On the incessant kidnappings on Abuja-Kaduna highway

I speak further on the insecurity in Nigeria and precisely of the Abuja-Kaduna Expressway and axis, as a national shame, of the government’s seeming deliberate choice not to deploy and project state power to protect state and citizens.

I said in an earlier piece that while Abuja is Nigeria’s political capital and Kaduna the de facto military capital city, it is inexplicable how the security of the less than two-hour drive expressway linking the two cities is unattainable.

Every concerned person would recall that when the Nigerian government shut down the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport for six weeks in 2017 to resurface its runway, adequate security measures were deployed to ensure the sanctity of the unnecessarily notorious mobility corridor, where neither princes nor paupers are spared of violent atrocities. It was a gauntlet of forces, including deployment of intelligence and emergency rescue services for which not even urchins thrived or had freedom of action. Again, whenever there is a VIP movement, ostentatious provision is made to convoy movements.

Videos from the recent dastardly kidnappings and killings last Sunday do show a VIP movement covered by armed security. So, by that, it does show that if the government  thinks it important to secure lives and property, it doesn’t matter the cost as compared to the human lives being lost, curtailment of citizen freedom, wellbeing and the image of the nation smeared and presented for easy ridicule by our international rivals and detractors.

In strategic security considerations, the parlous of Kaduna-Abuja Expressway security and its long irresolution simply shows Nigeria’s inability to project power, even within its sovereign space.

Brig. Gen. Saleh Bala (retd)is the President White Ink Institute for Strategy Education and Research