The Presidency on Sunday explained President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration’s efforts towards tackling the insecurity in the country.
A presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, in a statement, was responding to the Daily Trust’s editorial on Sunday titled ‘Life has lost its value under Buhari’s Nigeria’. He said while the Daily Trust had indeed correctly identified the source of the violence as ‘an amalgam of many complex issues’ such as poverty and unemployment.
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He said it was quite wrong “to suggest the problem of insecurity is intractable, and more wrong still to claim apathy on the part of the government.”
Shehu stressed that the military efforts had not let up.
He admitted that “in the face of today’s growing number of threats from Boko Haram, bandits, kidnappers and IPOB to your run of the mill bandits, our forces are stretched increasingly thin. But our dedicated soldiers are working around the clock to keep Nigerians safe.”
He said alongside military force, the Federal Government was seeking to address the violence at its economic source.
“Massive infrastructure Projects like the coastal rail and new train from the southern coast through the north-east to our neighbour Niger aim to expand employment and opportunity across the country, bringing hope to our more remote and poorer regions where bandits and terrorists thrive.”
He said even as the West continued to extricate itself from Africa militarily, the Federal Government was lobbying its western allies “aggressively for partnership, investment and support in other areas, such as proscribing Boko Haram, bandits and IPOB as terrorist groups, which would severely dent their funding; for investment in trade and infrastructure, to help lessen economic instability; and to help with technical assistance, advanced weaponry, intelligence and ordinance.
He said the suggestion that the president exchanged violence for the support he got electorally “is beneath a publication that claims any kind of political neutrality or integrity.”
