We can’t deny this, even if we want to. The headlines these days are ominous. It is either to announce the kidnapping of whole families, or school kids along with their teachers, or the killing of kidnapped monarchs.
The latest two in this abduction drama are even more audacious. In Sabuwa local government of Katsina State, 55 wedding guests were abducted while accompanying the bride to her new home. Three local vigilantes lost their lives trying to rescue them.
Then two busloads of passengers coming to Abuja from the South East were also attacked, on Sunday, at a town in Kogi State; with some of the passengers taken hostage.
From the setting of the few incidents mentioned above, it’s safe to say that the kidnapping business is now a national trade.
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We started with the FCT then Ekiti State then Katsina and finally Kogi, though the victims are from Eastern Nigeria.
In any country where security of lives is uppermost in their leaders agenda, their Commander-in-chief will be in a situation room with his NSA and his service chiefs right now, trying to strategise on how to halt this menace.
But, as we all know, our Commander-in-chief is not even within our shores. He’s at a place where safety and security are guaranteed by the government, and is watching events happening here from that safe distance.
From another angle, because Nigerians are getting angrier and hungrier, they are beginning to come out in protest to say so. Inflation has been on a steep rise and food prices are the worst hit. Ordinary Nigerians are finding it hard to feed themselves. And they’ve decided to announce it loudly and clearly, to those at the helm of our affairs.
But are they listening? Does it look like they are rushing to the drawing board to see what economic policies brought us to this state?
Also, does it seem like they are about to task themselves, and introduce austerity measures that will drastically reduce their spending and save enough to ease the pains of the common man?
Unfortunately, it is a resounding “no” to all these questions. Right now Nigerians are left to their devices. Striving hard to keep away from kidnappers by avoiding certain places, by making sure we leave home at a certain time and return at a certain time, to keep ourselves invisible to them; and now that they have the audacity to abduct from homes, we are even more security conscious when answering the knock on our doors.
Yes, our security agencies are trying their best, every day we hear of kidnap kingpins and terror cells getting neutralised.
But they can only go after the known cases, they can’t prevent new attacks or stop the new criminals rising and coming after ordinary Nigerians.
Today more and more people are sleeping with one eye open, so to speak, because they can’t afford to over relax and snore. The situation of the country doesn’t allow for that.
So, what then is the solution?
Those who troop to the streets think all they need is to grab government’s attention to their plight and their problems will disappear.
But there are many who believe this is wishful thinking. A government which in seven months has brought this level of hardship to us, that’s after we survived the “Next level” of horror endured in Buhari’s second term, cannot possibly have a great prognosis for our future.
But it might be worthwhile to seek a solution close to the corridors of power. A video that went viral last week, showed the Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima, predicting what could happen in the case of poor governance. I later learnt that the speech was given about 12 years ago, when he was newly into his first term as Borno State governor.
It’s not clear what the event was but the VP was obviously talking about the need for good governance as a prevention and a solution to crime.
In that video clip, Senator Shettima narrated an incident that happened to his friend’s wife and their driver.
While driving in Kano city, they were attacked by some angry youths who broke their car’s windscreen. The youths went ahead to call them bastards who were “enjoying while the rest of us are suffering.”
To show the level of anger and audacity harboured by the young men, they didn’t run away after destroying the windscreen, “It was my friend’s wife and the driver who scampered away.” Concluded the then governor of Borno State, Alhaji Kashim Shettima.
He ended the story by saying that very soon we will reach that boiling point in Nigeria.
Hear him “Unless we wear our thinking caps and work for the people. And the most important yardstick has to do with the quality of governance. There is more to leadership than primitive capital accumulation. No matter how much you steal, beyond a certain point it’s just a number…”
How eloquent and philosophical but is it also prophetic? Did our VP see the future so much that he prophesied what will happen if we continued on the path of poor governance? More importantly, have we reached that “very soon” which he predicted, given that audacious crimes are happening all around us and the country is no longer safe?
Remember that this politician and gentleman was a governor for eight years and a senator for four. He knows all about governance and how it impacts on the well-being of the people.
Can he bring his knowledge and experience to bear on this administration so that what he said, in that one-minute video can be adopted by this government in which he’s number two citizen?
I hope he can, because it’s what we need right now.
Today we crave the quality of governance that will put us, our security and our hunger above everything else on the government’s list.
