Ours is a country dangerously moving backwards at high speed. North, South, East or West and no matter where you live or come from, no matter your political opinion or religious belief, the tales, the woes and anguish are the same. The country is unsafe and extremely dangerous. Yet, those we have entrusted with leadership carry on like all is well whereas the entire country is in jeopardy.

Every day, we are either witnesses to, or we read in the news of how armed bandits, terrorists and most recently, “unknown gunmen” threaten, attack, abduct and kill helpless citizens with little or no resistance from security agencies. The criminals operate without fear and get away. 

As at the time of writing this opinion, the following incidents were recorded as having happened within a space of twenty-four hours from across the country; Bandits attacked a hospital and abducted two nurses in Kajuru. In Ibarapa area of Oyo State, 25 people were reportedly abducted in different circumstances. In Zamfara, bandits killed over 40 villagers.

In Enugu, two policemen were reportedly killed by unknown gunmen in an attack at Adani Division. In Kaduna, bandits invaded Greenfield University, killed a worker and abducted yet to be identified number of students. Sadly, some of the abducted students have been shot dead by their abductors. In Ondo, kidnappers abducted three construction workers on Ikaram -Akunnu- Akoko highway. In Niger State, bandits attacked a military base in Zazzaga community. In Warri, Delta State, gunmen killed a young man and abducted two persons in Omadino Community. In Anambra State, the Zone 13 Police HQ in Ukpo was attacked and two policemen killed. The list goes on.

In response to the heightened insecurity across the country, the United States issued a travel advice to her citizens to avoid travelling to 14 out of Nigeria’s 36 states. The travel warning was based on prevalence of crime, terrorism, civil unrest and kidnapping. According to the US, “violent crimes such as armed robbery, assault, carjacking, kidnapping, hostage taking, banditry and rape- are common throughout the country.” 

Whereas the current security situation is giving lots of concerns to our international partners, the most shocking thing is that we are doing nothing to contain the dangerous slide into anarchy. Our leaders seemed not interested in catching and putting away those behind our security crisis. Apparently, the current situation serves their political agenda. The best they have done is bargaining with the devil – paying ransom to the bandits with the hope to buy peace and security.

We are reminded that terrorism and banditry have come to stay. We have internalised that we have to bargain with the devil, that we have to learn to live side by side with the bandits. This is a foolish thing to do. A civilised society does not give space to criminals. It does not make excuse for mobsters. It does not recognise crime as human rights. A wise country stand on its values, it stand on its principles, it insists on good leadership. A good government does not associate terrorists or stand with criminals. It puts down criminals. It never obeys criminals because criminals are never sated. No matter what demands you follow, they demand more. And often, these demands are outside the norms, outside the laws, outside the constitution and beyond morals. 

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Nigerians are indeed suffering. We are in this ugly state because those charged with leading us are in actual fact fuelling the never-ending war and crisis that have engulfed our nation. In 2012, former President Jonathan lamented that insurgents and terrorist sympathisers had infiltrated his government. Some of them, he said, “are in the executive arm of government, some are in the legislative arm of government while some of them are in the judiciary. Some also are in the armed forces, the police and other security agencies.”

Who will imagine that eight years after Jonathan’s lamentation that we might be having an Al-Queda and Boko Haram member as a serving Cabinet Minister and we are told to be comfortable with that? Who will think that a day will come when our government, rather than maintain a safe distance from extremists, will become their Defender -in- Chief? Who could imagine we will be in a time when our government would pick and choose who to sanction for specific acts of terror? How will a government that stood with terrorists exonerate itself from the rife public speculations of harbouring the sinister agenda of using terror as a tool to adopt Nigeria as the natural homeland of all Fulani in Africa? How will a government with such a moral burden command the respect, confidence and trust of the citizens?  

We knew all the time that government is capable of doing evil and that most of our problems were created by government, but hardly did we know that a time will come when we will have a government that will not be afraid to openly stand against us and the constitution. Though we live in a time of uncertainties and many things are uncertain, one thing I am certain about is that we cannot continue to live like this and survive as a nation. The air in Nigeria is saturated with anger and bitterness caused by injustice and inequality. If we are determined, we can change a whole lot of things about our country, and it takes one good leader with his head in the right place to change the course of events and halt the impending war threatening to consume us. 

When you look at the resources God has put on this country and the resilience of her people, you find amazing people who have excelled in many spheres of life and you wonder why we are in this ugly situation. We cannot, in truth, allow this country to be destroyed, knowing the problem is not in our political geography but in us as a people- our leaders. And we can do away with those leaders and those things holding us down. 

There are those who don’t believe in the future and greatness of this country. In 2023, we must do away with them by stopping them from getting into public office. We must end the scam called the 1999 Constitution. We must group together and put together a set of criteria that will promote the kind of leadership that understand how we can develop our economy so we can take advantage of the entire value chains of our resources and create employment for our people. We cannot continue with people who have lost their minds, who don’t think we can produce refined petroleum from our crude oil or those that believe in the herd mentality as a way of life. We need a new kind of leadership that is disabused of religious and ethnic bigotry.

Terrorists and terrorist sympathisers can repent, but most certainly, we don’t want them as our lawmakers, ministers, governors and most of all, we do not want anyone associated with them as our President. We don’t want any leader that will allow his few cronies to control the wealth and destiny of this nation while impoverishing the rest of our population. We must take our destiny into our hands. We must snatch victory from the jaws of the lion. We must become more confrontational in our demand for justice and equitable society.

We must be ready to stand in the face of bad politicians whose evil antecedents we know and tell them to their faces and with our votes that they are not wanted anymore. We must wake up from our slumber. We must insist on good leadership. We must make our leaders know we mean business and that we cannot continue to live like this.  We must become more organised, more vociferous and more involved in our politics.