From John Adams, Minna
A chieftain of All Progressive Congress (APC) and former Niger State Commissioner for Information, Culture and Tourism, Jonathan Vatsa, has thrown his weight behind Senate calls for the immediate sacking of federal security service chiefs over the recent killing of over 70 people in Zabarmari, Borno State, saying that the time has come to listen to Nigerians.
Vatsa said that the country has lost count of innocent Nigerian lives that have been killed in the last five years of the Buhari administration as a result of the country’s internal security crises, and wondered why the President was still keeping the security service chiefs in spite of calls for their ouster by well-meaning Nigerians.
‘Blood is becoming cheaper than even water in the country. Nigerians are being killed as if we are in a war,’ Vasta said, reacting to the mass killing of rice farmers in Borno.
Vatsa, a former publicity secretary of APC in Niger, added that ‘there is no justification for the President to continue keeping the Service Chiefs.’
According to him, ‘it is obvious that the service chiefs can no longer add any value to the security of the country. In all honesty, I want to believe that they are even tired of the whole security situation and are waiting to be let go.
‘The President must listen to the calls by the National Assembly because they are the representatives of the people. They are lawmakers and they are speaking the minds of over 200 million Nigerians they are representing.’
In addition to calling for the sacking the service chiefs, Vatsa urged President Buhari to be courageous enough to apologise to Nigerians over the country’s security situation, saying that ‘if Nigerians can’t see food to eat, at least they should be able to move freely. The entire country is right now under siege, this is most unfortunate.
‘Nigerians didn’t bargain for this when they voted wholeheartedly for the President; so, therefore, he must do the needful to protect them. Every Nigerian is living in fear in his house today, not to talk of travelling on our roads, which are now [at their] most deadliest,’ he stated.
