Less than two months after Nigeria served the world with the ugly spectacle of over 300 tender pupils abducted from Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, Katsina State, the country is in the news again for yet another of such embarrassing and dizzying occurrences. Last week, about 42 persons were captured and taken away from Government Science College Kagara in Niger State by armed bandits who swooped on the school in the early hours of the day.
“Twenty-seven students, three staff and 12 members of their families were kidnapped. Unfortunately, one student was shot dead,” Governor Abubakar Sani Bello of Niger State told Reuters.
These chilling occurrences can only compound the already growing fears across the populace about the worsening insecurity in the land and what is increasingly appearing like the sad and pathetic incapacity of government to contain it.
Shortly after the kidnapping incident in Niger State, there were reports that about 17 nursing mothers who were on their way to a wedding ceremony in Garin Maigora town in Katsina State were equally brutally intercepted by armed bandits and taken away to an unknown destination, possibly, the thick Katsina forests. One can only imagine the kind of excruciating experience this could be for these nursing mothers and the unimaginable trauma the new babies would be subjected to.
It does seem that the terrorists now operate with utmost brazenness, if not fanfare, having realised the howling inability of the security agents to contain and bring them to justice. Reports say that their operation at the Niger school lasted for over two hours. It is shocking and scandalous that despite this, the security agents were not able to plan and deploy counter-measures to foil the criminal act.
As usual, President Muhammadu Buhari has condemned the abduction describing it as a “cowardly attack on innocent school children.” A statement by his media aide, Garba Shehu, added that the “President has directed the Armed Forces and Police, to ensure immediate and safe return of all the captives.”
Is this statement suggesting that the security agents always need to be directed by the president to carry out their very important, statutory duty of securing the nation?
The expectation of all well-meaning Nigerians is that the government should wake up to its responsibilities and rescue the country from this endless nightmare of abductions, killings, maiming and raping of innocent citizens. Concern has been regularly expressed about the very low school enrollment figures in Northern Nigeria and successive governments have mounted vigorous campaigns to reverse the unedifying trend. But with these regular abductions of students and their mindless subjection to unspeakable trauma, many parents might begin to be compelled to withdraw their children from schools.
And this can only frustrate the expected emergence of future leaders with adequate education to confront the challenges of the twenty-first century and drive the nation’s progress and development. Also, swelling the camp of the uneducated and unskilled youths provides ready pools from which unscrupulous politicians recruit their thugs. It equally feeds the ranks of potential terrorists and bandits.
It is sad that the Buhari regime has shattered the hopes it had raised about its capacity to protect Nigerians from rampaging renegades who seem animated by the pain and sorrow they unleash in the society. The primary duty of any government is the protection of lives and property. Any government that fails in this regard has only squandered its continued relevance and legitimacy. In this, this regime must be willing to admit that it has failed woefully. It has so scandalously diminished government as weak and clueless before the bandits who are now taking advantage of that to be more daring and deadly.
The greatest disservice of the Buhari regime to Nigerians will be to allow the growing impression that Nigeria has become a very unsafe place to settle in the mind of the world. It will encourage several countries to issue travel advisories to their citizens against visiting Nigeria, further drive away potential investors and encourage businesses already operating in Nigeria to relocate to safer lands. Of course, tourism is already dead in Nigeria, because it is only the insane that will elect to holiday in a country where people are regularly captured like rats and taken away without any restraining force.
It does seem that in the area of combating insecurity and restoring sanity to the polity, the Buhari regime has become pathetically fatigued. Its most attractive options now appear to be going cap in hand to the bandits to plead, negotiate, grant amnesty and “compensate” them with fat cheques for regularly smearing the polity with countless barrels of blood. We have had cause to warn that this is a defeatist strategy that can only compound the security crisis. Government will only succeed in providing the criminals more funds to equip themselves with more sophisticated weapons.
