FG, tackle rising insecurity

T HE kidnap of the wife of the Central Bank Governor, as well as a former minister and her husband on the Kaduna-Abuja road last week shows that the issue of insecurity is getting out of hand in the country. Before the latest incidents, several people had been kidnapped in the past, including a traditional ruler in Lagos, and the Federal Government ought to have raised the security level in the country to its highest. It is so bad that schools are now being targeted by these evil people; just last week, a vice principal, a teacher and about four students were abducted in Epe, Lagos, and this came eight months after an earlier attack on a secondary school in Ikorodu in February.

Nobody is safe in the country any longer, and I believe it is the result of the economic situation in the country that the crime rate is rising every day.

Over the years, our leaders mismanaged our oil wealth, thereby leaving nothing for the citizens to survive on when things became tough. What is happening in Nigeria today can be applied to our individual lives; an individual who does not have any savings will suffer when he becomes financially broke.

When we were awash in petrodollars, our leaders did not deem it fit to diversify our sources of income, as anything could happen to the oil industry. Did they even think the Western nations who were buying the oil at such high prices were comfortable with it. According to information, the United States started developing the shale oil over two decades ago when it was not comfortable with the high price it was paying for crude, as well as the politics tied to it in the international political arena.

Today, the shale oil is partly responsible for the fall in the price of crude, as well as the discovery of oil in more countries of the world, thus making more countries oil producers. The truth is that oil is no longer valuable as it used to be.

Now, the inability of our past leaders to envision a bright future for the country is the reason we are experiencing this economic challenges, and this can be linked to the insecurity we are currently facing in the country.

While I am blaming our past leaders for the woes we are experiencing at the moment, I want to charge the security agencies to nip in the bud the rising insecurity in the land.

One of the ways to reposition the country economically is through foreign direct investments, but no investor will come to invest in the country if the environment is not conducive.

Therefore, if we really hope to get out of the economic mess we have found ourselves, then it is important that the country is safe for doing business.

• Dr Taju Alalade,

Ilorin,

Kwara State.