WILL Nigeria survive? For how long will the train of bloodletting continue to trundle on? Does the Federal Government really understand the dire situation the country is in? Will President Muhammadu Buhari and the Federal Executive Council (FEC) rouse themselves from their apparent slumber and move to arrest the situation before it deteriorates any further?
These and similar questions are what beleaguered and increasingly desperate Nigerians from across different walks of life, in various parts of the country, and across various traditional and social media platforms, are asking themselves and, crucially, their rulers. Unfortunately, their clamour has been met with callous indifference by the Federal Government, leading many to conclude, justly, that the Buhari administration has run out of ideas and lacks the capacity to take on arguably the greatest challenge to the political and territorial integrity of the country since the Nigerian Civil War (1967- 70).
For such sceptics, the latest spate of attacks across the country is yet another proof that the administration is out of its depth. For instance, just last week, suspected armed herdsmen reportedly stormed several communities across Katsina-Ala Local Council in Benue State, leaving more than a hundred dead in their wake. According to the chairman of the council, Alfred Atera, the marauders had set ablaze residential houses and farms. In another example, on Sunday May 23, another group of suspected herders launched a premeditated attack on Dong Village in Jos South Local Council, killing scores of defenceless people. In the early hours of Thursday May 27, suspected herdsmen attacked Shikaan Mbagena Kpav, a Tiv community in Benue State, mowing down at least 36 people, some of them students of the College of Education Katsina-Ala.
Attacks like these are just one aspect of the country’s expanding economy of violence. Space does not permit a systematic documentation of the incidents of kidnapping which are now a daily occurrence. The same thing applies to calculated brutal attacks on soldiers and law enforcement agents by sundry armed gangs. Last month, more than 30 soldiers were sent to their early graves when still unidentified militants ambushed an army base in Mainok in the northeastern part of Borno State. When you throw into the mix the normal pattern of everyday violence, especially attacks on civilians by armed robbers, you get a picture of a country literally crumbling.
The situation has revived fears among security experts that the country, already a failure when judged by all the relevant sociological indices, is in danger of collapsing if urgent remedial steps are not taken. For example, in a must-read article for Foreign Policy magazine, Robert I. Rotberg and Joseph Campbell (the latter was US ambassador to Nigeria from 2004 to 2007) called for “a new determination by Buhari and the political class to restore security and a sense of safety” in order to “prevent the nation from spiraling further into failure and despair.”
We fully endorse the sentiment undergirding Rotberg and Campbell’s article and join them in decrying “the fraud, graft, and embezzlement that are fundamental to Nigeria’s weaknesses as a state and that are compelling contributors to its failure.” We call on President Buhari to act and act decisively. His silence at a time of such grave emergence for the country is not golden. Instead, it makes him look weak and utterly clueless. History is upon him and members of his cabinet.
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