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HomeNewsACT OF CRIMINALITY: WIPING OUT THE TERRORISTS

ACT OF CRIMINALITY: WIPING OUT THE TERRORISTS

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By: Abdulrasheed Ibrahim, LL.M, Notary Public

I have said it somewhere else that most of the people that aspire for leaderships in this country do not know how to use the power to make meaningful and positive impact in the lives of the people when they eventually get it. There is no doubt that patriotism and leadership by example have for long gone on flight in this county. According to Chinua Achebe : “Nigeria has many thoughtful men and women of conscience, a large number of talented people. Why is it that all these patriots make so little impact on the life of our nation? Why is corruption, gross inequities, our noisy vulgarity, our selfishness, our ineptitude seem so much stronger than the good influences at work in our society? Why do the good among us so helpless while the worst are full of vile energy?” The simple answer to this is lack of patriotism and love for the country.

If one may ask, what is patriotism? According to Achebe, “He is a person who loves his country. He is not a person who says he loves his country. He is not even a person who shouts or swears or recites or sings his love of his country. He is one who cares deeply about the happiness and well -being of his country and all its people. Patriotism is an emotion of love directed by a critical intelligence. A true patriot will always demand the highest standards of his country and accept nothing but the best for and from his people. He will be outspoken in the condemnation of their short-coming without giving way to superiority, despair or cynicism”. With what has been happening to us in this country, can it be said that our leaders from the top to the bottom are truly patriotic and living up to expectation? What have they been doing to seriously tackle the high rate insecurity across the country caused by the Boko haram madness, incessant herdsmen/farmers clashes, kidnapping, banditry and other criminal activities being perpetrated by the evil and terror gangs across the nation?

The level of havoc being unleashed on Nigerians by these evil and terror people in different parts of the country is becoming too disheartening and painful and this calls for an urgent intervention from the President of the country as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. The criminals are becoming more daring day by day and this requires immediate action by the President as than merely making of statements that a particular incident of kidnapping would be the last one contrary to which were series of such kidnappings thereafter. Mere assertion that the governors should not be paying ransoms to the kidnappers without more is equally not enough as there must be serious efforts on the part of the Federal Government to leash out its military might in smoking out the criminals from their hideouts for decisive action against them than mere rhetoric. Every word by the President must be followed by a serious action. The President should be worried that the North from where he comes has been the major target of these terrorists. Since the burden of national security lies with him as the Chairman of National Security Council by virtue of the Third Schedule of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, a concrete action is expected from that council. With the act of criminality and inhumanity being perpetrated by these wicked and evil terrorists, this is the right time for President Muhammadu Buhari to heed Rodrigo Duterte , the President of Philippines’s words that : “A leader must be a terror to the few who are evil in order to protect the lives and well-being of the many who are good”. Until the President immediately begins to be proactive in dealing with this evil people, most Nigerian people that voted and entrusted him leadership of this country will continue to regret reposing their confidence in him. The President must be concerned about the legacy he wants to leave behind.

The heartless criminals have turned this country into an animal jungle where they derive pleasure in killing innocent Nigerian citizens senselessly .It is high time the governments particularly at the Federal level mobilise all its might and forces to deal decisively with these criminals as they are making lives very unbearable for the Nigerians. Enough is enough. Why are some governors negotiating with these criminals and paying them ransom for their act of criminality rather than tackling them? The governors must make up their minds and be determined to confront these terrorists fire for fire. Since the governors may truly not have personnel and weapons to deal with these evil terrorists, the Federal Government will need come in to save the situation. Paying ransom (money) to the criminals will not deter them from the act of criminality rather they will allow that money to run into their heads and continue to perpetrate the crimes with the belief that they will get more ransom. Olusegun Adeniyi, a journalist and columnist in his article titled: “Criminal Cartels on the Loose” published in the Thisday Newspaper of February 11, 2021 said :

“In October 2019, a former Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mohammed Abubakar disclosed that over N3 billion was collected by bandits as ransom from relatives of victims in Zamfara State alone within a period of eight years. Abubakar who chaired a committee set up by the current governor , Bello Matawalle to find solutions to banditry in the state, said the report covered the period from June 2011 to May , 2019. The money, according to Abubakar, was collected from 3,672 victims whose relatives paid to secure their freedom. Abubakar said that a total of 4,983 women were widowed, 25,050 children orphaned and 190,340 persons displaced by banditry over the period in the state.”

This was what happened just in one state within that period. The data of other states are not included. By what we have been seen and reading after that the figures of the victims and the illicit earning in that state alone must have sky rocketed far beyond the above figures. Are our leaders comfortable with this development? What efforts are being made by our leaders to stop this madness and atrocities being perpetrated by these wicked terrorists? Are our leaders reading all these reports and if they do what are they doing to curb them? If the attitudes of our leaders still remain the same as Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was once quoted to have said when talking to some journalists that : “In most cases, I take what Nigerian Newspapers report with a pinch of salt. In your own case, I take it with a bag of salt”. A good reader should not be discriminatory when it comes to reading. He needs to develop the sense and ability to distinguish what is right and what is wrong so as to believe or disbelieve whatever he reads. If our leaders are discriminatory in reading, they will not know when a genuine information eludes them and that may have adverse effect on their role as leaders.

One often keeps wondering what is happening to our military might and intelligence in this county? Many innocent school children are still being held hostage from those of the Chibok girls in Borno State upto those presently being held in Kaduna State whose poor parents are being asked by the bandits to pay N500 millions for those children to be released or be killed. The governor of Kaduna State has said he was not ready to pay ransom to the criminals. Some other governors that have paid ransom in the past are now regretting that those criminals have taken them for a ride that after collecting money from them they have refused to give up their wicked and evil trade of kidnapping for ransom. But are our military personnel not aware of the hideouts of these terrorists to trace them? Are they afraid of confronting them to dare the consequence? I was astonished when I read the account of Sheikh Ahmad Gumi’s visit to Fulani settlements. According to Olusegun Adeniyi, in his article titled: “20 Years Later …Same Old Wahala” published in the Thisday Newspaper of January 28, 2021 in his column:

“Following a risky peace mission to Fulani settlements along Abuja-Kaduna routes that have become notorious for banditry and kidnapping, respected Islamic cleric, Dr Ahmad Gumi, has made shocking revelations. Sharing his experience in Daily Trust Newspaper at the weekend, the Sheikh said the bandits and kidnappers who carry out the nefarious activities are mere foot soldiers and the real kingpins live in the cities. Asked whether he was not afraid for his life engaging such characters, this is Gumi’s response: ‘I am not afraid of the bandits. I am more afraid of those people who capitalize and exploit them. When we asked some of the bandits why they kidnap people ,they said they don’t know the rich people, they don’t go to towns but there are people in the cities who ask them to attack certain rich people. So, the bandits are only agents. When the ransom is paid, it belongs to those people in town, the bandits are only paid operational fee. If you see them, they are tattered. One of the commanders was wearing slippers and you just can’t see any sign of the millions on them. So those (the sponsors) are people I fear because we live in the city with them and because they fear that we are trying to break their chain or hold on their agents The people I fear are those that are capitalizing on the weakness of the Fulani to indoctrinate them with their own ideology’ ”

In a country where leaders are concerned about the security of their people, the security agencies need not be told before doing the necessary things. From the above revelations, does it not look like those behind these atrocities are known people in the town? Can’t the security agencies go after them for proper investigation and arrest? In the region where the level of literacy or education is nothing to write home about, wicked and heartless terrorists are going about kidnapping innocent school children for ransom. Is this senseless act not discouraging sending children to schools? This is more the reasons why the President must be seriously concerned about the security situation in the country and devise ways to stop all these criminal madness.. If the bandits and kidnappers are well educated and know what is lawful and unlawful, they will not allow themselves to be exploited by those from the cities for their selfish end. If they know the gravity and penalty of such crimes under the law, they will think twice before allowing themselves to be used for such illegality.

These criminal elements are now a big threat to this country and until they are dealt with decisively we may not know peace for a very long time. Since these wicked and heartless people have disallowed us to live in peace, we must devise ways to make them restless as we can no longer afford to be at the mercy of the terrorists. If this exercise requires mass recruitment of good Nigerians into the security forces or sending our military personnel for sound and tactical training outside country or even buy sophisticated weapons to confront the terrorists, the Federal government must be prepared to do all these. If the US security forces could eventually bring down Osama Bin Laden, then our security forces should do more to bring down all the terrorists disturbing our peace here. El-Rufai was right when he said:”We need the combination of air power, and we need troops on the ground augment by local expertise and knowledge. We need just one , two ,three months operation to just try to kill all the bandits. It’s the only way to stop this. So long as these bandits are being paid, it’ll remain a business. So the only option that we have is to ensure that we kill them all.”

On the incessant farmers/herdsmen clashes, I think our leaders need to call a spade a spade and do the right things. In reality the open grazing of cattle should be considered as out-dated and ranching system be embraced and encouraged. Both genuine farmers and herdsmen in the country should be encouraged to embrace modern technology in the practise of mechanized farming and animal husbandry. The legislators must enact enabling laws to regulate such practice with appropriate penalty and sanction stipulated for defaulters of the law.Nobody must be above the law. I do not buy into the argument of some people that agricultural practice in any form are private businesses which the government must not be involved in.Such contention to me are baseless as it was the neglect and abandonment of agriculture in the large scale that has contributed significantly to the high rate of poverty in this country for a very long time. During the First Republic when there were three major regions of Eastern Region, Northern Region and Western Region, they survived mainly and sustained their economics basically on agriculture produces with which they developed their respective regions when there was no crude oil which the country now mainly rely on at the expense of the agricultural potential this nation is blessed with.

One of the great damages the terrorists has done to the agricultural potential of this country is that with their incessant and senseless attacks they have killed and displaced many farmers from their farmland .A glaring example of this was heartless killing of rice farmers in cold blood in Borno State and other parts of the country. Our leaders should be seriously worried about this ugly development as well as on the concern raised by the European Union on food insecurity in Nigeria in their recent statements where they said that “ over nine million citizens requiring urgent food assistance” and that :

“Because of the recent increase of violence in Northeast Nigeria, hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people will be left without assistance in an area where humanitarian assistance was already struggling to reach all those in need.”

Are these not enough to gear up our leaders particularly the President into serious action against the terrorists and evil people in our midst? Since those heartless terrorists and criminal have decided to be deadly in inflicting pain and sorrow on the good Nigerian people , every possible effort must be mobilised to wipe out these devilish terrorists from this country. Whenever necessary Nigerians should make information available to the security agents on how to trace and wipe out these terrorists disturbing out peaceful existence.The ball is now in the court of the President as the Commander-in- Chief to act quickly against the terrorists for the sake of prosperity.

NOTE: Anyone is at liberty to disagree with my above submissions as I will surely appreciate a balanced, fair and objective rebuttal.

08055476823, 08164683735: abdulrasheedibrahim362@gmail.com

22th April 2021

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Oludare
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