There is now no week that Nigerians don’t wake up to some disturbing news of mass and sometimes gruesome killings in parts of the country. The latest theater of the onslaught against innocent Nigerians is Kwara State. Killers, whom the Nigerian Government has chosen to be calling bandits, have virtually overrun the state and recently, they made a gruesome harvest of about 200 human lives.
After the now, usual commiserations from the Government, the victims’ families have been abandoned to their fate and life goes on as we await a fresh round of killings. In all this, no word of assurance was given about apprehending the perpetrators as is usually the case.
It is this aspect of Government’s behaviour that pains the most and it has also been the major reason why these criminals continue killing and plundering. And we ask: why has it been so difficult for the Federal Government to go after the killers? Why is it enough to just rescue kidnapped victims and call it a day? Is it that the Government does not know that arresting and prosecuting the perpetrators will address the root cause of this problem and perhaps solve it once and for all?
It is therefore really inconceivable that the Government has refused to toe this sure path. What the situation looks like now is as if the citizenry are being asked to devise their own means of defending themselves, when the task of securing the lives of the people rests solely with the Government.
We have a Government that has abdicated its responsibilities and shamefully so. Just as the saga of the American intervention which led to the bombing of terrorist camps in Sokoto is dying down, we have heard that American troops have landed in the country to help fight the so-called bandits. Yet, this is something any sincere and serious Government would have very easily handled.
In Nigeria, the message being passed is that human lives don’t matter; which is why Government seems unperturbed by the large scale killing of its citizens, with the killers going scot-free. It is a real sad commentary and one big enough to cause the resignation of a country’s leader in a saner society. But Nigeria has over the years proved it is not sane and so, anything goes.
Yet, despite our willingness as a country to stew in our own messy juice, we call on the President of the country, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to transit from negotiating the release of kidnapped victims and commiserating with their families to apprehending the culprits and making them to face the law. That is the surest way of reassuring the citizenry that he means well and also warning the criminals that every bad action has a consequence.
We say, enough of Government’s passivity!
