Bandits, herdsmen, insurgents, professional kidnappers, hooligans, cultists and gangsters, religious fanatics, highway robbers and sea pirates: you just name them, are now holding the nation to ransom. There is no week that we don’t hear of reports of atrocities carried out by these miscreants in the country.
Prior to the 2015 presidential elections, the then opposition presidential candidate was touted as the best candidate that can handle the menace of Boko Haram, being a retired general and a former Head of State with vast experience in security matters.
But today as an incumbent president with all the instrument of coercion at his disposal, how have Nigerians fared with him being in power for four years? From reports across the country, nothing has improved but rather things are getting worse day-by-day.
Boko Haram is still very much active, herdsmen are still killing, our highways have become the playground of armed robbers, kidnappers and rapists with our rivers and seas a fishing pond for sea pirates.
In Zamfara State alone, it is estimated that over 11, 000 persons have lost their lives between 2011 to date to the activities of bandits, not counting those kidnapped or raped.
In virtually every state of the federation, these criminals are having a free run with the security forces looking helpless. The situation has been so bad that even retired generals who are supposed to live out the remaining part of their lives in peace are either shot dead at their homes or on their way to their farms.
We are indeed experiencing a harvest of corpses in Nigeria, with most people feeling unconcerned at the situation until the gale of violence hits their loved ones or communities.
In Nigeria, we don’t take criminal activities seriously, and tend to look at them from either ethnic or religious prism. If we recall prior to 1999, there was nothing like bandits, cultists, religious fanatics and other criminally minded miscreants rearing their ugly heads, but sadly some of these problems could be traced to the activities of politicians who employed some of these youths as thugs to do their biddings at all cost.
Today, the thugs have graduated to become gun totting menace to our collective peace of mind. Even our houses with series of gates and padlocks cannot stop their determined effort to harm us. And those privileged to have armed excorts are not totally safe even on the streets and highways.
It is too bad that people read political meaning into a lot of security issues in the country. Under former President Goodluck Jonathan, a group known as the Bornu Elders and the Northern Elders Forum vehemently opposed the call for a state of emergency in Bornu State because of the security challenges and some of them even went further to say that the fight against Boko Haram is a plot to reduce the population of the North. The then Chief of Army Staff, Lt General Azubuike Ihejirika was accused of carrying out a genocidal plan to wipe out people from these areas. They threatened to take General Ihejirika to the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
This is 2019, is there any improvement in the war against insurgents and their fellow comrades in arms? The answer is yet to be a yes! From May 2015 to date, more Nigerians have died than at any period of the country’s bloody history. We are not at war yet the body count is still mounting.
Let us do away with politicians’ security issues and look at it from just the professional and nationalistic point of view. In Sri Lanka, it did not take the government more than a week to identify the culprits of the Easter Day bombings and less than three weeks to discover the hideouts of some of the culprits and their sponsors. But in Nigeria, the response to such security challenge is always inept, delayed or never sees the light of day. This is 2019, yet, we are still waiting to hear the security services tell us how many of the masterminds or sponsors of the criminal activities have been identified or charged to court.
Although moves have been initiated by the National Assembly and State Governments to tackle the security challenges, but there must be sincerity on the part of the federal government if these problems could be tackled successfully.
While vigilante groups like Hisbah in Kano, Kaduna, Bauchi would be allowed to operate in the North, some State Governments in the South have made attempt to set up security outfits to lessen the burden of the regular police only for the army to disperse them and tag them as thugs. Yet we are in one country.
If the ruling class continues to see critical issues, from the prism of politics, then, where are we heading to? Security problems should always be a collective issue where every stakeholder in the Nigerian project makes his or her own contribution as we are all affected by the wave of killings, kidnapping, rape and destruction.
Just recently, one of the image makers of President Muhammadu Buhari, Garba Shehu opened his mouth too wide and insulted the sensibilities of Nigerians by classifying Miyetti Allah, Ohanaeze Ndigbo and Afenifere as belonging to one category.
This is just the problem with Nigeria, it is either we trivialise issues or we play the ethnic card. If we keep on playing these cards, the owners and masters of the Abuja/Kaduna highway of death, the East/West road and other major roads in the country will continue to have a field day while the high command of the security services will be busy touring state commands and having security seminars on how to tackle insecurity.
It is high time President Muhammadu Buhari wielded the big stick as those he has given the task of safeguarding the security of the country have failed in their primary assignment.
Let heads roll!!!

Tonye Ikiroma-Owiye