Insecurity: The many failed promises of President Buhari

Even before he assumed power, one of the main promises of President Muhammadu Buhari was the issue of insecurity. He promised to make security one of his cardinal agenda, six years down the line, Nigerians are worse off as security has further gone south.

The country is not just battling with the Boko Haram insurgents, kidnapping has become a nightmare for Nigerians with students being the targets of kidnappers.

Just recently, on Saturday the 24th of April, President Muhammadu Buhari while reacting to the news of kidnapped students of Greenfield University stated that the FG will continue the fight against banditry and urged Nigerians to show empathy and come together as a society.

However, these promises sound too familiar, as Nigeria has experienced mass school kidnappings before the Greenfield incident this year alone including.

The list is endless, 17th February 2021 – Kagara Kidnapping – 27 boys; 26th February 2021 – Jangebe Government Girls’ Secondary School – 317 girls and 11th March 2021- Afaka kidnapping, Federal College of Forestry Mechanization.

After the Jangebe kidnapping, the President warned that State Governments must review their policy of rewarding bandits with money and vehicles as such a policy had the potential to backfire with disastrous consequences.

“States and Local Governments must also play their part by being proactive in improving security in and around school,” he stated.

After the release of the girls was confirmed, Buhari stated that the federal government is “working hard to bring an end to these grim and heartbreaking incidents of kidnapping. The Military and the Police will continue to go after kidnappers. They need the support of local communities in terms of human intelligence that can help nip criminal plans in the bud.”

The Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, stated that schools should be built near Military facilities to prevent further kidnapping incident, citing that the state government has studied patterns of abduction in Kaduna and Zamfara, and come to the conclusion along with the armed forces that if the army, air force and navy special forces can get to the location of the schools within 30 minutes, bandit operations can be foiled.

“In our view in Kaduna, the first (way to address the situation) is to ensure that schools are fenced, because, unless we fence schools, we will give easy access to criminals. So, fencing schools are very important, and that’s a budgetary item; you need money to build fences,” he said.

The State Governors have recently called for the implementation of state police to give them more leverage in dealing with insecurity. Doing this requires reforms and these reforms are impossible without the National Assembly pushing for and implementing a constitutional amendment.