A presidential aspirant for the 2019 general elections in Nigeria and leader of the Take It Back Movement, Omoyele Sowore, has challenged President Muhammadu Buhari to own up to the leadership failure over mass killings by Fulani herdsmen and stop shifting blames for the pervasive insecurity Nigerians are currently experiencing.
Omoyele Sowore contended that “it is unconscionable for the president to shirk his responsibility to guarantee the safety of Nigerians.”
The presidential aspirant in a statement at the week end declared: “The primary and the most important duty of any government is to provide security for citizens.
“We believe that development cannot take place in an environment that is as insecure as we currently face in the country.
“Not since the end of the Civil War has our people felt as apprehensive as they feel today. There is pervading insecurity in the country, and the government appears to be incapable to stop it.”
Sowore maintained that, “It is quite ironic that President Buhari was a former Army General, and one of his selling points, during the last election, was his strong military background which he assured us made him fit to provide Nigerians with adequate security.
“Sadly, cultism, robbery, and killings by alleged herdsmen have taken frightening dimensions, with all our security agencies seemingly unable to stem the tide.”
He lamented that, “Rather than giving the security and law enforcement agencies the marching order to restore the peace and enforce Nigeria’s laws, we have the ridiculous position of our Executive President blaming external forces and his political opponents for the inadequacies of his government to perform their statutory duties.”
He remarked that, “President Buhari even shamelessly told Nigerians that his police chief defied his order to relocate to Benue following the killings in that state, yet, the man is still at his post.”
“Regrettably, our parliamentarians are also failing to carry out their oversight role. Were our legislators to be up to their responsibilities, the president should have been called to, at the very least, explain why he allowed things to degenerate to these abysmal levels.
“What is more damning and unconscionable was the sight of Mr. President and his party’s stalwarts dancing away in Abuja at their party’s convention in Abuja while hundreds of their country men were being killed in nearby Plateau State. It is sad that our country has come to the level where the governing party does not deem it fit to suspend activities when news reached them that over a hundred Nigerians had been killed,” Sowore declared.
He recalled the president lambasting the previous PDP government for doing the same thing when he was in opposition; asking: “What has changed, President Buhari? “
Sowore further declared: “This callous and insensitive behaviour is unpardonable, and posterity will register it as one of the lowest points of a maladministration that has inflicted so much pain on our citizens.
“Such callous actions confirm our views that the APC and the PDP are simply two sides of the same BAD COIN.”