“The security architecture of the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) was compromised,” is the first sentence of a three-paragraph press statement yesterday by the Academy’s Public Relations Officer confirming bandits’ infiltration of the Academy on Tuesday.
The ten words sentence is enough to send a shiver running down the spine of every right-thinking Nigerian seeing how nonstate actors waging terror can effectively lay an attack on the nation’s highest military personnel training ground.
In the process of the early morning bout, the precious lives of two senior military officers were ‘wasted’ to the illegal bullets of the attackers at a time when Nigeria is in dire need of their meritorious service to help overcome the current insecurity mess across the country.
As the Nigerian Army tries to comfort itself over the sad demise of its two gallant abled-bodied officers, at the same time it is trying to identify the whereabouts of another fellow in the hands of the goons.
While it is needless to say that the barbaric act of the attackers is condemnable, it gives cause for worry and fear over how and when Nigeria will defeat all sorts of insecurity currently tenable in the country to allow the much needed peaceful atmosphere to consolidate national development and economic growth and prosperity, if a fully capacitated military structure as the NDA can be attacked with ease.
The Nigerian Army did well at many war fronts locally and internationally. However, seeing how untrained gunmen killed and are killing our gallant military personnel at local fronts: from the northeast to the northwest; from the north-central to the creeks of the Niger-Delta amid yearly mouthed allocation of large budgetary funds, depletes hopes for a peaceful Nigeria anytime soon.
Six years ago, Nigerians across the divides rushed to the nations pulling units and elected the present APC led Federal Government believing in the party’s manifesto and capacity of the then the presidential flag bearer of the party and now Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, to end the insecurity bedeviling the country.
However, security-wise, things did not work out for Nigerians in Nigeria and outside Nigeria as expected then.
Insecurity at the moment has a more deleterious tendency than ever before. And, Nigerians are increasingly feeling insecure at home and on the nation’s roads traveling from a part of the country to another in search of their pasture to earn a living as kidnapping has become the order of the day in the northern part of the country plus the Boko Haram and ISWAP insurgency and terrorism; agitations for secession multiplies, armed robbery, cattle rustling, farmers-herders confrontations, xenophobic killings; ethnoreligious conflicts.
Bandits now turned kidnappers have the capacity to whisked people away from their houses to the bush demanding for ransom running into six digits numbers. All classes of people in Nigeria are targets for the kidnappers as both uniform and non-uniform, men top state and federal government workers; businesspersons have felt victims of the now monetized kidnapping industry in Nigeria.
While we believe in the capacity of our nation’s security personnel to squash the current insecurity problems in our country, the people in government across all levels must develop the mindset to do the needful to arrest insecurity because securing the lives and property of citizens is the sole purpose of governments and ensure that defense budgets did not end up in the pockets of privilege few at the detriment of over one hundred and eighty million lives of Nigerians, resilient uniform men at various war fronts need to nurture courage and confidence in the most valuable role they are playing to defend their fatherland amid internal challenges within and outside the system, fellow countrymen must also support the uniform men in all deemed appropriate ways.
We have no country other than Nigeria. The task of remaking Nigeria for ourselves and generations unborn solely lies on our shoulders.
Kamaludeen writes from Bauchi and can be reached via: [email protected]; 08059589057 (WhatsApp Only).
