Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has accused President Bola Tinubu’s administration of abandoning the North-Central area to a wave of violence.
In a message made on his official X account, Atiku said that insecurity has grown in North Central states, demonstrating that the federal government fails to protect Nigerians.
He said, “The resurgence of killings in the North-Central shows clearly that the Tinubu administration has abandoned the region to bloodshed.
“Kwara, once safe, is now a hotspot of bandit and kidnap attacks. Niger State has seen militants attack military bases, murder soldiers, and even massacre worshippers in a mosque. Plateau and Benue continue to bury their dead while the Federal Government looks away.”
Atiku claimed that by May of this year, “over 10,000 lives had been lost in Northern states,” with Benue purportedly responsible for more than half of those murders, and warned that mass killings had persisted on a weekly basis thereafter.
He characterized the scenario as “a monumental failure in the basic duty of securing lives and property.”
Atiku, the Peoples Democratic Party’s presidential contender in the 2023 election, went on to blame the ruling All Progressives Congress for focusing on battling the opposition rather than insecurity.
He claimed that the party deployed “thugs, infiltrators, and hired hooligans” to disrupt political meetings in Kaduna, Kebbi, and Ogun, and that security forces either failed to intervene or blamed victims.
He stated the APC leadership’s silence was “proof of complicity.”
He also asked Nigerian police personnel to remember that they are “funded by taxpayers, not the APC,” and to be “neutral, fair, and constitutional.”
Atiku’s remarks came amid growing public criticism of the government’s response to rural and sectarian violence in the North and Middle Belt.
Nasir El-Rufai, former governor of Kaduna State, claimed in an interview with Channels Television on Sunday that the Federal Government, led by President Bola Tinubu, has been offering incentives to criminals through the ONSA.
He said that the ONSA organizes payments to criminal groups in the name of amnesty and incentives, cautioning that such a program would exacerbate insecurity.
However, the ONSA condemned the charges as “false, baseless, and insulting” to security personnel who have lost their lives in the fight against terrorism.
In a statement signed by its former spokesman, Zakari Mijinyawa, and published on X by presidential aide Bayo Onanuga, the ONSA stated that El-Rufai’s views were “unfounded and politically motivated.”
