Founder of the School of Politics, Policy and Governance and former Vice President of the World Bank, Dr Obiageli ‘Oby’ Ezekwesili, has accused the administration of President Bola Tinubu of cuddling terrorists when it has the opportunity to finish them off.
The co-convener of #BringBackOurGirls, an advocacy group formed over 11 years ago to campaign for the release of more than 200 girls abducted from a secondary school in Chibok, Borno State, condemned, via her X handle, government officials’ encounters with bandits without taking decisive action.
She said, “It is accurate to state that our federal and state governments, led at this time by @NGRPresident @officialABAT, are, by their appeasement strategy, enabling terrorists by rewarding their criminal behaviour.”
The two-time minister was speaking following the latest abduction and release of pupils and their teachers from St Mary’s Private Catholic School in Niger State.
According to her, a capable Nigerian state of the past would never cuddle terrorists, adding: “All who persist in harming and killing our country and people, especially our children, would have long been finished off by a caring and competent government, as the @NigeriaGov has a constitutional duty to protect and secure the lives of citizens.
“This constitutional duty means that our children must have safe schools to attend and excel in, never to be subjected to terrorist abductions, killings and other harms.”
She said the fact that successive administrations and presidents had woefully neglected their constitutional obligations since terrorism began in earnest in 2009 could not be contested by any reasonable person.
“Our past and present governments, in escalating degrees, have basically failed to decisively and effectively tackle terrorists who take up arms against Nigerians and our country.
“Failure with no consequences compounds. It now painfully appears that because grand corruption grossly weakened the capacity of our security establishments, all successive @NigeriaGov administrations implicitly adopted a policy of appeasing terrorists as the only way they know to secure Nigerians and Nigeria,” she lamented.
Nothing, she added, exemplifies this anomaly more than the triumphal press releases and statements that gloating public officials often issue to announce that “the Federal Government has secured the release of abducted victims…”
She also criticised government spokesmen who boast of success in “securing the release of victims of terrorism” without telling the public who the criminals they negotiated with were, at what cost, and under what conditions.
Ezekwesili, who recently won a global anti-corruption award, noted, “All that Nigerians see is flagrant opaqueness on matters injurious to Nigeria. Terrible! The serial lack of transparency in our insecurity crisis is enabling cancerous and deadly corruption on all sides of the so-called negotiations with criminals, while exposing the country and its people to greater vulnerabilities.
“The @NigeriaGov has neither taken action nor planned arrests and prosecutions of terror perpetrators to send a signal that government still believes there must be consequences for crimes.”
It was insane, she said, that officials of the Federal Government who were in proximity to deadly criminals terrorising the country during so-called ‘negotiations’ took no measures to destroy, decimate or arrest them for prosecution.
“The entire template raises serious questions that must be urgently addressed by the Federal Government. The ‘abduction industry’ in Nigeria today was created and now thrives because of the complicit actions of weak and incompetent governments that lacked, and still lack, the capacity to offer good governance.
“This abominable state of affairs will persist until Nigerians collectively arise to dignify their own lives by confronting the reality that those in power have run out of ideas to secure the country and its people,” she proffered.
