In 2014, anyone with some sense of perception could tell that ignoring the heinous crime of the Buni Yadi massacre and the abduction of young girls from their school, would embolden the criminals.
Six years on, children in as far away from Borno as Lagos, have been kidnapped from their schools. This breakdown of the very fabric of our society has come to the point where criminals barge into households in the dead of night not to steal but to snatch children from their parents and negotiate for ransom.
Ten years of asymmetric war in a country that has already fought a full-blown civil war it is yet to recover from, is a fertile ground for criminals. They have therefore appeared in all guises across the length and breadth of our country, unleashing death and misery.
Citizens have turned to prayers and lamentations. Even those in denial are having a rethink. Security operatives seem to be at their wit’s end, unable to keep pace with criminal minds or simply becoming fluid and working both sides of the divide.
Kidnappings, gun-running, cattle rustling, land grab, illegal taxation, slavery/Forced labour, human trafficking, sex slaves/prostitution rings, drug trafficking.
These are the crimes that continue to define a wartime sub-economy, the longer the war lasts the harder it is to break the stranglehold. This war has gone on for over ten years. Throwing money at the problem without a strategy with timelines and accountability is another Pandora’s box.
These past months have seen insurgents taking and killing citizens at will. Indeed, bombs are not going off but killings have spiked. Some might even describe it as a change of tactics. A sad development. Intelligence units should have been prepared for this.
Safe School Initiative.
Missing Persons Register – NHRC.
A Chibok Girls Desk in the Ministry of Women Affairs.
Rehabilitation, Reunification, Reintegration of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) – With a view to moving them to safe areas so as to continue to fend for themselves and restore their dignity.
No Nigerian should be in a camp for more than six months within Nigeria. These were solutions proffered to Government, with workable timelines and reviewable indices.
However, IDP camps is another thriving sub-economy. Unscrupulous persons are making millions of Naira from the suffering of others.
To all of this, add over ten million out of school homeless, unloved and hungry children Waiting to unleash their anger on a society that is indifferent. In another decade or less, even Presidential jets will not be safe. Sow the wind. Reap the whirlwind.
It is not that complicated. Planning, strategy, implementation. Honesty, lots of it. Selfless service and EMPATHY for subjects from competent, capable leaders.
Meanwhile, subjects who believe that the culture of having many wives and children they cannot cater for, has no correlation with the chaos of their region should continue to play the ostrich.
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