A retired Commissioner of Police, Emmanuel Ojukwu, has identified lack of effective governance as a major driver of the prevailing insecurity in Nigeria.
He emphasized that addressing the crisis requires strong political will, noting that the bandits wreaking havoc across the country are able to operate largely because of the absence of governance in affected areas.
There must be the political will to stop instability, the political will to give good governance to the people, Ojukwu said on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Monday.
Some of these bad elements are operating because there is lack of governance in the areas where they are operating, so they became the alternative.
He claimed that banditry continues to thrive in Nigeria because it benefits certain high-ranking officials in government, warning that the crisis will persist until the political elite are genuinely committed to ending it.
The former police commissioner also placed some responsibility on the general public, stating that as long as the culture of money worship remains unchecked, vices like banditry will continue.
The end should be judged by the means. Somebody has too much money, he throws it around, people hail him, he becomes a mentor, a bad person cannot be my mentor, he said.
In recent months, insecurity has worsened across Nigeria, leading to numerous incidents of killings, banditry, terrorism, and various forms of violent crime in several states.
Just last week, over 100 people were reportedly killed in a wave of violent attacks across Borno, Sokoto, Katsina, and Edo states over the weekend.
The attack attracted several reactions from Nigerians of all levels, with the Labour Party’s presidential candidate in the 2023 election, Peter Obi, urging the Federal Government to declare a “national war on insecurity.
Bloody Weekend: over 100 Killed in Borno, Sokoto, Katsina, Edo. This grim headline captures the frightening reality reflected in our weekend papers, Obi wrote on X.
The killing of eight NSCDC officers, the abduction of a Chinese national in Edo, the kidnapping of passengers on the Benin–Iyere–Oluku road, and the slaughter of five soldiers and 58 civilians in Borno are not isolated tragedies. They are stark evidence that Nigeria is in the grip of a full-blown security emergency.
When over 100 Nigerians are killed in a single weekend, our casualty figures rival those of countries officially at war. This is no longer business as usual. It is time to declare a national war on insecurity — to mobilise every resource, every agency, every state, and to suspend all distractions while we begin the process of reclaiming our nation from lawlessness.
