Leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and its presidential candidate in the 2023 general election, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has condemned the carefree attitude and cosmetic approach of the government towards terrorists, bandits and kidnappers.

He lamented that those who have made life a living hell for Nigerians as they kidnap, maim, kill and sometimes, sack entire villages are protected by the government and allowed to go scot-free, while some other Nigerians are decisively dealt with once they appear to have crossed the line.

He drew a parallel with the case of Nnamdi Kanu who was hunted down and arrested in faraway Kenya, brought back to Nigeria, prosecuted and jailed by the same government that has failed or refused to arrest people who roam the country’s forests kidnapping and killing people, including school children in their numbers.

“This is a government that could capture somebody in Nairobi, Kenya, bring him to trial and sentence him to life in jail. But they cannot capture people who are going around, terrorising everybody here in Nigeria. How do you go and carry hundreds of people? Have you been a nursery school teacher before? To get 35 children to cooperate with you inside the class is not easy. So, how are you going to carry 35 people and take them somewhere without the security personnel doing anything about it?

“So, what I’m letting you know is that the president should stop communicating failure. He should get a grip on his armed forces. Remember, one armed robber, Lawrence Anini, was disturbing people in the old Bendel State, and Etim Iyang was commissioner of police. He was coming to the Armed Forces Ruling Council’s meeting, when President Babangida asked him, where is Anini? Before you come here and start sitting with us, my friend, where is Anini? And within a short period, they captured Anini.

“So, what I’m saying is that President Tinubu needs to call the armed forces to deal with the terrorists and all of that. For kidnappers and all these opportunistic criminals who are taking easy targets, he needs to call the IGP, Egbetokun, and tell him, my friend, where are these kidnappers? And if I hear one more kidnap, you are gone.”

He also noted that President Bola Tinubu has never been serious about the insecurity in Nigeria, as his government has always treated perpetrators with kid gloves until recently when a tweet from the American President, Donald Trump, awakened him to realise the enormity of the insecurity in the country he oversees its affairs.

“First, he has heated up the whole country by poor economic policies that are making everybody desperate and wild. In terms of security of the country, he has not been paying attention to Nigerians who have been paying ransom everywhere from ‘one chance’ kidnappers and others.

“Do you think that if you conduct a public hearing of ‘one chance’ victims, there will be over a million? He’s not paying attention to people being kidnapped in the communities everywhere. The only reason he’s sensitive to it now is because Trump sent a tweet,” he stated.

He implored President Tinubu and his team to rise up to the enormous responsibility of governance and stop playing with people’s lives and only claiming to be serious each time Trump threatens to invade the country.

“They should not be serious only when Trump is tweeting and saying he’s going to deal with them. They should be serious all the time, because you can see now that it is possible for miracles to happen. So, if you were in doubt before as to whether the government is deliberately not doing its duty, now that they have done their duty within a week, we are getting results.

“If they keep this momentum and stop using security as an excuse for mismanaging resources and diverting public funds, if they actually get the job done, nobody can keep our children in captivity, and nobody will be able to succeed,” he said.

He said Nigerians are among the smartest people on earth and such smart people abound the country’s security agencies but lamented that the commander in chief is not in charge.

“The only mistake we made and I say this with every sense of gravity, is that we elected President Tinubu as Commander-in-Chief. That’s a big mistake because if you get the smartest people in the US Marine, in the CIA and other people’s armed forces, they are not as smart as our own officers.

“Nigeria has some of the smartest, most intelligent people. Even the police that you look at with common eyes have some of the most intelligent people,” he said.

On the presidential order to the security agencies to cordon off all the forests, especially in states where insecurity had spiked in recent time, he said the order does not excite anybody because that is what the government should have done a long time ago. He also said making such a security move public would not produce any result as the bandits are also watching the news and would restrategize.

He also blamed President Tinubu for populating his government with saboteurs, saying, “When President Tinubu came, I said to Nigerians that this gentleman will undo his own government by the people he appoints in his own cabal because he was elected alone and look at all the choices he’s making. Now, he is the cause of his own problem, domestically and internationally.”

On government’s claim that opposition parties were sabotaging Tinubu because of 2027, he said: “How can you say somebody is sabotaging you? Who sabotaged you to the point where you have no ambassador to the United States, no high commissioner to the United Kingdom, no ambassador to France, no ambassador to China and no representation at the Security Council members?

“Even if you are joking, you don’t want to have an ambassador to Burkina Faso, Estonia and Australia and leave out Germany. Why would you not have diplomatic representation in the membership of the Security Council? You are treating ambassadorial appointments like any other political appointment that you are going to use to force people to come and join you. That’s not going to augur well for your government,” he said. (The Sun)