Former senator Shehu Sani has criticised the tendency to blame successive federal administrations for Nigeria’s insecurity while shielding leaders and security officials from the northern part of the country from accountability.
Sani, in a statement, said banditry and Boko Haram terrorism originated in northern Nigeria before spreading to other parts of the country and neighbouring nations.
He said criminal gangs and terrorists had caused widespread devastation through killings, kidnappings, rape, extortion, displacement and the destruction of communities.
According to him, the violence had produced thousands of orphans and widows, while millions of Nigerians had been displaced internally or forced to seek refuge in neighbouring countries.
He also noted that Chad, Cameroon and Niger were still grappling with the effects of insecurity that had spread across their borders.
Sani questioned the political tendency to blame former President Goodluck Jonathan, former President Muhammadu Buhari and the current administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for the worsening security situation.
“We blamed GEJ, skipped and pampered Buhari and now blaming Tinubu for the infernos our leaders in office couldn’t automatically quench,” he said.
The former lawmaker argued that Nigerians were demanding quick solutions to a crisis that had persisted for almost two decades, despite successive governments having failed to completely contain it.
He further raised questions about periods when key defence and security positions were occupied by officers from northern Nigeria.
“We don’t want to even hear that at a certain point in our tragic history, all the defence and security chiefs were from our part of the country; they met us with bandits and left us with more bandits,” he said.
Sani said political loyalties had made some people reluctant to criticise leaders from their own region, while directing their anger towards perceived political opponents.
He added that the country needed to confront the root causes of insecurity rather than manipulate the issue for political purposes.
“If Christopher Musa had blamed GEJ and BAT for the killings, he would have been applauded,” Sani said, referring to former Chief of Defence Staff Christopher Musa and the administrations of Jonathan and Tinubu.
He argued that criticism of security chiefs should also take into account the broader political and institutional failures that have contributed to the insecurity crisis.
Sani concluded by comparing the country to a patient who refuses to accept the results of a medical test.
“We are patients who want our diseases to be treated and cured, but we don’t want to accept and read the lab results; we want to write our own lab reports,” he said.
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