Olusegun Obasanjo, the former president, has rejected proposals for talks with robbers, stating that in order to address growing insecurity, Nigeria must move decisively and accept international assistance.
Speaking on Friday at the Plateau State Unity Christmas Carol and Praise Festival in Jos, the state capital, Obasanjo urged the federal government to cease offering an apology and engaging in talks with terrorists.
His stance coincides with an increase in murders, kidnappings, and other assaults on a number of Northern villages in recent weeks.
Thirteen instructors and 315 children were kidnapped from St. Mary’s Catholic School in Papiri, Niger State, on November 21.
The kidnapping followed the jihadists’ November 17 kidnapping of 26 schoolgirls from the Government Girls Secondary School, Maga, in Kebbi State’s Danko-Wasagu Local Government Area.
In the most recent attack, 24 people—including pregnant women—were kidnapped from a rice plantation in the Palaita hamlet, Erena Ward, Shiroro Local Government Area, Niger State.
Between Monday night and Tuesday morning, bandits in Kano and Kwara also kidnapped about twenty people.
This comes just twenty-four hours after 38 congregants who had been kidnapped on November 18 from the Christ Apostolic Church in Oke-Isegun, Eruku, Ikere, Kwara State, were freed following negotiations between the Federal Government and their captors.
Ten people were reportedly taken into custody in the Tuesday attack in the Isapa community, a few kilometers from Eruku, Kwara State, including a pregnant woman, nursing moms, and children.
Speaking at the Jos event, Obasanjo voiced his concern with the growing level of insecurity and stated that Nigerians have the right to ask for international assistance to make up for what he called the government’s inability to keep its people safe.
“regardless of your religious affiliation. regardless of your origins. We Nigerians are being assassinated regardless of our line of work, and our government doesn’t seem to be able to stop it.
“We belong to the global community. We have the right to ask the international community to help us if our government is unable to do so,” he stated.
In contrast to his tenure in power, Obasanjo claimed that contemporary technology has made it simpler to drive terrorists from their hiding places.
“Before I left the government, I knew we had the capacity to pick up anybody in Nigeria who commits crime anywhere,” the former president stated. We lacked the ability to apprehend such a criminal without moving on land or by air after identifying and locating him.
