It seems that the glass of water has actually overflowed in Nigeria with the harrowing revelation that the captors of a whole bunch of college kids and employees from LEA major college in Kuriga In Chikun Native Authorities Space of Kaduna are demanding for one billion Naira to launch them. It isn’t only a demand reduce unfastened to be suspended within the air, the intrepid bandits have given the Nigerian state a 20-day ultimatum earlier than they start to do what they need with the kids. Eight months into the presidency of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, it seems that Nigeria is being force-fed the agony of its darkest days beneath Muhammadu Buhari.
Public colleges in Nigeria have since ceased to supply far more than damaged chairs, home windows, doorways, crumbling reptile-infested college buildings and disgruntled lecturers. But, for a lot of rural kids, whose lives at house someway handle to be tougher, college, regardless of how starved of sources, nonetheless represents a particular house of math and reminiscences, of effective arts and associates. To grab kids from their college the best way the bandits did is an assault not simply on the integrity of Nigeria’s safety however on innocence.
The Chief of Defence Employees is from Kaduna State. Most of the establishments the place Nigeria trains the members of its armed forces are positioned in Kaduna State. But, it stays the one a part of Nigeria the place lightening strikes twice with out flinching. It might take extraordinary misfortune for any of the 287 kids snatched on 7th March 2024 to have been amongst these snatched from Baptist Bethel Excessive Faculty in the identical native authorities in 2021. Nonetheless, the mother and father whose kids had been snatched in 2021 will completely perceive the agony of these whose kids have been stolen this time round. They may perceive your complete spectrum of darkish feelings they’re going via.
What’s beneath assault in Nigeria extends past life and limb, even when these are invaluable. In rendering colleges unsafe for kids and their lecturers, the bandits whose reign of terror is suppressing communities throughout Northern Nigeria are steadily decreasing the nation’s future to fiction.
Nigeria is in a transition. After eight years throughout which former president Muhammadu Buhari didn’t hassle to elevate a finger to depart a legacy, Bola Ahmed Tinubu is making an attempt his arms on an workplace blighted in earlier years by the ineptitude and inertia of its occupants. He could have had solely eight months, however the eight months have been longer than eight many years.
Within the muffled workplaces of the presidential seat in Aso Rock, the president and his closest aides have to be rattled by the flip of occasions. Spontaneous protests have rocked main Nigerian cities as households have responded to financial hardship. Costs of products and companies have soared, chopping off necessities from many households. The wealthy and poor alike in Nigeria have been compelled to grouse on the new equalizing actuality.
The bandits’ historic demand for one billion Naira exhibits they’re transferring with the occasions. It’s the first time within the historical past of Nigeria’s heartbreaking insecurity that one billion Naira has been demanded as ransom. It ought to tremendously fear Nigerians that criminals are jerking up their costs on the identical time the costs of products and companies are skyrocketing within the nation.
The Chief of Defence Employees is from Kaduna State, and it’s time Nigeria launched a forensic inquiry into why Kaduna simply rolls over on its again like a contented pet and permits bandits get pleasure from their outings within the state every time they strike. It shouldn’t have been straightforward to abduct and transfer 287 kids, a few of them undoubtedly screaming. Moreover, it shouldn’t have been straightforward to deal with or feed them. Moreover, it shouldn’t have been straightforward for safety companies to fail to reply to an emergency involving kids in a state awash with Nigeria’s army may, but in Kaduna State, all these had been straightforward and much more.
The sport Nigeria Is enjoying with these decided to inter the nation is an unutterably harmful one. The child gloves with which Nigeria continues to deal with those that sponsor terrorism within the nation could quickly be used to stitch its burial shroud. The glass has lengthy overflowed, and the eels the nation is coddling at this time are quick metamorphosing into venomous snakes.
The Nigerian authorities has vowed that there shall be no ransom paid the abductors, simply because it has vowed to fish out the abductors. Nonetheless, past forceful rhetoric, it’s uncertain that the Nigerian authorities has a lot of a plan to catch all these concerned. In actual fact, expertise has proven that it doesn’t.
Nigeria has to boost one billion Naira within the subsequent few days to free its kids held by terrorists. That’s the ultimatum hanging over the nation. That’s the worth hanging over the heads of harmless kids. Just like the sword of Damocles, bandits now wield calls for over Nigeria and dare the nation to not comply. If there was ever a jaguar stripped of its jagged tooth, right here it’s.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com