Dr. Obiageli “Oby” Ezekwesili, a former vice president of the World Bank and founder of the School of Politics, Policy, and Governance, has accused President Bola Tinubu’s administration of supporting terrorists when it has the chance to eliminate them.
Via her X handle, the co-convener of #BringBackOurGirls, an advocacy group founded more than 11 years ago to demand the release of more than 200 girls kidnapped from a secondary school in Chibok, Borno State, denounced government officials’ interactions with bandits without acting decisively.
“It is accurate to state that our federal and state governments, led at this time by @NGRPresident @officialABAT, are enabling terrorists by rewarding their criminal behavior through their appeasement strategy,” she stated.
According to The Guardian, the two-time minister was speaking in the wake of the most recent kidnapping and release of students and faculty from Niger State’s St. Mary’s Private Catholic School.
“All who persist in harming and killing our country and people, especially our children, would have long been finished off by a caring and competent government, as the @NigeriaGov has a constitutional duty to protect and secure the lives of citizens,” she said, adding that a capable Nigerian state in the past would never have cuddled terrorists.
According to this fundamental obligation, our children must attend and succeed in safe schools free from terrorist attacks, kidnappings, and other threats.
Since terrorism started in earnest in 2009, successive administrations and presidents have miserably ignored their constitutional commitments, she argued, and no sensible person could dispute this.
“To varying degrees, both our previous and current governments have essentially failed to take meaningful action against terrorists who use weapons against Nigerians and our nation.
“Failure without repercussions exacerbates.” She bemoaned, “It now painfully appears that all successive @NigeriaGov administrations implicitly adopted a policy of appeasing terrorists as the only way they know to secure Nigerians and Nigeria, because grand corruption severely weakened the capacity of our security establishments.”
“The triumphal press releases and statements that gloating public officials frequently issue to announce that “the Federal Government has obtained the release of abducted victims…” are the best example of this anomaly,” she continued.
She also attacked government representatives who claim to have been successful in “securing the release of victims of terrorism” without disclosing to the public the identities, costs, and terms of the negotiations with the criminals.
“All that Nigerians see is flagrant opaqueness on matters injurious to Nigeria,” said Ezekwesili, who recently received a global anti-corruption award. Bad! In addition to making the nation and its citizens more vulnerable, the persistent lack of transparency in our insecurity situation is allowing lethal and cancerous corruption on all sides of the alleged talks with criminals.
“To demonstrate that the government still believes that crimes must have repercussions, the @NigeriaGov has not taken any action or scheduled the arrest and prosecution of terror perpetrators.”
She claimed that it was absurd that Federal Government officials who were in close proximity to lethal criminals terrorizing the nation during purported “negotiations” did nothing to demolish, decimate, or apprehend them for prosecution.
“The entire template poses important issues that the federal government needs to address immediately. Nigeria’s “abduction industry” was established and continues to flourish as a result of the complicity of weak and inept administrations that were unable to provide proper governance.
“Until Nigerians come together to take responsibility for their own lives and face the fact that those in authority have run out of ideas to secure the country and its people, this abhorrent state of affairs will continue,” she said.
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