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July 17, 2019.

One Death Too Many: President Muhammadu Buhari Should Rise Above the Endless Rhetoric of Bringing Perpetrators to Book.

The leadership of the Young Progressives Party commiserate with the leader of Afenifere, Pa Reuben Fasoranti on the death of his daughter who was gruesomely murdered few days back by suspected killer herdsmen in Ore road on her way to Lagos. May God in his infinite mercies grant the entire Fasoranti family the fortitude to bear this irreparable loss.

The heartless killing of Mrs. Funke Olakunrin and thousands before her has become one too many and there will not be an end in sight to this criminality around the country except the government of President Muhammadu Buhari acknowledge the stark reality that insecurity in the country is far worse than he is made to believe by his team of security advisers.

The President should know that over thirty thousand Nigerians have either been killed, maimed, raped or kidnapped for ransom by suspected bandits, Fulani herdsmen or boko haram terrorists in the last four years in places like Taraba, Kaduna, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina, Benue and most recently in almost all the States in the Southwest.

In addition, there are currently over two million internally displaced persons in the country as a result of conflicts, terrorism and banditry. These figures put together points to only one thing that Nigeria is fast becoming a failed State and for any government to think otherwise is living in denial and an act of great disservice to the nation.

It is in lieu of the various security challenges facing the nation that we recommend the following to the President Muhammadu Buhari led government in order to immediately halt the declining state of insecurity and restore back the confidence of Nigerians:

1. The President should first acknowledge the seriousness of the security challenges presently confronting the nation by looking beyond the advice of unpatriotic sycophants around him.
2. A complete rejig of the current security architecture starting with the sacking of the current service chiefs who are already overwhelmed and the appointment of new ones that will reflect our heterogeneous nature without compromising competence.
3. Convoke an all-inclusive and non-partisan National Conference with the core mandate of discussing and recommending an holistic restructuring model potent enough to address our socio-economic and political challenges rather than the narrow call by the Senate for a National Security Summit. The current political structure is unsustainable and partly responsible for our security challenges and covening a National Security Summit without addressing the current political structure will amount to efforts in futility in the long run.
4. The Nigerian Police should immediately commence community policing with massive investment in intelligence gathering and forging strong synergy with communities in order to expose criminal elements in these communities.
5. The government should rise above the endless rhetoric of bringing perpetrators of these killings to book and start matching words with actions by embarking on an aggressive manhunt, arrest and prosecution of all criminal elements including their sponsors who have been responsible for unleashing terror in different parts of the country in the last four years. The absence of justice will only continue to embolden perpetrators, increase suspicion and eventually result to anarchy.

Conclusively, while we agree with President Muhammadu Buhari that every country has security challenges, he should also be reminded that Nigeria is not every country nor at war and neither should this perception be a license for insecurity in Nigeria to be handled with kid gloves.

Signed:
Comrade Egbeola Wale Martins
National Publicity Secretary.