13th May, 2013
Human rights activist, Comrade Bamidele Aturu says President Goodluck Jonathan has lost control of the nation as high wave of insecurity has overwhelmed the nation.
He said the nation is drifting into a stateless country without a leader to properly direct its affairs.
Aturu in a statement lamented that the events of the last one week in Nigeria had been quite scary and paralyzing, as the president sits idly doing nothing about it.
“The unacceptable murder of police officers doing their duty to make the country safe in Nasarawa State, the killing of law enforcement agents in Bama, the forcible release of over 100 prisoners from a prison and the kidnap of Justice Rhodes-Vivour’s wife, daughter and driver are some of the grotesque occurrences that proved conclusively that we have become a banana republic regardless of what those who claim to be at the helms think.
“The truth is that the political elite have lost it completely. The security agencies are merely groping in the dark, while anarchy reigns supreme. The murders and kidnappings are unacceptable and those behind them must be fished out and punished firmly and swiftly. It is amazing that President Jonathan and his security chiefs are watching idly while Nigeria is parcelled among ethno-religious militias of various hues,” he decried.
Aturu added that Jonathan had clearly shown high level of incompetence in handling this matter, saying that “this sort of incompetence, I believe, is unknown to human history. Let no one politicise the madness that is going on in Nigeria: it is not a case of failure of leadership or of the State (as some fancy), but their absence. The state is not failing in Nigeria; nor has it failed- it has vanished. Welcome to warlordism of the most virulent kind.”
He called on Nigerians to brace up and find an alternative to the absence of the state as they needed to do everything necessary to rescue “our stateless-country. If we don’t, we are all in for it.”
Aturu further called on the nation’s authorities to do everything in its power to rescue the Rhodes-Vivours, warning that they must not be harmed, “otherwise we shall hold all those who parade themselves as holding offices in our stateless country responsible.”
—Kazeem Ugbodaga & Eromosele Ebhomele