Political Killings Must Be Checked
A few months to the general elections, insecurity has once again heightened all over the country. Almost on a daily basis people cry out that their lives are being threatened and in several cases no threats are issued before the guns boom.
The loss of valuable lives to assassins is a great cause for concern. Valuable lives have been cut short in their prime due to political gains. Marshal Harry, Funsho Williams, Bola Ige, Dipo Dina and several other unfortunate victims were cut down by yet-to-be-apprehended assassins, yet our politicians have learnt next to nothing.
The recent spate of assassinations in Borno State, during which the All Nigeria People’s Party’s governorship candidate, Modu Fannami, the younger brother of the state governor, Goni Mustapha Sheriff and five others were felled by assassins’ bullets, are examples of what to expect in the next few weeks as the elections approach. Nigerians are apprehensive of what the politicians will unleash on the citizenry and themselves in the frenzy that would precede and follow the elections in April.
In the last few days Bauchi, Plateau and Borno have been on fire as many pepole have been killed while thousands have been displaced. Agreed, some of these crises are not really political but the fact that they are coming as the election approaches is ominous. How safe would the country be by April when the elections are supposed to hold?
Before the violence escalates, let us remember Asari Dikibo, the PDP national vice chairman, south south; Ogbonnaya Uche, ANPP Senatorial candidate; Andrew Agom, member of the PDP Board of Trustees; Igwe Barnabas, Onitsha branch chairman of the Nigeria Bar Association; Ayo Daramola, a PDP governorship aspirant in Ekiti State; Charles Nsiegbe, a political associate of the Rivers State governor, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi among several others whose killers are still at large.
Even the media has not been left out. From Godwin Agbroko and Abayomi Ogundeji, both of ThisDay newspapers to Bayo Ohu of The Guardian, one prays the list does not get longer. The deaths are still being investigated and the police seem not to be making any progress.
Nigerians are tired of these politically motivated assassinations, which is why we are apprehensive about the April polls. Government needs to beef up security across the nation. State governors too, being the chief security officers of their states, should brace up. The Jos, Plateau State incident has become a recurring decimal, which the governor of the state Jonah Jang has described as politically motivated, and even with the presence of security men and even members of the armed forces, people are still senselessly killed.
We believe it is time to act now. President Jonathan cannot afford to turn a blind eye to the precarious security situation in the country. He cannot pretend to be deaf to these senseless murders. He cannot afford to call it a ‘family affair’ of his party. We are losing too many valuable men to our kind of politics. There is a need to take another look at the constitution and see why people want public office so badly that they are ready to kill another human being to get it. It is time to sit and study the situation and ask ourselves why political office is so attractive in Nigeria that people will do anything to get it.
The government needs to strengthen the machinery of crime detection and prevention. We cannot allow our democracy to be truncated by people who do not value human lives.
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