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Opinions of Tuesday, 13 July 2021

Columnist: Prof. John Egbeazien Oshodi

Nigeria mustn’t be abandoned

President Muhammadu Buhari President Muhammadu Buhari

The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), urgently needs to be counselled to take steps to establish a climate of security and democracy in the country.

Internally, almost everyone exhibits anxiety and uncertainty over both the solution to the ongoing Nigeria economic, security, political and constitutional crises, and the dark role that the Buhari regime is playing in it.

Buhari who constantly is on the side of using the police and military for every domestic security and civil demonstrations, needs to be advised to engage in dialogue with relevant sectors of the Nigerian society like the agitators for separatism. Besides, he needs to advance with a sense of urgency and purpose, and with a spirit of compromise.

Psychologically, Nigeria is now in an environment of unhealthy law enforcement, security, financial, educational, economic, medical, and political processes.

Almost day in and day out, people are killed execution-style with the use of heavy automatic rifles; there are brutality and illegal detention of protesters, abduction of students, youths’ suicide, kidnapping of travellers, raping of women and children and the country is plagued by a mob violence. In most cases, the government almost looks away and stays silent and appears powerless.

For far too long, the western world has been deeply concerned about the ongoing corruption, overstay of awaiting trial inmates, government’s disobedience to court orders, illegal police/security detention, steep unemployment, judicial dishonesty, and public mistrust of the government.

Cases of deep seated and serious religious/ethnic crises, high humanitarian crisis, electrical shortages, widespread road accidents, huge mental issues, institutional ineptitude, agency duplications, overpopulation, citizen unrest, protesting unpaid police officers, increased hunger, water stress, homelessness, increasing humanitarian needs and a lack of effective action by the Nigerian government to assure accountability in the growing list of characteristic human rights abuse violations are disconcerting.

The truth is that the Buhari regime has refused to accept the fact that it has lost the credibility and ability to bring political and civil society actors to the table for a consensual talk that inspires trust. The Nigerian crisis and impasse are total. The worst has yet to come, and it is about time the international community understood that.