Nigeria: A Surge in Terrorist Activities

opinion

It is heart-rending that kidnappings and terrorist activities are on the rise in Nigeria. Apart from the scourge of quasi-religious insurgency, armed robbery and sundry crimes, there is palpable fear over the menace of kidnappers across the country. The Kaduna-Abuja and the Lokoja-Abuja highways have indeed become notorious as hotspots for violent kidnapping. No less a person than the Federal official charged with internal security, Lt. Gen. Abdulrahman Danbazzau, declared recently that the scoundrels who have traumatised some travellers on the Kaduna-Abuja highway are terrorists. This is no cheering news. Nigerians are puzzled that the Federal Government has abysmally failed to protect life and property on land and sea in the country.

Kidnappers, wherever they operate, are human beings. With good intelligence gathering, they can be fished out and punished. Sadly, they have operated on some roads in the country at the cost of too many precious lives on Abuja-Kaduna expressway, Abuja-Lokoja expressway and on Benin-Sagamu expressway. In some instances, they operate as robbers for hours. Often after they have done so much damage security forces feebly proclaim their inability to properly take on the criminals because of poor arms and ammunitions. Ikorodu in Lagos State has become a haven for a secret cult, Badoo, that takes fetish delight in violently and crudely terminating innocent lives. The six students of Igbonla Model School who were released from their kidnappers' den recently have also given an account of their harrowing experiences in the hands of criminals. When will this barbarity end? When will the Nigeria Police wake up to effectively take control of this environment? It took the intervention of the Acting President for the governments of Edo, Delta, Ondo, and Lagos to work in unity for the release of the boys.

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