Nigeria: Wike's Bounty and a Safe Nation

24 January 2018
opinion

As we seek solutions to the mass killings that have wracked our nation's peace in recent times, the N200 million bounty Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike placed on the killers of 17 people in the state on January 1, 2018, should specially interest us. So should the swift response of security operatives who liquidated the alleged culprits. "For desperate ills, desperate remedies," goes a French saying.

Which captures the circumstances of Wike's and the security operatives' response, though the ideal is for such suspects to be punished as sentenced by the law. The interest should be in Wike's response as a model of a desperate remedy for a desperate ill threatening our nation's survival as a peaceful, safe and united entity; since, with similar killings by herdsmen taking place rather concurrently in other states, there is no apparent effort to bring the perpetrators to book. And this is despite their leader having virtually taken ownership of the killings, which claimed 73 lives in Benue State, including disembowelled women and children, by explaining them as a retaliation for the loss of their cattle in the victims' territory.

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