Fellow Nigerians, I deeply regret the failure of leadership in keeping with its constitutional duties of securing the lives and properties of citizens. Recent terror warnings point to this failure and most regrettably the seeming lack of empathy emanating therefrom. Like I always say, without security, our efforts at Nation building will be akin to putting the cart before the horse.
World over, leadership is renowned for its vision, strategic thinking, commitment, and inspirational communication. Unfortunately, the leadership of our dear nation has failed on all counts of what should be the hallmark of qualitative leadership. I will explain using the imminent terror attack warning released by the United States.
parts of the country have become illusive, hence the present chaos. Having a vision also requires strategic thinking and leadership to allocate resources (human and material) to deal with any situation.
Most bizarrely, the present administration has shown no known commitment to dealing with the myriad of challenges facing the country. Definitely, security is a part of the long list of issues undeserving of adequate attention. While leadership elsewhere inspires, we have a spokesman of the administration taunt foreign governments to predict security occurrences in their places.
We have kept silent for a few days to see what kind of action or reaction our government will present to Nigerians over the now global assessment of terrorists in Abuja. Once again, like countless other times, we as Nigerians are left to fend for ourselves. In the ensuing confusion, our government and security agencies are mute. We hear of soldiers of a foreign nation operating in our capital city looking for terrorists and evacuating non-essential workers. The situation has degenerated to the point that flights for these nationals are now diverted from Abuja to Lagos.
The crazy thing is that we don’t even expect much from our leaders anymore. The so-called opposition and “Big party” politicians are mute, deaf, and dumb to the security alerts. For the enervated and all those desirous of a prosperous nation, I ask: Where is our National Security Adviser? Where is our Interior Minister? Who gave the US Government authority to mount a joint operation on Nigerian soil? Evidently, we are living in a clueless society. The leadership has no idea of how to treat its people nor do they have any idea of the palpable sense of insecurity and doom that prevails.
Fellow Nigerians, if we continue to elect people to govern this country that has no clue about what modern governance and leadership should be like, then we are looking at the imminent collapse of our country. Unfortunately, the present leaders are people who are concerned only about how they look to the public, pushing irrelevant topics and posing for photo ops to distill health and travel status rumors. In rare cases, they embark on a show of pointless empathy.
Nigeria deserves modern governance that takes its oath of service to the people seriously. The security of this nation should be the primary task of the next administration. We must change our predictable security architecture and profile. I must state that the enemy is within; they know our tactics and they have intelligence on all our movements. Most importantly, they know our weaknesses.
We must immediately start to vigorously and intentionally hunt down our enemies and project clarity of purpose that any clear and present danger to the unity, integrity and security of the Federal Republic of Nigeria will be dealt with decisively. God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
‒Ado-Ibrahim is the presidential candidate of Young People’s Party (YPP).
