Trump’s Tweet Jolted Tinubu To Act On Insecurity – Adebayo

The Social Democratic Party (SDP) presidential candidate in the 2023 general election, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has lamented that it took a tweet from United States (US) President Donald Trump for President Bola Tinubu to take the level of insecurity in the country seriously.

He said Trump’s tweet made Tinubu realise the enormity of the insecurity in the country he oversees its affairs.

Adebayo said after heating up the country by poor economic policies, the Nigerian president has not been paying attention to the security situation of the country, especially as Nigerians have been paying ransom everywhere.

He implored President Tinubu and his team to rise up to the enormous responsibility of governance and stop playing with people’s lives and only claiming to be serious each time Trump threatens to invade the country.

“They should not be serious only when Trump is tweeting and saying he’s going to deal with them. They should be serious all the time, because you can see now that it is possible for miracles to happen. So if you were in doubt before as to whether the government is deliberately not doing its duty, now that they have done their duty within a week, we are getting results.

“If they keep this momentum and stop using security as an excuse for mismanaging resources and diverting public funds, if they actually get the job done, nobody can keep our children in captivity, and nobody will be able to succeed,” he said.

He said Nigerians are among the smartest people on earth and such smart people abound the country’s security agencies but lamented that the commander in chief is not in charge.

On the presidential order to the security agencies to cordon off all the forests, especially in states where insecurity had spiked in recent time, he said the order does not excite anybody because that is what the government should have done a long time ago.

He also said making such a security move public would not produce any result as the bandits are also watching the news and would strategise.

He decried the level of mockery and propaganda of the government drawing an analogy with the arrest of Nnamdi Kanu from far away East African country of Kenya, his prosecution and final conviction. He lamented that while the government could go outside the country to arrest Kanu and bring him back to Nigeria, the same government has failed to arrest people who roam the country’s forests kidnapping people, including school children in their numbers.

“This is a government that could capture somebody in Nairobi, Kenya, bring him to trial and sentence the person. But, they cannot capture people who are going around, terrorizing everybody here in Nigeria. How do you go and carry hundreds of people? Have you been a nursery school teacher before? To get 35 children to cooperate with you inside the class is not easy. So, how are you going to carry 35 people and take them somewhere without the security personnel doing anything about it?

“So, what I’m letting you know is that the president should stop communicating failure. He should get a grip on his armed forces. Remember, one armed robber, Lawrence Anini, was disturbing people in the old Bendel State, and Etim Iyang was commissioner of police. He was coming to the Armed Forces Ruling Council’s meeting, when President Babangida asked him, where is Anini? Before you come here and start sitting with us, my friend, where is Anini? And within a short period, they captured Anini.

“So, what I’m saying is that President Tinubu needs to call the armed forces to deal with the terrorists and all of that. For kidnappers and all these opportunistic criminals who are taking easy targets, he needs to call the IGP, Egbetokun, and tell him, my friend, where are these kidnappers? And if I hear one more kidnap, you are gone,” he stated.

He also blamed President Tinubu for populating his government with saboteurs, saying, “When President Tinubu came, I said to Nigerians that this gentleman will undo his own government by the people he appoints in his own cabal because he was elected alone and look at all the choices he’s making. Now, he is the cause of his own problem, domestically and internationally.”

On the government’s claim that opposition parties are sabotaging Tinubu because of 2027, he said: “How can you say somebody is sabotaging you? Who sabotaged you to the point where you have no ambassador to the United States, no high commissioner to the United Kingdom, no ambassador to France, no ambassador to China and no representation at the Security Council members?

“Even if you are joking, you don’t want to have an ambassador to Burkina Faso, Estonia, and Australia and leave out Germany. Why would you not have diplomatic representation in the membership of the Security Council? You are treating ambassadorial appointment like any other political appointment that you are going to use to force people to come and join you. That’s not going to augur well for your government,” he said.