Most appropriately, insecurity topped the list of issues of utmost concern for all the political parties and their respective candidates at all levels for the recent 2023 General Elections. In the course of the prolonged campaigns, the political parties, depending on whether they were or still are in power or not, made case(s) either for or against the current government over the pervasive insecurity that has been the severest threat to the people’s lives in Nigeria.
The insecurity was, in fact, the biggest reason for the simultaneous victory of some candidates and the defeat of others during the last elections. This means that the persistence of insecurity in, particularly, most parts of the North served as the basis of the election of some contestants and the rejection of others by the voters, which means that all the other factors that might have, in one way or another, also determined the outcome of the elections were less significant than the insecurity.
In various ways, the North effectively engaged most of the contestants in a manner that signified total resolve to extract absolute commitment from them towards the resolution of the security crisis. It was a measure that allowed for a comprehensive and comprehensible analysis of the crippling challenges and the resultant expression of a full readiness to deal with them.
It is, for example, easy to recall that a coalition of some Northern pressure groups, a few months to the elections, organized an interaction with the major presidential candidates in Kaduna during which each one of them was demanded to unveil his agenda for the North. The groups and, by extension, the Northerners manifested a strong desire for abundant explanations, by the individual candidates, on their respective proposed strategies for the rescue of the region from the numerous problems that have continued to threaten its existence.
Expectedly, each one of them identified insecurity as the most terrible challenge that calls for a quickest and most coordinated action. They individually lamented the prevalence of a heightened insecurity as evident in the regular violent attacks which is an indication that the safety of persons and security of communities have already been terribly compromised.
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The rate of such a threat in terms of scope and intensity was so unimaginably high that the possibility of the conduct of the elections was almost ruled out by a lot of concerned Nigerians. Both the vastness of the areas affected by the criminality and the clear determination of the perpetrators to continue with their acts apparently decimated the capacity of the security agencies for the kind of counter-attacks that could lead to the containment or even reduction of the violence.
This was the situation in which such vital activities as party primaries, campaigns and all other necessary engagements took place and were therefore the main reason for the apprehension in a lot of critical quarters over the readiness of the country for the elections. Even the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was, at a point, reported to have been uncertain about the timely conduct of the exercise on account of the prevalent threats to security in the various parts of the country.
However, as the elections approached, the rate of the violence noticeably dropped as a result of which voting and all other related activities took place in the centres designated for such purposes. The drastic reduction of attacks in even the worst-hit areas not only guaranteed the conduct of the elections but also created the feeling that the insecurity had been substantially tackled.
The well-acknowledged relief has now, unfortunately, turned out to be short-lived as bandits, kidnappers and some violent criminals are now fully back with their acts. There have, nowadays, been reports of deadly attacks and abduction of innocent people at a rate that prevailed prior to the period of the elections; a setback that is most shocking and which has also necessitated the valid question: Why the renewed attacks?
A search for an answer to the above question has already begun with the various groups of Nigerians coming up with varying and, in some cases, even conflicting theories, each of which is re-enforcing the fear over what appears as the consolidation of criminality in the country. Those who had thought that the criminality acts have gone with the elections or, more precisely, the elections have provided an end to the insecurity must have now realized the weakness of their conclusions.
The recent killings and/or abductions in, for example, Benue, Kaduna and Zamfara States as well as along some major routes have fully pointed to the fact that neither were the criminals ever subdued nor have the agencies responsible for the control of the ugly situation become more equipped for a fight with them. The incidents are an indication that the perpetrators of the act have garnered a strength that is enough for them to constitute a destabilizing force.
This undeniable reality is a huge challenge that awaits the winners of the recent elections in whose emergence as new leaders a strong hope for the immediate salvation of the country has been immensely invested. While they, perhaps, are still celebrating their victory, they need to read carefully and loudly the message contained in the recent violent attacks on the people who voted for them.
Continuity of criminality, especially on the scale it is being perpetrated, is something no Nigerian will want to imagine. It will be completely erroneous for the newly-elected leaders to just think that the people can continue to live as either targets or victims of criminal acts or the country can continue to survive an endless violence that amounts to a clear act of destruction of its basic foundations.
The election winners, especially those in the North, should make conscious effort to put all the foreseen challenges in a proper context so that they can get prepared for the extremely difficult task ahead. As those who will, in the next few weeks, assume responsibilities as either state governors or lawmakers at national and state levels, the winners have since been duly expected to have developed sufficient and effective strategies for the resolution of the various crises in the North in particular and the country in general.
In fact, the ordinary people of the North who have been brutally exposed to severe dangers as a result of incompetence, recklessness or greed or even combination of all of those tendencies of their leaders will expect nothing less than a genuine effort towards the creation of much better living conditions for them from all those they have just elected. Any failure to meet this expectation will hardly ever be accepted.
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