Tinubu’s Empty Words Can’t Renew Hope on Security

By Ikeddy ISIGUZO

NIGERIANS are supposed to be applauding President Bola Tinubu’s decisions since he slipped into Abuja in the middle of the night on Monday. His return has renewed hopelessness, darkness across the land – his key decisions show these.
After ignoring Nigeria’s heightening security distress for the 14 days he cocooned in Paris and London, Tinubu has continued as if the renewed vigour of the killings and the depressing hue they cast mean nothing. The killings in Benue and Plateau are at a pace that has made other killings in the North West, North East, and kidnappings in other parts of Nigeria seem like peace.
How has the President addressed these persistent loss of lives, the emphatic presence of criminals who operate with hardly anyone stopping them? He has done nothing.
To be fair to the President he has used the same empty words like “rejigging the security architecture of the country”. Meaningless words that are worse than saying, “I will do nothing about the situation”.
Unarmed communities are being killed by attackers bearing unlicensed sophisticated weapons. Criminals stroll through our lands killing, burning farms, displacing residents who are blamed for deaths of cattle from pesticides they apply on their crops. We almost blame them for not knowing how to live with cattle herders whose practices thrive on ruination of the efforts of farmers.
Tinubu from the comfort of his “working visit to France” addressed the killings in Plateau as “communal issues”. Over 100 lives were lost in two attacks in Bokkos and Bassa Local Government Areas.
More annoyingly, in Plateau, Governor Caleb Mutfwang wants to probe death of some cattle suspected to have died in a farm. The owner of the farm is said to have poisoned them. How did the cattle get to the farm? Was the farmer supposed to obtain permission from the cattle or its owner before apply pesticides in his farm?
Benue Governor Hyacinth Alia added that trite line about the killers being foreigners. One would think there was a section of our Constitution that permits foreigners to kill Nigerians at will.
The killings continue. The counting has stopped. The lethargic address of their consequences are obvious.
Ordinarily, no President, strategist or not, would stay away from his country for two weeks while it burnt whether “on a working visit” or maintaining “constant communication with key government officials, overseeing key national matters”.
Leaders cut their trips short in such circumstances. There was no indication that the President was under any personal emergency. The President looked away in two weeks of high-octane tension in Nigeria.
The strategic leader stayed abroad. He who pilloried President Goodluck Jonathan for the buck not stopping on his desk, suddenly has no desk on which the buck would land.
Father of our nation, the greatest leader of Nigeria, issued ineffectual orders from abroad as Nigeria cowered under relentless attackers from criminals who the President and others before him call names that minimise their crimes and cloak them sometimes as victims. They could actually be.
Our President, Commander-in-Chief, strategic as always, elected to be indifferent to the wails of the afflicted. Jonathan would have visited the States. Many will be shocked if Tinubu does. He will keep his distance from the issues, the people.
The indifference is clear.
What is important to the President is his major and general comfort. The major comfort is being the President beyond 2027. Nobody should confuse this with winning the 2027 election as some of us often do. Defections will see to that.
The other comfort is ensuring enough power in the President’s abode. Electricity supply is so erratic that the President has sweepingly approved N10 billion for a special power plant for the presidential villa. The new grid will spare the President the indignities from using public power while other Nigerians will be taught lessons on payment of their bills go for days, weeks, months, years without electricity. There is a small provision of N8 billion on the 2025 budget to enlighten us on paying our bills.
It is not too late to summon an emergency security meeting which should have ranching as a major bridge to cross the rough waters of insecurity and end the killings. The National Assembly should return to address the national security crisis. The National Assembly has instead extended its recess. The government can find the money. The President can borrow.
Ranching will take herders out of the forests, stop the clashes with farmers and residents of our villages, create hundreds of thousands of new jobs across Nigeria in medicine, financial and consultancy services, logistics, construction, and save Abuja and other cities the unsightly contests between human beings and cattle for right of way. The heaps of dungs they decorate the streets with are equally unpleasant.
Once ranching commences, it is easier to fish out those masquerading as herders to make a business out of different crimes, and deal with them according to the law.
The President is a very busy man. The next few weeks have been planned for reception of decampees to his party. It is considered a priority.
What is before us is the security of our lives, and our cattle.
Section 14(2)(b) of the Nigerian Constitution of 1999, as amended, states that, “The security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government”. Do I need to remind the President? He swore on oath on 29 May 2023, to uphold this provision, among others. He also did 26 years earlier as Governor of Lagos State. It is time he gave this provision life.
Can the President for once put Nigeria and Nigerians first?
He can delay the ceremonies for the defectors and attend to the security challenges now. The National Assembly should reconvene, immediately. Bills to secure the country can be passed in days. Some of them are in advanced stages. Did we not pass the National Anthem bill in hours because the President so wanted it?
Do not bother so much about 2027 that your presidency is completely drained of essence. The great prophet Goodluck Jonathan, in his most profound comment since 2015, has said, “Tinubu will win in 2027”. Does that not reassure you?
Before your next trip to France, please find time to secure Nigeria. Please make this a priority beyond words.
We hear you are building super highways, rails, and other infrastructure, mostly you remember to exclude South East, and South South but we put security ahead of them.
Are you building the infrastructure for people who cannot use them? We have to be alive to use them.
One of your biggest ambitions is to be Nigeria’s greatest President. Your son, Seyi, has appropriated it for you when you can genuinely earn it by tackling insecurity.
When you end insecurity, Nigerians will not care if your “working visit to France” becomes permanent, in case it is the preferred location of your presidency.
You can give them an example with our neighbour Cameroon, whose President, Paul Biya, 92, last February, became the world’s oldest Head of State. Biya is in his 43rd year as President of Cameroon and he lived in France for decades before Switzerland from where he presides over Cameroon’s stability. Biya will run for election in October 2025. Sounding like Jonathan, he will win.
May nothing I have said about Biya, be read as a suggestion for Tinubu to contest in 2031.

ISIGUZO is a major commentator on minor issues