Is Nigeria Now A Killing Field? — GPAAN

 Press Release

The Guild of Public Affairs Analysts of Nigeria received, with horror and utter disgust, the gory news of the invasion of a train of Nigeria Railway Corporation on its way from Abuja to Kaduna by a horde from hell on 28th March 2022.

We have waited this long to make a statement because we had hoped that the government of President Muhammadu Buhari and the heads of the security agencies would have resolved the problem so we could have a positive statement to make. But alas!

Terrorists rigged explosives on the rail track, to cause the train to hobble to an unscheduled stop in a most unlikely place in the bush. As soon as the trip was disrupted the killers boarded the disabled coaches, shooting sporadically.

At the end of the dastardly invasion, at least eight innocent souls, including that of 29-year old Dr. Chinelo Megafu, who managed to send a tweet asking for prayers, had died. Also, Alhaji Alwan Hassan, acting Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Nigeria's Bank of Agriculture is reported to be one of the abductees, while Musa-Lawal Ozigi, Secretary General of Trade Union Congress, is reported dead.

An undisclosed number ended up in hospitals, with 26 confirmed injured, 186 confirmed safe, and an unknown number abducted by the terrorists. Indeed, no one, not even Nigeria Railway Corporation, is able to confidently provide the number of passengers on that train. After one week the Nigeria Railway Corporation was able to issue a terse statement that about 168 passengers are still unaccounted for.

*GPAAN President, Mr. Ayo Oyoze Baje, speaking at a GPAAN Event  

Rumours suggest that the number of passengers on that train are somewhere between the acknowledged 362 names shown on the trip manifest and the 970 capacity of the train. This is another way of saying that the ubiquitous Nigerian factor, harbinger of manifest corruption, has reared its head in the mix; that some passengers, whose fares may not have been accounted for and paid into the coffers of Nigeria Railway Corporation, may have paid into private pockets!

Yet just two days after the disaster another train trip, this time, from Kano to Lagos was waylaid. This time, the train driver was shut and killed. The irony to all this is that Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, had hardly concluded a press conference, in which he boasted that rail trips are a safe way to travel in Nigeria.

He indeed unwittingly indicated that the railways were safer than travels by road and air. He even replied to former President Olusegun Obasanjo that the Buhari Administration was not overwhelmed by the pervasive insecurity in the nation.

Recall that one week before the invasion of the Abuja-Kaduna rail line another horde from hell made a run on the runway of Kaduna International Airport, maybe to show the government and people of Nigeria that nowhere, not even international airports, are safe in Nigeria.

What should baffle anyone is that a Federal Government, led by a retired Major General, who had promised security to the Nigerian electorate during his electioneering campaigns in 2015, appears totally clueless in the face of a series of carnage and insecurity in the nation.

Things have gotten so bad and scary that an understandably frustrated Governor Nasir el Rufai of Kaduna State, the state that has received the most violence in recent times, announced, right within the portals of Aso Rock Villa, official residence of the President, that he was considering engaging foreign security contractors, otherwise known as mercenaries, to flush out the terrorist out of Kaduna State.

The curious thing is that neither the seemingly absentminded President nor the amorphous Presidency seems to know what to say or do. There is a deafening silence from an apparently embarrassed government.

The Guild of Public Affairs Analysts of Nigeria finds both the killings and abductions and government's appearance of helplessness both regrettable and unacceptable.

The President and Commanderil-in-Chief of Nigeria's Armed Forces and all his service chiefs must wake up and justify their appointments to the people of Nigeria and make good their oaths to safeguard Nigeria. They must comprehensively address what seems to be the problem.

If they cannot or are unwilling to do so, they will be doing the Nigerian people a world of good by turning in their resignation papers. That will be the most honourable thing to do.

May the good Lord deliver Nigerians from the clutch of the danger that is holding them so tightly.

 

Ayo Oyoze Baje,

President, Guild of Public Affairs Analysts of Nigeria