By Cheta Nwanze
A country’s capital is the city where its national government is located. This location is usually carefully chosen and designed to offer the best impression and position for a nation’s government and people to connect optimally with citizens and visitors. Sometimes nations change their choice of capitals to get new ones that adequately serve these purposes and this was the idea behind the Nigerian Government moving the federal capital from Lagos to Abuja in 1991.
Thirty-one
years later though, what we have is a situation where Abuja is dealing with a
significant terrorist threat that began as a spate of armed robbery attacks on
the outskirts of the Federal Capital Territory and recently manifested as
prison breaks that had arrested terrorists and criminals being freed.
The situation should be shocking but it really isn’t. It has sadly been rather predictable and began with the regime of retired Major General Muhammadu Buhari responding to attacks on Northern minorities with a disdainful lack of concern that had many onlookers believing it was complicit in some way.