Director General of the Progressive Governors’ Forum (PGF), Salihu Lukman has decried the worsening security situation, saying “as things are, every Nigerian should recognise that we are in emergency situation.”
Lukman, who is a chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), was reacting to the controversies surrounding the quit notice handed down to herders from the Forest Reserve by Ondo Governor Rotimi Akeredolu on Monday.
He warned against reducing security issues to ethnic and religious sentiments.
The PGF boss in a statement titled: “Caution on divisive campaigns and national security challenges” in Abuja warned that divisive approach of either ethnic or religious platform in resolving our security challenges can only worsen the situation.
“Nigerians need to wake up to the reality that preventing or arresting criminal activities such as kidnapping and banditry cannot be achieved by massaging our ethnic and religious sentiments.
“As things are, every Nigerian should recognise that we are in emergency situation. The false divisive notion of any group initiative independent of others resolving our security challenges can only worsen the situation.
“We vs them” public debate, which appears to dominate our national conversation today, especially regarding our ‘nightmarish’ security challenges is unfortunate. We must caution ourselves as Nigerians to rise beyond our sentiments and emotions.
“Every time spent debating in divisive terms on problems of criminality in the country, which doesn’t discriminate our identities means lost opportunity to contract or mobilise implementation of agreement.
“In fact, it may even mean some levels of protection for the criminals as all public attention is diverted away from the criminals to engaging the false issues of what our identities represents.”
The PGF boss lamented that most of the public debate is about which group we want to support.
He asked: “Is there any Nigerian today who is not disturbed by the high rate of kidnapping, banditry and similar crimes? Such a Nigerian is either directly or remotely involved in kidnapping, banditry and all the crimes taking place.
“Nigerians need to wake up to the reality that preventing or arresting criminal activities such as kidnapping and banditry cannot be achieved by massaging our ethnic and religious sentiments.
“These are criminal activities that can hardly succeed without the collaboration of community and religious leaders. In fact, there are also strong allegations of even collaboration of security officials.”
