By Jeremiah Emmanuel, Abuja
Following the declaration of Nigeria by the America President Donald Trump as country of particular concern, it generated myriad of reactions from Nigerians, with some citizens viewing it as invasion of Nigeria sovereign territory.
It is true that as Nigerians, patriotic ones for that matter, we will not be happy to see another country coming to invade our territorial space to do what we should do by ourselves.
But in a situation where those saddled with the responsibilities of ensuring that Nigeria work, but failed in their duties and are not willing to give other Nigerians ready to make things work, it is a cracked in the wall that can invites the lizard.
If the leadership of Nigeria has done the needful in surmounting the challenges bedevilling our nation, we wouldn’t have been here jumping from pillar to post trying to evade external interference on our domestic issues.
The leadership of our dear country appears to be overwhelmed and cannot address the challenges before us squarely, people have lost their loved ones in numbers that it now feels like a normal thing.
The government will issue press statements with promises that goes down the drain with no tangible action. This and many other concerns have made the citizens tired of the government non-action.
If America interference will nipped the tide, shouldn’t we as a nation or people embrace it to relief our government?
In this instance, the US government that people are tongue lashing for threatening Nigeria with military action has not even entered Nigeria yet. The statement is that if the Nigeria government fails to act, they’ll be left with no option than to step in to save the population under existential threat.
Many people will see the America government stance on Nigeria as busybody, and acting on wrong narratives; but people failed to realise that many non governmental organisations (NGOs) interfacing with the victims of these attacks are sponsored by America, and therefore have data on victims of the attacks that even our government does not have.
Most times, our government rely on data from these NGOs to document the crisis in the country. The government seems to careless about the well-being of the citizens.
It is therefore incumbent on the government to lead by example by being patriotic in protection of life and property of the citizens they swore to serve. And one of the steps the government will need to take to demonstrate their patriotism is by deploying the needed state apparatus to deal with the security concerns, and to ensure that citizens are not chased out of their ancestral land.
It is important that the government takes drastic measures to address insecurity caused by these hooligans who paraded themselves as terrorists, bandits, killer herders and criminals.
On this note, it’s imperative to state that these Nigerians being chased out of their lands are not armed, and don’t have legal right to own firearms and ammunitions, which made it almost impossible that they matched the energy these blood thirsty invaders, wielding sophisticated arms enters their communities and chase them out from their ancestral lands.
It is therefore sacrosanct that the government exercise it’s cardinal responsibility of providing security to life and property of its citizens; and since the Nigeria citizens are not licensed to own arms and ammunitions that are capable of repelling these miscreants who turned themselves in as terrorists, the government must step in to protect the hapless citizens.
Jeremiah Emmanuel is a social analyst and writes for Republican Interest from Abuja.
