No fewer than 76,000 Nigerians were killed in the last 10 years, Chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF), Dr. Kayode Fayemi has said.
Fayemi, who is the Governor of Ekiti State, stated this on Thursday at the launch of the NGF’s Peace and Inclusive Security Initiative (PISI) in Abuja.
He said that the killings occurred between May 2011 and February 2021 and orchestrated by both state and non-state actors.
The forum’s chairman noted that government authority has been undermined by the spate of violence and coordinated criminal activities that have eroded public trust in public institutions meant to protect them over the years.
Fayemi identified one of the causative factors as uncontrolled population growth.
According to him, the oversized population “that the government is unable to cope with” includes “a large number of poor people estimated at over 40 percent of the population who are living below $1 per day”.
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He identified another causative factor as desertification that “has affected over 60 percent of Nigeria’s land, as drought and climate change have continued to aggravate land deterioration in the country”.
Fayemi added that proliferation of small arms and light weapons further compounded the problem.
“In addition to the proliferation of arms is an undertone of rising ethnic conflict, with different ethnic groups subsumed in conflicts and pitched against one another,” the NGF Chairman said.