A former Education Minister, Alhaji Dauda Birma, has said that Nigeria’s future could be in the balance if the issue of insecurity was not urgently and adequately tackled.
He stated this while lamenting rising spate of banditry and kidnapping in the country.
The elder statesman said that the trend was even more dangerous in the North that is already grappling with widespread poverty.
“We have this problem of insecurity, which I understand is being tackled now. Banditry has taken over a substantial part of the north, but I believe that the police are on top of the matter,” Birma told Saturday Sun.
“Kidnapping is all over; we used to hear about it in the South, which started in the Niger Delta, but it has come to the North. We are told that kidnapping was deliberately brought to the North to destabilise the region.
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“It is a very worrisome situation because if you talk about poverty in the North and when you add kidnapping, which is preventing farmers from attending to farms, then the issue of poverty is going to be compounded.
“I hope the security agencies should be up and doing, but more than that, I believe that community leaders should also get up and tackle this issue before it is too late.
“This is putting a very big question mark on the future of this country because if insecurity is what we can boast of; if robbery, kidnapping, rustling are what we can boast of, then a big question mark is put on the future of Nigeria.”
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