COUNTERPOINT By Femi Akintunde-Johnson
During my research in the writing of this article, I stumbled on a blog piece on the website of the famous New York-domiciled NGO think tank, Council on Foreign Relations, published about a year ago, July 23, 2020, by Nkasi Wodu. He is a Port Harcourt based “lawyer, peacebuilding practitioner, and development expert”. The 643-word document was titled “Not All Violent Problems Require Violent Solutions: Banditry in Nigeria’s North-West”.
In contextualising the arguments and features that highlight deliberate or inadvertent cannon-fodders which ultimately weaponise banditry around Nigeria, we will quote fairly copiously from Wodu’s insightful submissions – as introductory premise to our interrogation of the putative social-economic triggers making this dreadful “enemy”continue to fester and threaten to overrun our country.