As the present administration led by President Bola Tinubu marks its first year in office, about 82 local and international Civil Society Organizations
On account of the sincerity of the transition programme of General Abdulsalam Abubakar, the then military Head of State, Nigerians from all parts of the
STATE OF NATION: Stop the bleeding, end carnage now, CSOs urge Buhari
On
Hundreds of
Civil Society Organisations in Nigeria have petitioned President Muhammadu Buhari to, as a matter of urgency, stop the escalating security concerns in the country.
They further alarmed that the first quarter of 2021 witnessed an all-time high fatalities mass atrocity incidences across the country.
The petitio signed by the Joint Action Civil Society Coalition/Nigeria Mourns Secretariat and made available to
Vanguard revealed that “Following its sharp increase of 43 per cent in mass atrocities 2020, Nigeria has continued to experience a decline in security across the nation. In the first quarter of 2021 (January to March), we recorded an all-time quarterly high of almost 2000 fatalities from mass atrocities incidents across the country. This week, across the 6 geopolitical zones, there were escalated combustions of violence resulting in even more deaths.
Introduction
Nigeria is in dire straits. All over the country, Nigerian citizens, including children, are killed daily by terrorists and criminals as well as in extra-judicial killings by state actors with the government doing little or nothing about it. The government, through the Minister of Defence, has instead callously abdicated its responsibility and called Nigerian citizens ‘cowards’ and urged Nigerians to ‘defend themselves’.
Kidnapping for ransom has assumed an industrial and deadly scale never witnessed on the African continent. Our children are no longer safe in schools and Nigerian citizens and communities are now pauperised by terrorists who extort huge ransoms while murdering their hostages. We condemn, in the strongest possible terms, what has now become the government’s standard state policy of using taxpayers’ money to pay terrorists thereby funding and encouraging terrorism and criminality.