The Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, has lampooned the Federal Government, FG, for lacking ‘proactive steps in dealing with the challenges of insecurity facing the country’.
The ACF publicity secretary, Emmanuel Yawe, speaking on behalf of the group, stated that the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has shown that it lacks proactiveness in utilizing intelligence reports.
Yawe spoke against the backdrop of various cases of bandit invasion of schools and kidnap of students, the most recent being the invasion of the Bethel Baptist High School in Kaduna State where 121 students were abducted.
According to him, the submission of the ACF is that the government must take urgent and proactive steps in ensuring the frequent cases of attacks on schools and kidnapping of students are curbed.
Yawe, speaking to Punch said, “The best way to handle the menace of kidnapping is for the government to be more proactive in intelligence gathering.
‘Once we have good intelligence we can act swiftly and stop kidnapping. The danger of allowing people to be kidnapped is that once this happens, getting them released through payment of ransom or military action becomes more complicated. This is the sad situation we are in on now.”
Also speaking on Tuesday at a media briefing against the backdrop of the recent kidnapping in Kaduna State, lawmaker representing Chikun/Kajuru federal constituency of Kaduna State in the House of Representatives, Yakubu Barde, urged the federal government to legalize guns to allow Nigerians to defend themselves.
Barde, who expressed worries about the growing cases of insecurity in the country, suggested that if criminals knew that the person they wanted to attack also had a means of defending themselves, they would take a second thought before launching such an attack.
