Nigerian President Bola Tinubu on Wednesday declared a state of national emergency over a string of brutal attacks and kidnappings, including mass abductions of schoolchildren.
“My fellow Nigerians, this is a national emergency, and we are responding by deploying more boots on the ground, especially in security-challenged areas,” Tinubu said, announcing plans to recruit another 20,000 police officers and deploy “forest guards” to lawless rural areas. Nigeria currently has about 30,000 police.
“Although I had previously approved the nationwide upgrade of police training facilities, the police authorities are, by this statement, authorized to use various National Youth Service Corps camps as training depots,” Tinubu said.
The president also made a somewhat awkward acknowledgement that too much of Nigeria’s police force was engaged in protecting VIPs and their property and those protection details would “undergo crash training” for redeployment to “security-challenged areas of the country.”
Tinubu also said he would support legislation allowing Nigeria’s 36 states to begin forming their own police forces, an option previously denied to them.
“States should rethink establishing boarding schools in remote areas without adequate security. Mosques and churches should constantly seek police and other security protection when they gather for prayers, especially in vulnerable areas,” he added.
Tinubu has faced mounting criticism since early November, when U.S. President Donald Trump accused his government of allowing the violent persecution of Christians. Trump threatened to send in American forces, “guns-a-blazing,” if Tinubu did not take action.
Tinubu and his apologists responded by claiming there was no particular animus against Christians in his country, or any organized “genocide” effort against them. Instead, they claimed Nigeria was plagued by faceless “bandits” who were equally willing to victimize Muslims and Christians.
The ensuing weeks saw a string of attacks against Christians, including the abduction of 25 schoolgirls from a boarding school in the state of Kebbi, a mass kidnapping at St. Mary’s Catholic School in the state of Papiri, and a kidnapping attack on a church in Kwara state.
Opposition leader and former presidential candidate Prince Adewole Adebayo said on Thursday that Trump’s hectoring roused Tinubu from complacency toward the security threats faced by Nigeria.
“First, the whole country has been heated up by economic policies that are making people desperate. In terms of security, the government has not been paying sufficient attention to Nigerians who have been paying ransom everywhere, from ‘one chance’ kidnappers and others,” said Adeboyo.
“One chance” robberies are a uniquely Nigerian crime in which a violent gang drives around in a bus or taxicab with one seat unoccupied. The gang pulls up to a place where passengers are waiting for transportation and shouts “one chance,” meaning they have one seat available.
When an unsuspecting lone passenger boards the vehicle, the gang robs or kidnaps them. The more vicious “one chance” gangs enjoy tossing their looted victims out of the vehicles without slowing down.
“If you conduct a public hearing of ‘one chance’ victims, there will be over a million. The only reason there is sensitivity to it now is because Trump sent a tweet,” Adeboyo said.
Adeboyo worried that Tinubu’s attention to security would lapse again, once the international spotlight turns away, unless Nigerians demand the constant attention of his government.
“They should not be serious only when Trump is tweeting. They should be serious all the time. If they keep this momentum and stop using security as an excuse for mismanaging resources, and actually get the job done, nobody can keep our children in captivity,” he said.
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