Afenifere Charges President Buhari to Recall Retired Soldiers over Insecurity

Kemi Olaitan in Ibadan

The Pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to consider the insecurity situation in the country as warlike that requires recalling retired intelligent officers to complement the efforts of existing security organs to halt the war.

The group in a release by its National Publicity Secretary, Comrade Jare Ajayi, yesterday, maintained that there is no more time to be wasted in being more honest, decisive and comprehensive in confronting the security situation if the country is to be prevented from going under.

While lamenting the level of insecurity in the country such as kidnapping, killing, arson and burning of vehicles conveying people from one place to another as happened recently on Kaduna highway and in Borno and Katsina states as well as the near daily occurrence of kidnapping in Ondo, Ekiti, Osun, Imo states among others, it insisted that the President must come out openly to give an ultimatum of two weeks to those carrying arms illegally to lay down their arms.

According to the group, within this period retired intelligence officers should be encouraged to report at the military formations nearest to them with a view to reintegrating them back into the system.

He said, “Needed weapons and incentives must be provided just as the intelligence units within the security organs are rejigged to weed out the fifth columnists in the army. Overtures be made to certain powers that have control over our neighbouring countries from where terrorists infiltrate our country.

“Among such super powers that need to be consulted are France, the United Kingdom, China, Russia, Germany, Israel and the United States of America. The rationale behind this is to seek for direct assistance in terms of logistics as well as for some of them, particularly France, to work on French-speaking neighbouring countries to help curtail insurgents using their territories to infiltrate Nigeria.”

He added that beyond seeking foreign help however, the federal government must be ready to be more genuinely committed to removing insurgency and related criminality from our land.

“This, it can do successfully, by stopping to treat bandits and terrorists with kid gloves, by genuinely providing needed equipment to the army and other security agencies, by truly engaging the youths into ventures that would earn them a livelihood, by no longer treating some bandits and terrorists as sacred cows and by liberalising the economy in such a way that the cost of commodities and services in the country would come down considerably.

“Above all, states and local governments that are willing should be allowed to have their own policing system up to the level of investigation and prosecution without let or hindrance,” he said.

Afenifere spokesman asserted that it is disheartening that terrorists had the temerity to launch attacks near Maiduguri last Thursday around the time the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria, President Buhari, was visiting Maiduguri and parts of Borno State, stating that rather than the insecurity in the country been checkmated, the situation has been going from bad to worse.

According to him, “It is high time President Buhari heeded the advices being given from various quarters including the ones by the Eminent Nigerians led by former President Olusegun Obasanjo and the one that emanated from the Inclusive Security Dialogue Retreat which held in Abuja a few weeks ago and attended by the same Chief Obasanjo, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar, Sultan of Sokoto, Reverend Samson Supo Ayokunle, CAN President, Chief Edwin Clark and many other leaders from ethnic nationalities.

“They had called on the president to urgently convey a national conciliatory conference to address the underlying issues of our challenges that successive governments have ignored.”