USOSA Flays Attack on Train, Demands Prosecution of Culprits

USOSA Flays Attack on Train, Demands Prosecution of Culprits

Unity Schools Old Students Association (USOSA) has condemned the gruesome attack on an Abuja-Kaduna train by bandits, which affected members of the association.  The association demanded that the culprits and their sponsors be immediately fished out and prosecuted.  In a statement, yesterday, the President-General of USOSA, Lawrence Wilbert, said the association considered the recent security breaches too many in a thread of demonic assaults on the national psyche, peace, tranquility and socio-political and economic development.  His words: “We decry the fact that the police, armed forces and other security agencies are evidently transfixed and confounded by the macabre antics of the evil merchants of death who, to all intents and purposes, have seized the nation by the jugular, making nonsense of our sovereignty and laying waste the lives of our people and our immemorial commonwealth.”  Noting that the intelligence gathering components of the country’s security apparatus appear non-existent, he added: “Every Nigeria’s life is sacred; it is the responsibility of the government to secure our lives. The fact that insecurity pervades the land is no news; the increased frequency of the attacks, their ever widening geographical spread and the mounting casualty figures are. Nigerians are also very familiar with the causes of the malaise, chief among which are massive bare-faced corruption and gross incompetence in the government and the higher echelons of the security agencies, and an increasingly greater premium on ethno-religious and other sectional sentiments rather than our collective patriotic quotient.”  Wilbert said Nigerian leaders should be held accountable for the prevailing insecurity in the country.  His words: “Worse still is the lukewarm attitude of the general populace, sign-posted by our age-long unhealthy disinclination to hold our leaders and public officials accountable.  “We have, particularly, condoned their docility, inaction and even connivance in some cases towards Boko Haram terrorists, bandits, elements of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and their likes for too long.”  He added that each time the menace is unleashed on citizens, people come out en masse to condemn the act and later go back to slumber.  “Each time the ungodly marauders invaded communities in Borno, Ondo, Imo and other states, we scream for a few days and go back to our slumber. When they violated the sanctity of our worship centres and the serenity of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok; Federal Government College, Birnin Yauri and many other schools, we made much noise in the morning and quietly went frolicking by evening.  “It was our lackadaisical response when they breached the walls of the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA), our military and police barracks, and the bounds of our markets, roads and others. It didn’t seem to matter that each of those affronts occasioned untold grisly bloodletting and murder, wanton destruction of valuable property, abduction of hordes of innocent Nigerians and gaping social dislocation,” he added.  Calling on Nigerians, male and female, old and young, rich and poor, to rise and say a decisive no to the myriad, mostly contrived or indulged, evils that have befallen us in unprecedented magnitudes, he said: “Let us now, as a people, review our actions and contributions to our collective security, while I call for a review of our national security architecture, specifically urban and rural policing.  “We must now, in unison, unambiguously protest and demand that all the culprits and their faceless sponsors be immediately fished out and subjected to the full wrath of the law. It is time we resolutely, and without ceasing, demand the enthronement of enduring national security, good governance and utmost accountability from the government and its agencies. It is time we emphatically issue, ‘Perform or resign or be booted out!’”

Related Articles