April 14, 2024, will make it 10 years since the first mass school abduction took place in Nigeria. On that day, 278 students of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok in Borno South, were sensationally hauled into captivity. After ten years of manhunt and expensive military actions, over 100 of them remain unaccounted for.

Government officials proffered the excuse that the Nigerian Army was not accustomed to asymmetric warfare. After ten years of engagement with the menace of jihadist terrorists, bandits and armed herdsmen, the security and armed forces ought to have gained expertise in tackling these criminals.

Instead, mass abductions of innocent Nigerians in the North continue unabated. Out of the eleven states of the North-East and North-West, only Jigawa, Kano, Bauchi and Gombe states have so far escaped the ugly experience of mass abductions of students and women.

On Thursday, March 7, 2024, Nigeria hit a new record. About 280 students of Government Secondary School, Kuriga in Kaduna State, were abducted by bandits, though some managed to escape. Also, over 200 women from a refugee camp in Gamboru-Ngala, Borno State, were whisked away by Boko Haram terrorists when they went to fetch firewood.

Many of the students and other defenceless citizens abducted over the years in Yobe, Kaduna, Katsina, Niger, Sokoto, Zamfara, Kebbi, Borno and Adamawa states can no longer be accounted for. These include the youth corps members from Akwa Ibom State reporting for national assignment in Sokoto State.

It is time to ask ourselves searching questions. What role do the Police and Security agencies play in protecting the people? Apart from carrying briefcases for politicians, what else do our security men and women do to ensure that these abductions are prevented and solved through intel and digital technology?

Apart from intimidating protesters and the opposition, what does the Department of State Security, DSS, of these days do? How do these criminals manage to move hundreds of human beings into their hideouts without detection? Why are the Army and Air Force left alone to tackle these criminals? And why have they not been able to evolve effective strategies to wipe out these criminals?

What is the role of nepotism in fostering the apparent ineffectiveness of the armed and security forces to defend the territorial integrity of Nigeria? This apparent weakness in our security agencies became pronounced when former President Muhammadu Buhari loaded the juiciest offices of the Federal Government with his ethnic and regional acolytes, a practice that continues under Tinubu. Apart from nepotism-fuelled alienation, could some bad eggs in our armed and security agencies be complicit?

Could nepotism-fuelled apathy and alienation also be responsible for Federal Government’s increased inability to produce results in our economic, security and other sectors?

We must find answers to these questions.

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