Some prominent Niger Delta leaders want President Muhammadu Buhari to sack his service chiefs as part of the solution to the bloodletting in the country especially.

A former President of the Ijaw Youths Council (IYC) Worldwide, Mr. Udengs Eradiri and the current secretary general of the IYC, Alfred Kemepado said the security agencies need to be re-vitalized to cope with the current security challenge and the attendant loss of lives. But for Second Republic governor of the old Kaduna State, Alhaji Balarabe Musa, there appears to be no effective solution in sight.

He told The Nation that everyone, including those who initially refused to acknowledge it, are now are now vulnerable to possibilities of encountering various unlawful criminal attacks. Eradiri said President Muhammadu Buhari’s decision to extend the tenures of the service chiefs “went a long way to kill the morale of subordinate officers.”

He said the leadership “must take responsibility and deal with the issue.” Also speaking, an opinion leader in Bayelsa State, Chief Thompson Okorotie, said the service agencies have “not done enough.”

He added: “that is why some people are calling for their removal. I support that view if they are not able to develop strategies and proactive measures to stop the bloodletting. “The killing is too much. If there is no peace there can be no meaningful development. We want a united, indivisible, peaceful and prosperous country”. The Secretary-General of the Ijaw Youths Council (IYC) Worldwide, Alfred Kemepado, said President Muhammadu Buhari should “learn to visit scenes of killings as a positive demonstration of his body language that he is totally against such killings.

“It will go a long way to put the killers in check and restore the confidence of the victims in the government. “It is high time to overhaul the security architecture. If overhauling will mean changing the service chiefs, so be it. If it means acquiring better security equipment to enhance the performance of security agencies so be it.

“As it stands now, our security agencies are sleeping. It is not also out of place if security agencies go for more training or outsource some issues beyond them to consultants”.

No effective solution in sight, says Balarabe Musa Also assessing the situation, Second Republic governor of the old Kaduna State,Alhaji Balarabe Musa said the first step in stopping the killings is that “we must all honestly acknowledge that Nigeria is presently in a quagmire,” and for the president to constitute a government of national unity.

“The only possibility to avoid catastrophe is to persuade the President to constitute a Government of National Unity, but the way things are now , that is mere wishful thinking – it will not work,” he said. Continuing,Musa said:“we cannot continue like this with these killings, we cannot continue with the lack of performance by this government; we have to find some other peaceful and democratic means or process towards resolving the problem. “But is the National Assembly capable or united enough for such responsibility? “Besides, can the National Assembly do it without the executive? “So, whichever way you look at it, Nigeria is in a quagmire.

“The only thing that can be done peacefully and democratically can only be done through an institution like the National Assembly but if all fails, the people may just have to take up the responsibility by themselves, peacefully and constitutionally.”

There’s a difficult spiritual dimension –ACF chieftain Abdurahman A former Secretary of the Arewa Consultative Forum’s Political Committee, Alhaji Mohammed Abdulrahman expressed concern over the ethnic and religion colouration being given to the killings and said these do now augur well for the nation’s unity. He said such colourations are making the resolution of the conflicts difficult to achieve.

He prayed that the current situation does not degenerate. “More than anything, there is a consistently-demonstrated lack of capacity in resolving or effectively ending the killings nationwide,” he added.

Government must be proactive, says Ernest Irek A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Cross River State, Chief Ernest Irek urged the government to be proactive. He said: “We have flashpoints in this country. We have Benue. We have Plateau. All those flashpoints should be checked. Is it when the problem goes round the whole country that we would wake up? (The Nation)

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