Former Kaduna Central Senator, Shehu Sani, has challenged political leaders and other stakeholders in the North to accept responsibility for the failure to contain banditry and terrorism that emerged from the region and subsequently spread across Nigeria and into neighbouring countries.

Sani said it was dishonest to continually blame successive administrations for the security crisis while overlooking the failures of northern political leaders and security chiefs who occupied strategic positions when banditry and terrorism worsened.

In a post on his Facebook page yesterday, the former lawmaker said criminal gangs and Boko Haram insurgents had inflicted enormous suffering on Nigerians, particularly communities across the North, through killings, abductions, rape, ransom-taking and mass displacement.

“The orphans and widows generated by banditry and terrorism are now IDPs in our cities and refugees in our neighbouring countries,” he said.

Sani noted that neighbouring Chad, Cameroon and Niger were also grappling with security challenges which, according to him, had their origins in northern Nigeria.

He criticised what he described as selective outrage over insecurity, arguing that some northern political actors were quick to blame former President Goodluck Jonathan and now President Bola Tinubu while being reluctant to subject the administration of the late President Muhammadu Buhari to the same scrutiny.

“We blamed GEJ, skipped and pampered Buhari and now blaming Tinubu for the infernos those in office couldn’t automatically quench. We are asking for a miracle and magic we failed to perform.”

Sani recalled that there was a period when virtually all the country’s defence and security chiefs came from the North, yet the region’s security problems persisted and, in some instances, deteriorated.

According to him, the officials “met us with bandits and left us with more bandits.”

Sani argued that the security crisis should therefore not be viewed solely through the performance of the current administration, saying northern leaders who previously exercised political and security authority must also account for their stewardship.

He accused some people in the region of directing their anger at convenient political targets rather than confronting terrorists and bandits or questioning leaders who failed to contain them.

“We are not angry with the bandits and terrorists. We are not angry with our own who failed to treat the cancer.

“Our anger is reserved for scapegoats and anyone other than our own,” he said.

Sani also weighed in on criticism of former Chief of Defence Staff, Christopher Musa, arguing that scrutiny of his performance should not be applied selectively while former political office holders were insulated from responsibility.

“It’s said that Musa failed as a Defence chief, but all those revered as opposition messiahs were also once in office like Musa,” he said.

He suggested that Musa might have attracted applause from some quarters if he had blamed Jonathan or Tinubu for the killings rather than directing criticism elsewhere.

The former senator said political considerations had increasingly overshadowed concern for victims of terrorism and banditry, with politicians and their supporters more interested in protecting the reputation of political leaders than demanding accountability for those killed, abducted or displaced.

“We march over the graves of the victims of banditry and terrorism in the course and cause of defending the image of our leaders who failed them,” he said.

Sani said meaningful solutions to insecurity would remain difficult unless the region was prepared to acknowledge uncomfortable truths about the origins of the crisis and the failures of those entrusted with addressing it.

Likening the situation to a patient unwilling to accept a medical diagnosis, he said: “We are patients who want our diseases to be treated and cured, but we don’t want to accept and read the lab results; we want to write our own lab reports.” (The Sun)