World Watch Monitor, 14 June 2021 (excerpts)
This week, a coalition of over 120 Nigerian NGOs, including Action Aid, issued a plea that President Buhari act over the decline in security. Following what it referred to as “a sharp increase of 43 per cent in mass atrocities 2020” it had “recorded an all-time quarterly high of almost 2000 fatalities from mass atrocities incidents across the country” from January to March 2021.
The NGOs noted how the government had downplayed the severity of “large scale terrorist attacks in the North West” by tagging the criminality as “banditry”. They had in a February statement charged President Buhari to halt the drifting of Nigeria to what they called a ‘state of anarchy’.
On 13 May, President Buhari pledged that his administration will “use all available resources and manpower in dealing with bandits”.
During Eid prayers, Bauchi State Governor urged the Federal Government to improve the security architecture. “Most of the criminality is coming from us as members of the Islamic faith, such as banditry, kidnapping and the rest. We must be very courageous to say it. It’s not something acceptable in the tenets of Islam … Apparently, the Federal security architecture has failed not because of any compromise but because the situation is overwhelming”.