Nigerian political leaders have been advised to give up the luxury of partisanship and show serious commitment of statesmanship if Nigeria must win the fight against terrorism.
The call is coming five days after a bomb attack in a motor park in Nyanya, Abuja killed 75 persons.
On Channels Television’s programme, Sunrise Daily, the vice president of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), Issa Aremu, condemned the attack and said that Nigerians were quite diminished with the serial decimation.
“The list of the victims of the blast showed that all of them are Nigerians and all of us should be sober. I expected us to declare national mourning,” he said.
Mr Aremu observed that the inability of security forces to bring the terror attacks to an end showed that the leaders were operating separately.
“If we keep on operating separately we will be defeated collectively. The luxury of partisanship should give way to serious commitment of statesmanship on the part of those in leadership position.We need more sobrieties at all level. We can’t do fire for fire at this time,” he said.
According to him, the burden is on President Goodluck Jonathan to use all the security agencies answerable to him in tackling the issue.
“He should walk his talk,” the labour leader said, referring to the President’s statements assuring Nigerians that the attacks would soon come to an end.
In an effort to end the insecurity in Nigeria, President Jonathan met with the governors of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Thursday, a meeting that had been condemned by the All Progressives Congress’ governors who claimed they were intentionally left out.
Mr Aremu said that the President had the liberty to meet with his governors, but stressed that he would do better to look for a more all-inclusive meeting.
“Excessive partisanship must give way to statesmanship at this time of insecurity crisis. When we have national crisis at hand, I expect that statesmanship must take over.
“I expected the president to have called for the meeting earlier,” he stressed.
A PDP governor, Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State, told reporters after the meeting was for PDP governors only and that the invitation was not extended to the All Progressives Congress governors.
According to Mr Aremu, what Nigeria needed at this time was to challenge the agencies meant to perform their duties to do so and not the blame game.
There have been incoherent security agencies’ reports on developments in the abduction of some school girls in Borno State and it is beginning to raise doubts in the minds of Nigerians about the claims the security agencies make in their counter-terrorism operations.
The military had claimed that it rescued 121 of the girls that had been abducted by suspected members of the Boko Haram on Monday but later retracted the statement when the principal of the school said that only 14 out of the 129 girls kidnapped that escaped from the abductors had been reunited with their families.
The abductors were said to have disguised as military men and had told the principal that there was an order to take the students out of the school, as there was a tip-off that the school would be attacked.
Mr Aremu, therefore, stressed the need for security agencies to check the use of military camouflage by non-military persons.
