Attahiru Dalhatu Bafarawa, a former governor of Sokoto State, Tuesday said that Northerners and indeed all Nigerians were not happy with the security situation in the country.
Bafarawa revealed this in his state of the nation address where he urged President Muhammadu Buhari to show more concern on insecurity than COVID-19, adding that insecurity had claimed more lives than the pandemic.
According to him, the government appeared to have abandoned the situation and channelled all its effort to a pandemic that had taken about 2000 lives in the country.
He said: “When I see things are not going, I cannot keep quiet, because if I keep quiet maybe other parts of the country will start accusing us that we are promoting what is bad. But, the reality is that we in the north are not happy with the way things are going.
“I see Nigeria as one country, it is not a question of whether the president is a northerner, we are not saying this based on our own personal interest, we are saying this behalf of the people who do not have the opportunity to say it, and I believe most of Nigerians have the same feeling. In my village about 14 people were killed just two days ago, insecurity has not improved,” Bafarawa said.
“About 2000 people have died last year from Coronavirus, come to think of how many lives were killed within a year, 3000 to 400,000 people died from insecurity. ”
He further adviced the government to divert the budgeted N400bn for the procurement of COVID-19 vaccines to tackling insecurity.
“Now we are talking about 400 billion and just about 2,000 people have died. Why can’t we divert this money for security? Because this insecurity is Nigeria’s Coronavirus because we don’t have much COVID-19 in Nigeria, so that we can move forward.
“Coronavirus has taken lives less than insecurity. Insecurity has taken lives and property. Look at the danger the insecurity is bringing, if we use that 400 billion to buy security equipment, it will do a lot in curbing insecurity”, he added.
