The Bishop of Sokoto Diocese of the Catholic Church, Matthew Kukah, has warned President Bola Tinubu that Nigerians are losing trust in the government to secure them, and there is a need to reset Nigeria’s security architecture to prevent further killings by terrorists and armed groups in the country.
Kukah said this in a Saturday statement in response to the Christmas Eve attacks that left more than 100 people dead across three local government areas (LGAs) of Plateau State.
The attacks took place in communities in Mangu, Bokkos and Barkin Ladi LGAs. The attackers also set ablaze more than 200 houses, according to the Plateau State Police Command.
In a statement on Saturday, Kukah said the insecurity across the country is tantamount to Nigeria being at war. He said the killers have turned the security agencies into objects of mockery and turned Nigerians into mere weeping, helpless victims and spectators.
He noted that funerals and coffins from attacks like the recent Plateau attack are now part of the daily lives of Nigerians.
The cleric, therefore, called on President Bola Tinubu to review the security arrangements of the country and implement permanent solutions to end these attacks.
“President Tinubu must know that the legitimacy of his government hangs on resolving this and giving us our country back,” Kukah stated.
He said years of military involvement have led to the mistaken notion that issues of security are military, adding that years of ‘guns and bullets approach’ have seen the growth of corruption, lack of cohesion, collaboration and coordination, and infighting among the security agencies.
“There is an urgent need to re-set the national security architecture. Enough is enough,” he said.
“National security is a function of robust, deep intellectual analysis and mapping of the goals and even ambitions of a country and its local, regional, or global place in the world.
“It thrives on creating scenarios based on a proper understanding and reading of geopolitics and locating where a country wants to be. So far, we have thrived on ad hoc and arbitrary options.”
Kukah, who asked the intelligence community to identify the attackers, their sponsors, and motives, noted that “these killings are no longer acts by herders and farmers over grazing fields.”.
He said: “There is more, and we as a nation will do well to face this threat before it is too late. No evil lasts forever. The world defeated slavery, apartheid, Nazism, racism, and forms of extremism.”
“It is the task of the intelligence community to tell us who they are, where they live, and what their goals are. These killers are professionals; are they Nigerians, or they have just Nigerian sponsors? Their sponsors are among us. They must be in high places. They are now embedded in the architecture of the state.”
He, however, commended the government for the way it responded to the tragedies: “unlike before, when no one bothered to visit the scenes, we are seeing very rapid responses from the top.”
He said it was not sufficient, as rebuilding these communities requires more than mere physical infrastructure.
He said there is a need for clearer, more imagined strategies for rebuilding community cohesion and resilience, adding that rebuilding people’s hearts is more urgent than rebuilding houses.
“Merely awarding contracts for the building of houses is not as important as building markets, rebuilding roads, providing agricultural inputs for farmers, and so on,” he said.
He noted that while religious leaders have continued to use their moral authority to pacify people and encourage them not to take laws into their own hands, there is a rise in anger and frustration among people.
He added that clerics even risk being seen as accomplices to an erring state as they continuously call for calm. “The Nigerian state itself risks becoming an undertaker in the eyes of its citizens,” he said.
“Our cups of sorrow are overflowing. We have shed enough tears. We may pretend that we are not at war, but truly, a war is being waged against the Nigerian state and its people. God forbid, but we could snap anytime, anywhere, and for any reason.”
Bishop Kukah said the attackers, whoever they are, have unspoken motives in the north-central part of the country.
According to him, the method, choice of location, communities, and timing of the attacks further restate the attackers’ motive.
“We may not know who they are, but someone wants something from the Middle Belt. Stretch your imagination from the emergence of the modern Nigerian state and connect the dots,” he said.
“We have questions crying for answers: Who are these killers? Where are they coming from? Who is sponsoring them? What are their grouses, and against whom? What do they want? Whom do they want? Who are they working for? When will it all end? Why are they invincible and invisible? Who is offering them cover? Are we condemned to live with this and hand this broken nation to our children? Should we all just become inoculated and sedated to make all this bearable? Who will supply the opium to dull our pain? Are we sleepwalking to self-destruction?”
The cleric lamented that the’murderers’ have left their footprints of blood and tears across the length and breadth of the entire northern states, indiscriminately wreaking destruction across large swaths of land and communities.
He said Nigerians are gradually succumbing to the fact that the killers do not respect religion, region, or ethnicity.
“In all this, the Nigerian state and its security agencies are blind-sided, seemingly incapable of cleaning up this Augean stable of sorrow and pain in our land,” he said.
“We are gradually taking eerie solace in the fact that these killers do not respect the boundaries of religion, region, or ethnicity. We seem to be consoled that they are destroying churches as well as mosques, killing Christians as well as Muslims. We seem to be lulled into a feeling of collective consolation, and we all believe that we are all victims of an endless orgy of violence that has taken over our land.”