2ND NYANYA BOMB BLAST: WE ARE ALL TO BLAME

2^nd May, 2014

PRESS RELEASE:

2^ND NYANYA BOMB BLAST: WE ARE ALL TO BLAME

Another bomb exploded in Nyanya, Abuja yesterday allegedly killing ten people and injuring about a dozen others. The bomb was reportedly triggered off from a white gulf car parked a few meters away from the scene of the first bomb which occurred two weeks ago.

 

We are shocked beyond words not only by the audacity of the perpetrators but also by the failure of our security apparatus. The fact that this second explosion occurred almost at the same spot with the first one accentuates the grave danger facing Nigerians in the hands of terrorists and the seeming helplessness of the security agencies.

 

The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) strongly condemns this dastardly act. We are also constrained to conclude that we are all to blame for the deteriorating security situation in the country.

 

The Federal Government (FG) takes the lion share of the blame for monopolizing the security agencies (police, army, etc) without allowing state governments to create complementary outfits contrary to international best practices. The same FG details too many security agents around top government officials leaving too few to protect the jamaheer (poor masses).

 

But because security is a corporate responsibility, the citizenry must share the rest of the blame. The police and other security agencies alone cannot secure lives and properties.

 

Security is a joint enterprise. The citizens must compliment the efforts of the security agencies with readiness to provide information. They must also be on the tip-toes of alertness.

 

MURIC therefore charges every Nigerian citizen to take up his or her own share of the responsibility. Terrorists are not ghosts. Henceforth, unfamiliar faces who park vehicles in our neighbourhoods must be challenged whether they try to leave the vehicle or remain seated therein. We must quickly inform the police if they cannot give satisfactory explanation. The same applies to strangers who attempt to abandon bags and baggages particularly in public places.

 

The security agencies must build confidence in the citizens to ensure their cooperation. They must therefore roll out concrete and verifiable facts to the public instead of figments of imagination and fabricated security abracadabra.

 

On its own part, FG must be more transparent, sensitive and accountable. FG must be willing to delegate some modicum of responsibility for the maintenance of security to the states. It must take pragmatic steps towards accepting states as partners in the crucial task of ensuring security.

 

Posterity will not forgive members of the National Assembly and delegates in the ongoing national conference if they turn deaf ears to the agitation for the creation of state police.

 

Professor Ishaq Akintola,

Director,

Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC)