Uninhabited Palatial Mansions In Nigeria’s North, Fear And Insecurity Rises As Poverty Deepens
The Oasis Reporters
April 5, 2019
A visit to most towns in the north of Nigeria would reveal palatial mansions lining well constructed roads and streets. Many of them hum into life Friday’s through Sundays when the rich owners arrive from different destinations in the country and sometimes abroad to play court in splendour and grandeur.
The very poor and beggarly never fail to line up in front of the houses of the rich to receive some token as sadaka, especially on Fridays after service.
With the opposition that greeted the attempt to host the Miss World Beauty Pageant in Abuja during President Obasanjo’s tenure, the confusion that followed it and an insensitive remark made by a young Nigerian writer; The particular writer was to later flee from the country to London.
She was angry that she had to flee. During a BBC ‘Focus on Africa’ Interview in London, she said rich Nigerians were busy building mansions everywhere but they were not building factories.
Today those mansions are practically abandoned because the rich owners are now afraid to visit their cities and villages. For perhaps more than two years now, Nigeria’s international journalist, Kadaria Ahmed has not visited her village in Zamfara state, wracked by insecurity that includes chilling killings.
Former Sokoto State Governor, Attahiru Bafarawa is equally complaining about the rising insecurity especially in the north.
Bafarawa Asks FG To Address Insecurity, Tighten Borders For Illicit Weapons. https://t.co/F8PtYeXQWo pic.twitter.com/ZkjdCLPofQ
— Channels Television (@channelstv) May 2, 2019
So has a lawmaker representing Niger State, Honourable Adamu Chika who has expressed his worries about the level of insecurity in the North West zone in Nigeria.
Chika voiced his concerns over the challenges the people have been facing in the last one year, adding that he is scared to go home because he feels insecure.
He made his concerns known, during a House of Representatives plenary on Thursday and asked that a lasting solution be adopted to address the security challenges.
“Mr Speaker, where are we going? I cannot go to my village, spend a night and sleep as I’m speaking to you.
“For the last year, I cannot go to my village and sleep, I feel very insecure. And this is where I find myself, it is terrible, we have to do something about it.”
Other lawmakers from the Northwest also expressed their dissatisfaction and how the situation has put the zone in abject fear.
A member representing Katsina state, Ahmed Safana, lamented the spate of attacks on innocent people in his constituency which has come under attacks.
“The recent spate of attacks on members of my constituency has reached an alarming stage as the perpetrators of these deadly acts, continuously kill innocent persons in my constituency and set their homes ablaze where defenceless men and women are abducted to an unknown destination.”
Another lawmaker from Kano state, Bashir Baballe added that; “People need a solution to the issue of insecurity first, Mr Speaker, our people cannot go to the village market, trading, social interaction has collapsed, because people can no longer attend events.”
The House of Representatives resolved to invite President Muhammadu Buhari to address the chamber on what his government is doing to curb the rising crime rate across the country.
The Invitation by the House is the second by the lawmakers to the President within three weeks.
The House had on April 11, 2019, unanimously adopted a motion with the mandate to issue a query to the President, asking him to explain the spate of insecurity under his administration within two days.
Meanwhile, President Muhammadu Buhari who the lawmakers wish to invite is already in safe London and his own hometown of Daura in Katsina State is so unsafe, such that his own village head has equally been abducted. Nigeria’s Defense Minister has carefully evacuated his family from his unsafe hometown in Zamfara State.
At the inception of this administration, President Muhammadu Buhari made sure that almost all security agencies are headed by his northern Muslim brethren because he probably trusted them more than southerners. Under them, security has deteriorated and yet he maintains them in office. Unlike in Sri Lanka where Muslim extremists bombed some churches and killed over 200 Christians. The president of the largely Buddhist country swiftly accepted the resignations of Defense minister and the Inspector General of Police.
Due to a series of killings in Cyprus, the Police chief too, had to resign.
But Nigeria continues to keep it’s non performing security chiefs in office in the face of rising insecurity.
Mr Noah Nwosu ( @NoahNwosu75 ) is a Nigerian and he tweeted that he lives in “Calgary, Canada and bet me you can leave your doors open and go on vacation for over a month and no one will touch anything in your house. Criminality in Nigeria may likely be among the highest globally”.
Canada is affluent but Northern Nigeria is poor. It has the largest collection of beggars in the world. Infact they export beggars to the entire world. 10 million of its children are out of school and it’s political leaders seem so helpless to address such monumental challenges, yet they keep on ruling the country due to their numerical superiority. The few children in the north that attend federal schools gain admission with scandalously low marks while Southerners can only be admitted with excellent grades.
Northerners are no less brilliant but their leaders make sure they receive a lower version of academic excellence and as such, produce graduates that use their own super human efforts to succeed in competition with others, while the large majority simply scrape by.
It shows no grandness in leadership style, but grandeur in style of living. Only that now, their grandiose mansions are currently empty of occupants out of fear of being kidnapped.
The south too, is no less perfect, but the condition in the north is more distressing over insecurity.
Additional reporting :
Channels Television
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