Northern Group Says FG has Failed, Asks Northerners to Protect Selves Against Terrorists
The Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) on Sunday called on citizens in northern Nigeria to look after their own security, as federal security agencies have failed in their duties to protect the region.
The coalition made the call in reaction to Saturday’s gruesome killing of farmers in Zabarmari, Jere Local Government Area of Borno State, saying northerners should “rise and protect themselves” from all forms of banditry and insurgency afflicting the region.
The spokesman of the coalition, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, said government and federal troops could no longer be relied upon to protect northern communities, adding that the current situation was not “tolerable”, and demanding an immediate and comprehensive overhaul of the leadership of the nation’s military and entire security assets.
The organisation said regime of President Muhammadu Buhari had lost control over “the imperatives of protecting northerners.”
Abdul-Azeez’s statement which was titled, ‘Borno Killings: Time for Citizen Action’, a copy of which Nigerian Sketch obtained said, “Time has come for citizens to rise and protect themselves. The situation under which all northern communities live today is no longer tolerable and we must all rise to protect ourselves and demand an immediate and comprehensive overhaul of the leadership of the nation’s military and the entire security and law and order assets.
“The President and federal troops keep telling us that they are doing something about the mounting insecurity; but by now, all northerners must have realized that our region has been abandoned at the mercy of a rampaging insurgency that is continuously wasting the greatest asset of North, its population and weakening it politically and pauperizing it.”