The Federal Government has been given 14 days to tackle insecurity in the north and relieve the current service chiefs of their duties or deal with a protest that will shut the country.
The call was made by various youth organisations from the region under the umbrella of the Coalition Against Killings in Northern Nigeria (CAKIN) via a statement signed by its leaders – Isa Abubakar of the Northern Youth Council of Nigeria, Yerima Shettima of the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, Yusuf Idris Amoke of the Northern Anti-corruption Front, Mohammed Salihu Danlami of the Arewa Youth Assembly, Murtala Abubakar Joint Action Committee of Northern Youth Associations, Dr. Idris Mohammed of the CUPS and Gambo Gujungu of the Arewa Youth Forum – on Monday.
The group said it had grown frustrated with the situation in the region and would no longer tolerate the mindless killing of innocent citizens of the northern Nigeria which the government has done nothing to stop.
“From today June 15, 2020, the coalition gives a 14-day ultimatum to the Federal Government to end killings in the entire states of the north. After the expiration of this ultimatum, any reported case of killings will leave the coalition with no option than to mobilize citizens to take to streets until the government is completely shut down.”
The group stated in strong terms that President Muhammadu Buhari “as Commander-in-Chief should immediately relieve the service chiefs of their duties,…investigate and prosecute all security personnel living above their legitimate earnings, abolish security votes by the state governors…without second thought” and that it “strongly supports the idea community policing and calls for its immediate implementation nation-wide,” amongst other recommendations.
The group reminded the president that the north turned out en masse to vote for him in 2015 because, as a retired general, he is “positioned to deal decisively with all forms of threats to the security of our people, particularly challenges of Boko Haram that had caused hardship and unprecedented destruction of lives and economic activities” but regretted that five years into his tenure, instead of reducing insecurity, it has escalated “thereby exposing great numbers of our people to avoidable deaths and loss of property in a manner that history has never witnessed before”.
The group called on citizens to “mobilize on how to constructively engage government at all levels and make demands to end the killings,” while calling on it to end its “non-chalant attitude to the plights of people going through horrific experience in the hands of criminals that seems to have overwhelmed our security agencies”.
