Nigerian Elites Fueling Insecurity, Disunity – APC Chieftain

BY AMEH IDUJAGI, JALINGO – A Chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Taraba State, Chief David Kente, has blamed the Nigerian elites for the growing insecurity, tension and disunity across the country.

He specifically said that Nigeria is presently on a precipice, stressing that it will only take divine intervention and conscious efforts on the people’s part to avert a major catastrophe.

Kente noted that one of the worst things that has happened to Nigeria is the fact that we have foreigners who are into organized crimes.

Kente, who is a zonal commissioner on the Board of the North East Development Commission (NEDC), noted that leaders of thought and opinion moulders in position of authority have sacrificed national interests to promote selfish ideas by promoting religious, ethnic, regional and political interests that suits their purposes.

Kente told journalist at an interactive session with journalists in Wukari on Thursday that when merit, justice, equity and fairness become relegated to the background and mediocrity is allowed to take the center stage in a society, the people are bound to react in a way that would affect the growth of the society.

He further said; “What we are witnessing now is just the delivery from decades’ long pregnancy. Over the years, our leaders chose to promote selfish interests over national interests.

“They chose to achieve their political ambitions at all costs and not to serve, but to amass wealth for themselves and their families.

“In the course of this, they have explored religious, ethnic, political, and all kinds of sentiments and have created and are still creating the kind of disunity that now threatens our very existence as a nation,” he said.

Kente advised that in the next dispensation, the people must rise to choose leaders with national outlook and interest, who would promote national interests and uphold justice, equity and fairness.

According to him; “The threat to our education system by this continued abduction of school children is a threat to national sustainability.

“We at the North East Development Commission (NEDC) are doing our best to stop the drop out of school children as a result of insurgency, banditry, militancy or any other guise, but this must be a collective responsibility and we all must key into it”.

Kente, who was in the Taraba gubernatorial race in 2015 and 2019 also said; “Community policing, like other suggestions, is a good idea in tackling insecurity. Traditional institutions need to be given more defined and authoritative roles”.

He said that such roles must be backed by the constitution to allow them perform in their domains if any kind of community policing efforts is to achieve meaningful results.