Killings: Buhari Doing Nigeria Great Disservice – Ezekwesili

Former Education Minister and co-convener of the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) campaign, Oby Ezekwesili, on Monday, accused President Muhammadu Buhari of doing Nigeria a great disservice.

Ezewesili said President Buhari’s “coldness” in the face of the incessant herdsmen and Boko Haram killings and his alleged lack of solution to the daily slaughtering of Nigerians is even a greater “disservice” to the country.

The WHISTLER recalls that a United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report of April 2018 had put the deaths of teachers resulting from Boko Haram attacks at 2,295 in the North-east since 2009, while noting that at least 1,000 children had been kidnapped and 1,400 schools destroyed since 2013.

Equally, there’s been a surge in the spate of killings by suspected Fulani herdsmen in states like Benue, Plateau, Taraba, amongst others.

Speaking via her official Twitter account (@ObyEzeks), Mrs Ezewesili said the alleged normalisation of the killings under the current administration and its effect on “childhood innocence” of Nigerian children calls for concern.

The ex-minister tweeted: “There is nothing that gives me profound pain, as the fact that families of those of our citizens now killed daily are actually mostly left on their own to bury their dead,” she wrote.

“They are on their own while the leaders of government and rest of society carry on as though all is well.

“The second aspect of my profound pain at the killings that happen daily is the effect it has on children. The normalising of killings has fast desensitized even our little ones. There is a hard edge that is not childlike in the Nigerian children who now see death as common.

“I am afraid that our society will long pay for the deadened emotions that frequent news of killings of citizens that our children are becoming accustomed to hearing without as much as a flinch anymore.

“The greatest disservice Buhari is doing Nigerians is to not having (sic) solutions to these daily killings. The greater disservice is his coldness (sic) in the face of the killings. Buhari is by his emotional dissonance killing the childhood innocency (sic) of our Nigerian children.”