ABDUCTION OF OVER 300 SCHOOL CHILDREN IN KATSINA FURTHER SHOWS GOVERNMENT FAILURE IN FIGHTING INSECURITY
SPN CONDEMNS KILLINGS OF RICE FARMWORKERS AND ABDUCTION OF SCHOOL CHILDREN; SPN CALLS FOR THE RELEASE OF THE ABDUCTED SCHOOL CHILDREN
The forceful abduction of over 300 school children from Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, Katsina State, barely two weeks after the killing of 46 rice farmers in Borno, has further confirmed the obvious failure of the Buhari-led government and the capitalist ruling elite to tackle insecurity.
The Socialist Party of Nigeria (SPN) condemns the killings, abductions and other criminal attacks going on across the country.
The school children were abducted on Friday, December 11, 2020, the day President Buhari arrived in his home state Katsina on a private visit. President Buhari’s home and his ranch and cattle are heavily guarded while school children are left vulnerable despite almost daily banditry attacks and criminal raids in Katsina and the northeast and northwest regions of the country. These regions (northeastern and northwestern) have been under siege of armed banditry and Boko Haram insurgency for over a decade while both PDP and APC governments have demonstrated an utter incapacity to effectively end violent crimes. Rather, the insecurity has been turned to a means of corrupt enrichment by top government functionaries and military top officers.
The Kankara incident is a sad reminder of the mindless massacre of 59 schoolboys in Buni Yadi, Yobe State on February 25, 2014, abduction of about 276 schoolgirls in Chibok in Borno State on April 14/15 2014 and abduction of 110 schoolgirls in Dapchi, Yobe State on February 19, 2018. There are numerous abductions, raids, rapes, looting and killings that go on unnoticed, unreported or under-reported. Understandably these brutal attacks have discouraged farming and reduced farm produce and thereby increasing costs of food, while also reducing child enrolment in school.
There is also a growing state of insecurity in the southern part of the country with the rising cases of armed robbery, burglary, gang attacks, cultist attacks etc. Also, the government and the capitalist ruling elite have failed to end these attacks.
In the absence of jobs, basic infrastructure, better living conditions, crime has become a means of eking out a living. Hence, there is a strong link between lack of jobs and poverty to crime; crime is not only organized, but it has also assumed a mass character. Due to the implementation of the anti-poor policies, the capitalist ruling elite is responsible for the growing mass poverty and unemployment in the country and mass insecurity. This is why we of the SPN call on working people and the poor to join us in the struggle against anti-poor capitalist policies and for a socialist change.
It is very obvious that the bureaucratic and corrupt security architecture of the bourgeois regime has failed woefully despite the huge budget allocated to the military and police, most of it being looted by the privileged top echelon of the military and police alongside their collaborating civilian top political officeholders. The rank and file of the military and police are poorly paid with the poor living conditions while the top echelon lives in opulence, and this explains the reason more officers are deserting the military force. Besides, the families of the rank and file officers who die in the line of duties are abandoned. This is one of the reasons the SPN demands the right of security personnel to freely join a union of their choice as a means to agitate for better welfare conditions.
We need a mass and collective response to insecurity. The Socialist Party of Nigeria (SPN) strongly advocates well-funded and democratically controlled non-sectarian community policing and defence committee of the working masses and the poor in order to effectively fight insecurity and crime. Also importantly, working people, youth and the poor have to struggle to defeat anti-poor capitalist policies and the iniquitous capitalist system in order to be able to address the material conditions such as mass unemployment and mass poverty for the seemingly intractable insecurity. This also means that we have to struggle for the nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy under the democratic management and control of the working people. This is in order to take the control of the economy away from a tiny privileged clique and thereby mobilize adequate resources that could help provide for the basic needs of the vast majority.
Abiodun Bamigboye Chinedu Bosah
Acting National Chairperson National Secretary
Website: www.socialistpartyofnigeria.org.ng
E-mail: [email protected]