It has become a daily routine for armed robbers and ‘kidnappers’ (or do I call them ‘adultnappers’) to go about their businesses without any hindrance from any quarter, especially in the Eastern part of the country. When you see where these boys are carrying out their enterprise, no one will tell you what to do. Just the sound of their weapon will send anybody in sight running for safety. If you have the opportunity to run as far as possible, do that; if it means to lie on your belly for as long as possible, you will have to do that unless you finalized everything in your will before leaving your house earlier. The kind of arm that they use for these operations, to say the least, is just too much.
One begins to wonder where and how they get all these sophisticated weapons of war from, because even the military men I see on patrol on our roads and streets do not even have any of such weapons and the funny part is that they are supposed to match these criminals arm for arm, if not more, so as to stop or avert their operations.
It is not possible to expect someone to fight another that is fully armed with gun, and I mean gun, with what is considered to be bare hands; that’s just what it looks like when you compare the type and potency of the arms used by the hoodlums and the military men on patrol.
Most of the time, it is even more funny to see that the security officials on our roads are not helping matters. You see a police man who is supposed to check vehicles to ascertain the contents of such vehicles ‘minding his own business’ of collecting the green-coloured Naira note from drivers instead of doing what he was asked to do. They are so engrossed with this selfish business that to serve the nation becomes secondary.
It also explains how porous the security in this country is; from the borders to the airports, to the sea ports, to our major high ways, even to the streets, villages and towns. How would someone explain that these weapons were smuggled into the country without the slightest knowledge of the security agencies at all these places? For one to assume that they are sponsored by some people in high places may not be out of place considering the rate of political instability in the country. It’s no longer new to hear about politically motivated killings in the country. I now wonder what someone will gain by killing or kidnapping another person to get to a position of authority. Does ‘position’ now make one a leader? Certainly no!
All this just end up producing people who know nothing or less about leadership taking over our leadership positions. We will soon enter into the season of serious election campaigns, more people will be kidnapped (or adultnapped) while others will loose their lives. At the end of the day, the poor masses will surfer its consequences. More arms will be smuggled into the country to assist these hoodlums even the more. We already have more arms in circulation than is necessary (unfortunately in the hands of the bad people). Most of the Niger-Delta militants dropped their weapons, others are still holding theirs, and we are still getting more (very soon). May we not end up in an aggressive civil war.
I rest my case here.
