 Rebeka the Niger police forced in Edo state yesterday confirm that several passengers were abducted from the Ekihan train station. This is located in Igwebe and local government area of that state. Chidiunkawá Buzo is the public relations officer of the Niger police force Edo state command. He confirmed the incident in a state bent on Saturday saying the travellers were waiting to board a train from the Igwebe and the station. broadenokaisaya u widama newspaper nago hijakini na u cati塚 bei na nilim elderly pakoba hb bakat abine kwa izia还是 lip ha mng s mng bensini kutu wiscin uwe 32 pasajayas. Hapun kuwi wikia kutu soma tata. Maafia ya hezibu Pemisi Taka ya kuna kufa mana, lukasana Chris Nekari, bamesini nafilini na piratzi, non-kwaibu shisha umbu na umabu, na mumu belijaya wa hiazakia wa hisha umbu na umbu na hiaze ya kwaibu na hiazakia w refugee nuka wa hiazakia wa hiazakia. dasi na umbu na hiaza Ato na nika-gule A yok wantto huiru A umbu na hikutu kachi ni muna mura m code na umbu na hikutu na umbu na hikutu nisha umbu na hikutu na hikutu na hikutu na hikutu na hikutu niu atak on a train station in Nigeria. We can say yet again, yet again, are you surprised that these gunmen, these terrorists or heads men would have I won't call it I able to do this again? It's similar to what happened in Kaduna State. Thank you very much and good morning to our viewers. My reaction is rightly like you have said, not again, but I am also not surprised that it has happened. Because since Nigeria has been visited with these kidnapped scenarios, the government has not done anything to stop further kidnappings. And if nothing has been done to stop further kidnappings, it is only a matter of when next and who next that we are talking about. Recall that about a year ago, precisely on my birthday, the 28th of March, what is sad birthday gift I got? Scores of passengers were kidnapped on a Kaduna bound train that departed from Abuja. What did the government do? The government did not react like government is where we do. Government did not go after the kidnappers. Instead, the kidnappers were trading Nigerians for money. And if I recall, at a 100 Naira bounty per head, I say 100 Naira, 100 million Naira. The kidnappers were at me party to trade the Nigerians they had taken hostage. 100 million Naira per head. The kidnappers had the humility to even invite medical personnel to deliver a pregnant woman of her baby. These kidnappers were feeding. That means they had supplied chains to supply them food, supply them water, supply them arms on the territory of Nigeria. And the Nigerian government did nothing about it. These guys traded these Nigerians successfully. If that is what happened on the Kaduna bound train, one will stop other people from kidnapping because kidnapping has become a creative and almost riskless business in Nigeria. That's why if you take citizens hostage, you will see the full force of the government. The government will react swiftly and surround the entire geographic space where the kidnappers happened. And the security agencies will remain there until the kidnappers resort either by the kidnappers surrendering themselves and their hostages or they getting killed and the hostages released. That is what you will see elsewhere. If you go to any of the democracies around the world and you take citizens hostage. We see it play out on TV. The government will be there in helicopters. It will be there with sharpshooters. It will be there with the grand forces. It will be there with navafoses, with air assault, anything that they can put in today. And we will see it live on TV as these operations will take place until the kidnappers are either arrested or killed. That makes kidnapping bad business. But not in Nigeria. So as it happened in Kaduna and it has not happened in Edo state, the question is where next? And who is the next victim? That's my submission of this news item. Be sure you will never forget the 28th of March 2022. Of course you said it was your birthday. Very sad day. And indeed you've done justice by going to the history. What happened in the last train attack in the country. In your opinion, why Edo state? Because if you want to talk about such incidents, the states of the part of the country that easily comes to mind will be the northern part of Nigeria. We saw that in Kaduna state we've seen abductions in the middle belt, for instance in Plato state recently. So why Edo state? Edo state is not the first, second or third or even fifth state to come to mind when we think of such attacks. So why do you think that this is happening in Edo state? Would you say it's part of the trend we've been seeing of terrorism? Because we hear according to the police spokesman in Edo state he's saying that they identified as herdsmen. Nikagule. It's very difficult to say why Edo state. Incidentally I have a very long relationship with Edo state because I went to the University of Benin and after I graduated I was retained as a graduate assistant so I was a university teacher for another five years. So for about ten years I lived in Benin. So it's a state that I very much love and in fact if Nigeria were the kind of place where we are not dealing with this type of origin thing I could consider myself to be an Edo indigent. So why Edo state? I don't have answers to that but I know that given the way the security situation in Nigeria has deteriorated. Like you rightly said insecurity was prevalent in the northern part of the country but has gradually escalated to other states in the middle bed and is now actually happening to states in the south. And that is because the government of Nigeria has lost the game to these perpetrators. But the government of Nigeria is not up to it. The government seems to be clueless. The government doesn't anytime I see it like the chief of defense staff come on TV to be making press conferences. I feel pity for him because I look at the chief of defense staff who has allowed the game to be controlled by terrorists, pandis and kidnappers. I see a chief of defense staff who cannot protect his citizens. I see a chief of defense staff who I don't know what his challenges are. Could it be the equipment, the man or money but you expect a reaction different from another chief of defense staff as well. As in like if take for instance in the United Kingdom where the that citizens have been taking hostage. The reaction you receive from the security forces is going to be different from what you see in Nigeria. And so because Nigerian security architecture is not actually going after those who are terrorizing citizens or carrying out acts of banditry or kidnapping citizens. Then the entire country has become a fertilized ground for this act of criminality. And if it has happened in a do-state here it can happen in any other state. So I would think that given that it happened in a do-state why a do-state is because it can be any state actually in Nigeria. These passengers were standing at a train station waiting to be lifted by a train and then these guys just came there and kidnapped them. As we speak today in Nigeria, the kidnappers can actually kidnap anybody anywhere in Nigeria as of today. And you are not going to see the reaction that is needed from the security agencies. Indeed Nick, kidnapping is not a strange phenomenon in the southern part of the country. I mean for some time now we've had kidnapping in the southeast. But if we keep an epidemic between the southeast part of the southeast and the south side especially river states. So somewhere between Pohakot and Oweri was a hotbed. But when you look at these terrorism style kidnappings and you hear a headsman buy the police, what comes to mind? Do you think it's different? Is it similar in your opinion too? Is it linked to insecurity and the crisis in the northern part of the country of which headsmen have played a prominent role? Are we beginning to see a trickling down of the security crisis and the situation in the northern part of the country into the southern part of the country? It should mean that what we have seen as security threats in Nigeria south is no longer just the kidnapping we know from our brothers and sisters here or the so-called unknown gunmen who are civil from this part of the country. But we are beginning to see an expansion of the terrorism related insecurity in the northern part of the country when you hear a headsman behind this. Because if you look at Edo state, it's sounded by Kogi state, Ondo state, Delta state and Anambra state. And to move from Kaduna to Edo state, you have to go through the FCT and you have to go to Kogi state. So should we begin to assume that what's been happening up north is now down south or is this just more of what we've been seeing in the south in previous years? We have seen the trickling down of the insecurity in the country. Because in 2015 when this current government came into power, the insecurity was prevalent in the north east. And the promises, one of the electoral promises was that they were going to deal with that. Now they came into office in 2015 and immediately we started seeing the trickling down from the north east to the north central to the north west, south west, then south east and now in the south south. So you can see that over the past 80 years what was the challenge that we had in the north east has not developed and covered the entire nation. So this is what we have been seeing. And like we have been saying now, there is no gain stain again to say we are going to advise President Buwari. Because if there is anything President Buwari should have done, he should have done in the past 80 years. He hasn't done it. So our attention is actually now gradually turning to whoever is going to succeed him in the next couple of months precisely on May 29. And we are telling this person that once they come into office, fighting insecurity should be their number one agenda. Because a country that is not secure is not going to develop. Because they much talked about foreign direct investment and all of that that we talk about is not going to happen. If there is a sense of insecurity, you know, I tell people that if you go to a place like Johannesburg, you will discover that you stand a greater chance of getting a knife talking your back into Johannesburg than it is in Lagos or in Abuja. But you will see tourists flocking to Johannesburg on holiday and they are not coming to Nigeria. Why? It's because Nigeria's security architecture is not formed to prevent this attack. Because security is in two ways. Number one, intelligence less security should stop you from having these incidents in the first place. And then the second layer is that in case the incidents happen, then your reaction to that should be so swift and final that the people who perpetrate these things, who advise themselves. Yes, go on. We can hear you Nick. Yes. All right. Apologies for that. Nick go on. It's quite clear the connection is okay and we can hear you clearly. I was just trying to sort things out. So like I was saying insecurity is in two layers. I mean fighting security is in two layers or securing the nation is in two layers. Layer one is when you prevent the insecurity from happening in the first place. And then layer two is if it happens, then you are going to fight it. In Nigeria, neither is happening. We needed to prevent this ado kidnapping from happening. We needed to prevent Kaduna kidnapping from happening. We needed to prevent every other kidnapping banditria terrorism in Nigeria from happening. But in case it happens, our reaction to that should be swift. That the perpetrators should be given little chance to get away with their crime. What are not happening? And because of that, that feeling, that sense of insecurity in Nigeria, we are not going to see tourist come here. We are not going to see foreign direct investment come here. No, let me tell you things that are very simple and easy ways we can actually set up security in Nigeria. Number one, Nigeria is perhaps the only nation, the only nation with this kind of size of population that does not have an emergency number. An emergency number like a 999 or a 911 where citizens can swiftly call the security architecture, security agents attention to an accident. When you have such an emergency number system, you have given all the citizens security responsibility. Because if they see something that is fishy, they will just call you. And once they call you, you respond to it. Nigeria does not have even have something as simple as that. So how can we find security where we have not put the architecture in place? And year in year we continue to allocate the highest budget to security in Nigeria. And yet the insecurity is increasing. Has anybody been heard responsible? So, like for instance now, this trend kidnap that has happened in those days, assuming the commissioner of police in those days has been today suspended from work. And somebody has gotten, if all commissioners of police in Nigeria realize that look, if insecurity is perpetrated in my domain, the government is going to suspend me and I'll probably lose my job. You know that they are going to be more serious with their work. But nobody is going after anybody. We are not going after the perpetrators. We are not going after those who should have stopped them or gone after them in the first place. And therefore it is just a question of who next and where next, unfortunately. Give us a minute or two. We have some content to play. We'll just go listen to an excerpt. We'll look at that. All right. Anyway, I'm told we can keep going with the conversation. So that's fine. Nick, so I mean, we remember what Amishi said when he was minister of transportation. He was talking about the proposal to secure Nigeria's rail tracks and very importantly the rail infrastructure in the country. I mean, billions or trillions of naira in loans, you know, taking to ensure that this rail infrastructure in the country is put up and set up and put aright. I mean, this is part of the worry takbe rail corridor. What do you think is responsible for the fact that last year there was an attack on a train? People were abducted. We know what happened. Till now we've not seen security beefed up at the train stations all across the country. There are not too many on the tracks across the country. There are not too many to ensure that at least we learn from history to ensure that it has not repeat itself and it has repeated itself. Why have we not seen the government of the day do the few things Amishi said or at least do the little they can to ensure that there is security as good security at a train stations and on a rail infrastructure in the country which we board for and which we are yet to pay for. It is very difficult to understand why the government has been unable to tackle head on the insecurity in Nigeria because I supported President Buhari in 2015 and the reason I did that was because I saw in him as an ex-genera what he takes to deal with insecurity in Nigeria. But unfortunately that has not materialized. President Buhari seems to have been bereft of ideas on how he is going to tackle insecurity. For a long time he was in office insecurity was escalating from the north east which inherited to the north west, north central down to the south and all we could hear was that the president condemns the kidnap of citizens. The president condemns the kidnap of school children. The president condemns the terrorist action against Nigerians. We are only seeing these press statements that were being issued by the presidential spokesman. Even the president himself, we not addressed the nation about the efforts that he is putting in to tackle the insecurity that we are facing. And this thing continued to escalate. The people he had in charge, the security chiefs, he had to take Nigerians a lot of work to tell the president that these people have overstayed their work on and that they need to be removed. And when he removed them and the insecurity continued. And in one of his interviews he said, look, I don't know what to do again because Nigerians wanted me to remove the service chiefs. I have removed them, so what next? So we were not confronted with the president, even though a former general who should understand how to deal with insecurity running the country without the necessary action that was made. So here we are almost eight years later. And the things that were not heard before because about 2015 we used to know about the Boko Haram activities in the Northeast and then some bombings that were happening in places like Abuja. Now that has now escalated to routine kidnap of citizens. It has escalated to a total breakdown of lower order like in the Southeast. And now we are seeing kidnap in places like experiences of fair share of insecurity. I mean we are not forgetting the old war massacre where gunmen came from nowhere. So all over the nation now we are having these cases of insecurity. Man who promised to secure the nation as one of the tripod of the economy and then the other being corruption. And if we have to roll the score card of President Buhari as far as security is concerned, agreeable by a lot of Nigerians will be that he has done very poorly. Indeed if I must be fair, on the resumed Abuja Kaduna train service, we know that we've heard that there are security operatives manning these trains. Some of the passengers have reported seeing these security operatives working to and fro while the train has been in motion and all that. But still we've seen that the stations themselves are being attacked. Maybe we can say I assume that the focus is on the Abuja Kaduna train and the station is up north. One would have thought that they would secure not just the trucks but the stations all over the country. And Amichi did say something about the time that there was a proposal and it had been rebuffed and there was some sort of disagreement within the corridors of power in the country about that. We also heard that there were security reports, intelligence reports that were sent to the army and they did nothing about this. Do you think that there is a political will and even a will from maybe the security apparatus in the country to address the situation we have at hand or has Nigeria's security been compromised from within the apparatus, the security apparatus, the power structure in the country? Thank you very much for that question. I think it's a combination of all that you have stated. There's lack of political will, there's lack of political courage as you can see in this act of, in terms of government's response to this act of insecurity. There's also the challenge of having a fifth columnist within the security ranks. It is something that the government itself has owned up to that there are people within the security architecture who are either collaborating or even supplying arms or giving away intelligence and things like that. But you see, that is the job of the government. The government job has been cut off for it to deal with this matters. Who within the security architecture has been arrested, persecuted and jailed no matter how high ranking in all this. It's not just for the government to come out and tell us that they know that there are people within the security architecture who are collaborating with these terrorists, bandits and kidnappers and all sorts of criminals. It is for the government to take the next step. Have we seen a genre? Have we seen a head of security agency? Have we seen some more senior government who has been picked up, persecuted and jailed because they were collaborating with these people? The answer is no. And if that doesn't happen, how then are we going to stop it? What is going to be the deterrence to others not to do this? And also, I mean, it's a difficult job for President Buhari to explain why the security architecture in Nigeria is weaklessly with the likes of iPop or Southwest Bandits and all that. But towards the other eye, if it is the Northern Fulani Heisman who are perpetrating insecurity, you don't see the kind of switch reaction that you see. I'm speaking to you here now. I'm speaking to you in Makode, in Benue state. And I think it was last year or two years ago, there were a community in Benue here that was alleged to have seized some army personnel and murdered them. A very bad thing for anybody to adopt. The government reacted swiftly with helicopter gunshells, with troops on the ground. They went and they leveled the communities within that horizon, totally leveled them. We're not seeing that when it is the Northern Heisman. Nick, we hear that there is a security sweep and the security are spreading their net to try and rescue these abducted persons. We've seen the video as you saw what we played. The Deputy Governor of Edow State visited the site. He was accompanied by the State's Commissioner of Police. And the police in partnership with local vigilante and local farmers combing the bush in the area, the bushes in the area, to try and see how they can free these persons and release them and get them back to their families. Are you finally, final question, because at the time, do you feel confident, do you feel positive that we've always seen sort of a reaction by the police in Edow State? Maybe we might see these individuals being released being rescued rather as quickly as possible. We usually see this kind of pain when the insecurity has already occurred. In the Kaduna case, we saw the chief of defense that had gone there. We saw the chief of army that had gone there. We saw all the people, minister of transportation went there. We saw all these things. So whether this thing is done for the cameras or it is actually concrete action that is being taken by the government to fight this insecurity, it's only the next few days that it's going to occur. And my hope and wish is that this should not be for the camera, at least for once, let us get it right, where these efforts as we are seeing on these video clips will lead to the eventual arrest or killing of the kidnappers, depending on their choice, their own choice and the release of the hostages. So it's only the next few days that it's going to tell us if there's something different from this Edow case in terms of security reaction and from the Kaduna case. Alright, Nika Gulewana, thank you very much for your time. And once again, happy new year to you. We do hope for a positive outcome this time as far as the rescue efforts are concerned. It's really traumatizing one. Nika Gulewana, guest this morning on a first topic, a first conversation right here on the breakfast. Nika, have a fantastic day. Thank you very much. And my message to viewers always is that elections is next month. The presidential elections is actually on the 25th of February. Please go and get your voters' cards. Alright. I know that iLake has not made it easy because voters' cards are not where you are living, they are where you are going to vote. But please make the sacrifice, go and get it. And if you have no register to vote, still mobilize people to go get their voters' cards and also to come out to vote. Because it is only when we have competent leaders in office that insecurity will disappear from Nigeria. Thank you, Nick. Have a wonderful day. We're still ahead. Thank you very much, Nick. We're still ahead on the program. Non-governmental organization is asking the federal government in particular President Buhari to refers to the recent increase in electricity tariffs in the country. We'll look at that when we come back. Please stay with us.