 Another mass abduction. Dozens of students kidnapped at a school in Zamfara state. Cabinet reshuffle. President Mohammed Buhari asked two ministers to go. And off the press, it's a review of today's newspapers coming up this morning. Good morning and welcome to a very wet and rainy Thursday morning here in Lagos. This is Plus TV Africa and of course the breakfast. I am Masao Ghee of Bon Wan. Thanks for joining us. And I am Anette Felix saying good morning to you and thank you for making us part of your very beautiful first day, the second day in the month of September. And I wish this month was starting off on a very good note, but sadly it's not. And that's because while students of Government Day School in Kaya Maradun Local Government Area in Zamfara state were sitting for their exams, I'm very sure their focus really wasn't just making it always, if possible, only to see that at 11am, while in that exam hall, terrorists and bandits basically blocked the road leading to that school, started shooting sporadically into the air to scare people, went in there, grabbed the students and made a way on motorcycles. Now sources say over 300 students go to that school and people have said over 100 were kidnapped, but the official figure we've gotten from the police state command in Zamfara state is that 73 students are missing. Now our next councillor in Zamfara state had four of his daughters who attend the school kidnapped as well. I mean, it's just terrible what we've seen happening in Zamfara. Lots of response from people, the Aroha Consultees Forum really have spoken, criticised this, and while this kidnap was happening, the state governor, Bellarmeta Wally, was actually at a prayer meeting, and there at that prayer meeting he was basically telling Zamfara state residents to take up arms and defend themselves. I have quotes for you. Now Zamfara state governor Matawale said, I am calling on the people of the state, particularly those in rural areas, to use all the available weapons at their disposal and protect themselves whenever the bandits attack their villages. Matawale went on to say as from today you should come out en masse and face the bandits if they come to your villages. He also said, do not sleep in the nights. If you get any information the bandits are coming to your communities to attack you, try to ambush them with all weapons in your possession. Now I'll quickly talk a bit about our next top ten story, linking to this. Now we know that when it comes to arming the military, there's been lots of lapses from the federal government, lots that have even been admitted by the president himself, with millions of narrow-budgeted for the sale or for the purchase of arms diverted. We know that already. So if a whole military is so grossly underfunded and they have insufficient weapons to fight terrorists with all the training that they have, how then does the governor plans for it to work out, for citizens who have no combat training, and what weapons exactly would they lay their hands on to not sleep at night, get information about bandits' arrival or planned attack and set an ambush for them? Help me explain this but that's really what stopped trending this morning. Well, before I get to the part where I'm going to obviously say that this is like clockwork and this happens every four AK market days. Once they release a set, they take a new set and it's happening all over the north. There's a lot of questions. For years now we've wondered how it's possible to kidnap 200 people and it's not kidnapping them or holding them hostage in their location. This is taking them to a totally different location. So how possible is it and how easy is it that in Nigeria today you can take 100 people and just disappear? On motorcycles. Whatever. Motorcycles on skateboards. How many motorcycles would you carry to kidnap over 73 people? And if you listen to some of the demands when they kidnap, motorcycles are some of the things that they ask for as ransom. So it would always be mind-boggling for every Nigerian to understand how possible it is that you can take 100 people and disappear. So there is that part. What roads do they pass through? How do they get to their hideouts and nobody knows where they are or sees them with these 73 according to a news report or 100? These are things that are very, very hard to understand. But we should have, I think by now, to understand that the picture that has been painted with regard to security is very far from what the reality is in these states because of how easy it is to pull these things off. It basically tells you that there is almost zero security in these regions and these bandits are really just enjoying themselves taking charge of whatever they choose to do, doing whatever they choose. There's no police, there's no NSCDC, there's some of the people who are down here in the south running wild. They almost don't exist in Zamfara and Katsina in Borno. They don't. There's obviously no NSCDC or other Nigerian police. They keep relying on the army. So there is that. In response to Governor Matawale asking people to defend themselves, I also would think that we've gotten to that stage already and it's also important that the people of Zamfara and people of northern Nigeria start, and unfortunately this sounds like anarchy. It sounds very much like everybody's just going to run wild and we're looking for a Bakasi boy type of situation here. We're looking for a militarization of every part of northern Nigeria. But because it's hard to believe that you can, when people say they don't know who these bandits are, that's impossible and that's not true. If Sheikh Gumi could walk into these places and speak with these people, it means that they know who they are. They're probably members of their community or members of a close-by community that are carrying out these attacks. And so I think it's also important, yes, it might not be lawful as Governor Matawale is suggesting to defend yourselves and it's almost not impossible because these people don't have any military training. They don't have the combat training either. All they have are cutlassies and holes that they use for their farming. But we should get to that place where people can now say enough is enough. I'm sorry how it sounds, but enough is enough. You cannot continue to do this. If the government security agencies have all failed and don't exist, then enough is enough. And if we see a person that we know has links to these people, we would hold that person in the south here while growing up. So basically you're saying that some form of action on the... On the side of the people. I'm thinking that's where we are. There has to be so much. And I heard the police or the army a thing was two days ago in the paper telling people to stay away from self-defense or some of all of that. But I don't think those people have a choice anymore. I think if you have 1,000 people in the community, 200 bandits, yes they might be armed with AK-47s, maybe it's 50 of them, but 1,000 young men in the community should be able to storm any location at this point. It doesn't make any sense that it's very, very risky. I totally understand where you're coming from. People who have been kidnapped are at risk. I get all of that. But we have to get to a place where it is now. We've reached a breaking point. We've been pushing the wall too much and we can no longer just sit back and hope that the government will come in. I think really it's just we're sending people to the slaughter. If people are asked to gather themselves in mass and invade the bandit hideouts. Yeah, well that's why I mentioned it. You can't take a knife to a gunfight because these people have yams. They would simply just fire and just waste those people. So I think what we really should focus on doing if we had an ideal structure in place where the government works is for people to come out and demand protection constitutionally which is protesting. That should be the constitutional and the democratic way to go about it. That's an ideal society, right? We're obviously not in an ideal society and you have also seen and this is one of the parts that maybe hurts every Nigerian the most that if the people have done for our tomorrow come out and say we are protesting against the failure of government to protect us the same government would have police to calm down on those protesters. They will have readily armed police with tear gas canisters and whatnot battens readily. And you ask where these men when the terrorist came. Absolutely. And so that's one of the most painful parts of the whole picture that we've painted and once again the truth and the honest picture of what exactly we're dealing with with that security needs to be told. So it's easier for us to understand why government is failing. Is there no police command in Zamfara state? Is there no NSCDC? Is there no DSS office? And these things are available in those places. Quickly moving on to our next stop trending story. We're talking about also about security. So first of all, for Falunah, senior advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falunah has written to president Mohammad Buhari over soldiers jailed for mutiny. He has a story. In 2014, these soldiers were actually have found guilty of rebelling against the authorities in their division in Medugri bonus state. They were subsequently convicted. And their offense according to Falunah how he's described it is that they only demanded to be armed against the battle you know with this terrorist. So the soldiers were then earlier sentenced to death but that was in 2015 but Falunah was able to argue and push the case for the death sentence to be commuted to 10 years imprisonment by the military authorities. Now in this letter that Falunah has written to president Mohammad Buhari, he's arguing for three things. The first thing he mentioned that the president himself admitted an interview to the BBC house of service on December 28th, 2015 that the government had sent the soldiers to the battlefield without arms and ammunition to prosecute the war and that that was what led them to the mutiny and that they were arrested and detained because they were sent really to a battle front without arms. Falunah also argued that the sum of $2.1 billion and $643 billion that were set aside for the purchase of equipment for the counter insorgency operations was by military officers. He also said that the government and some state government had recently been granting pardon to repentant Boko Haram terrorists and had been rehabilitating hundreds of terrorists who had waged war against Nigeria and subjected citizens to abuse and human rights degradation. He said that if these terrorists who have committed grave offences can be forgiven and pardoned and rehabilitated then these soldiers who are convicted for mutiny for demanding weapons to fight terrorists should be granted pardon and rehabilitated by the federal government. It's a strong argument there so really links to what I mentioned earlier sending people to the war front to fight without arms these people have more sophistication more sophistication regarding training God knows how they get that more sophistication regarding funding and then the people you give millions of Naira and billions of dollars to purchase arms then steal that money nothing is done about that and then the people will come out to complain that they have been sent to fight without arms they are now being accused of mutiny and would be put to death or stay in jail for 10 years it really doesn't seem like what is good is good for the gander here. Yeah and I think it was a couple of years ago that I spoke with a soldier who had just returned from the north and he made similar statements that the picture over there he had lost a couple of colleagues he showed me a few wounds on his knee that he was able to recover from the picture that he painted basically was that it feels like you are fighting yourself according to him you are in battlefield and it feels like you are fighting yourself because the same people that you are going to fight have been told that you are coming the same people that you are going and so every time you are going out so you think the bandits have superior intelligence according to him when it should be the other way around it may not be true in every single picture but we have also heard of leaked information we have heard of and some of all of those rumors from President Gullag Jennifer had said that the members of Bukoram in his government he said that but when you hear of things like this it is not really as shocking as it should be because they have been similar stories when this thing happened in 2014 I remember this story very well they had complained of the same things that they were in arms properly and it felt like every time that they were going out they would die and so some of the soldiers basically protested against their superiors and that is how they ended up but Femifalona has a very strong point if you can forgive the same terrorists who have committed these atrocities against the Andrian state for the last decade you must also forgive soldiers who haven't done anything besides protests that they needed more weapons one thing that we have lacked in the last couple of decades also is a proper auditing with the funding for the fight against insecurity yes I remember Sambodashuki had been incarcerated in 2015 for mismanagement of funds of $2 billion or so but after that there have been billions and billions of billions of dollars or Naira that have been pumped into weapons and ammunition and funding for the fight against insecurity and yet we still aren't winning the war so why isn't the Andrian government asking these questions yesterday was in the news that $500 million was spent on 12 Tukano also about Tukano jets how do we have that much money to spend on jets but we can't buy AK-47s and buy smaller equipment in the fight against insurgency so when we become honest with ourselves and we become states that truly wants to be honest with the fight against insecurity we probably would win the war we would be closer to winning the war until then we're going to continue with this dance in the market and it's never going to make sense to anybody and yes I agree with Femifalona pardon people who have murdered hundreds and thousands of Nigerians you may as well pardon those soldiers who haven't necessarily committed any crime aside protesting against the superiors which just in the military balance is wrong but yeah that's it on top trending this morning let's take a break and return to analyze the papers on off the press