Governor Sule of Nasarawa State, has stated that insecurity, especially kidnapping and abduction did not start in northern Nigeria as is commonly believed and has now become a national crisis that no region can afford to ignore.
The governor described a recent meeting of Nigerian governors as stressful and emotionally charged, reflecting the seriousness of the country’s security concerns, while speaking on Sunday Politics on Channels Television.
He said, “It is usually very forgetful for us in this part of the world, you know we usually forget things very, very easily and we are very fast actually and very quick in pointing accusing fingers at others.”
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Governor Sule stated that the governors’ meeting was heated because members were frustrated by rising insecurity.
“You needed to see the stress at that meeting and the tension during the meeting as far as the issues of these insecurities are concerned,” he said.
“Sometimes people raise their voices… people are angry, people are warning, people are thinking we are not doing enough. We are accusing ourselves that we are not doing enough,” he added.
He claimed that the governors’ level of agitation during the meeting demonstrated their extreme worry.
According to the Nasarawa state governor, abduction first swept throughout Nigeria’s oil-producing southern region before moving northward.
“Let me remind you… if you go back between 2003, 2004 all the way to around 2009 in this country, no kidnapping was taking place in northern Nigeria,” he said. “But kidnappings were taking place in all the oil regions.”
Governor Sule described how local and foreign oil workers were regularly kidnapped in the Niger Delta, citing his experience in the oil and gas sector.
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According to him, financial incentives were the primary driving force behind the initial wave of kidnappings in the South.
“At that time most of the oil workers were being kidnapped, it was a daily activity in the oil region,” he noted.
“One of them was kidnapped, and they made up their mind that they were not going to come back to Nigeria,” he said, explaining that the development led him to serve as a consultant and work in Port Harcourt and Trans-Amadi.
“It was mostly economic kidnapping because they kidnapped some of our people and a lot of them, in most cases oil workers, were kidnapped and oil companies would pay,” he said.
Governor Sule further emphasized that Nigeria must band together to combat kidnapping countrywide and cautioned against regionalizing the current wave of insecurity.
He expressed hope that the current situation will be resolved in due course.
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