Imperative Of Securing Nigerian Citizens Through Two Specific Government Policies:
June 24, 2025.
The principal purpose and responsibility of any democratic government is the security and welfare of its citizens. In Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution, as amended, that responsibility is aptly captured in Section 14(2)(b).
In the United States of America, a Second Amendment to its Constitution took place on 15th December, 1791, that was fifteen years after America’s Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The core purpose of the Second Amendment was to grant American Citizens the right to keep and bear guns. The Amendment was the aftermath of the thoughts of Founding Fathers of America who strongly believed there was (and is) need for a well regulated Militia for the security of a free State, and the right of self defence. No doubt, the Right the Founding Fathers had in mind was influenced by the historical context of the time, including the necessity to protect the Citizens against potential Government tyrany.
America’s concept of Liberal Republicanism simply means that Citizens are in charge of their own lives, and not subject to any detrimental regulation by others. The Right in question under Liberal Republicanism is not just that Citizens are allowed to keep and bear guns, it is that the Government is not allowed to prohibit them from keeping and bearing guns.
In this write-up, a lot of reference has been made to the United States of America because Nigeria, out of its own conviction and volution, decided to copy, adopt and operate the Presidential Constitutional Democracy of the United States, starting from 1979, and which gave rise to the emergence of President Shehu Shagari same year.
A system appreciated and copied, should be comprehensively, and not haphazardly, operated!
From 2015 when President Muhammadu Buhari emerged as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the Security and Welfare of Nigerians became nothing to write home about. His Fulani kinsmen made it a policy that Nigerian Citizens’ lives would have to be meaningless. Nigerians are seamlessly slaughtered in hundreds or even thousands by Fulani terrorists and bandits.
The latest report of mindless savagery and brutality by the Fulani terrorists and bandits in which about TWO HUNDRED Defenceless Nigerian Citizens were butchered took place in Yelewata Community in Guma Local Government Area of Benue State. This terror and horror are quite unacceptable in any human society, even in the most uncivilised!
Seamlessly, because even though the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as amended, ironically gives the impression that State Governors are the Chief Security Officers of their respective States, none of them can ‘direct’ the Commissioner of Police in his State to take any specific action on security in his State. No State Governor in Nigeria can authoritatively claim he has the constitutional capability or apparatus to guarantee the security of lives of citizens of his State. To add salt to injury, Nigerian laws injuriously prohibit Nigerian Citizens from self defence. The laws render them porously vulnerable to massacre, at any time, by the Fulani.
Commendably, unlike what happened in the very horrible and dark days of General Buhari, 2015-2023, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has gone to Benue to hear from the victimised and traumatised People, and has assured them that adequate security will be provided for them.
If the President ever had the impression that what was happening in Benue, Plateau and other parts of the Middle-Belt, in fact, Nigeria all over, was ‘Farmers/Herders Conflict’, Tor Tiv V, His Royal Majesty, James Ortese Lorzua Ayatse, a renowned Professor of Biochemistry and separately a former Vice Chancellor of two different Universities, has succinctly, without any iota of doubt left, explained to Mr President, and the Nigerian State that ‘it is not herders-farmers’ clashes, it is not communal clashes, it is not reprisal attacks or skirmishes’. He described the violence as a ‘calculated, well-planned, full-scale genocidal invasion and land-grabbing campaign’ by herder terrorists and bandits that has lasted for years. The Tor Tiv V added, “wrong diagnosis will always lead to wrong treatment….we are dealing with something far more sinister than we think. It is not about learning to live with your neighbours, it is about dealing with a war”.
If lives of Citizens should really matter in Nigeria, as they should, any sincere Government, as is currently symbolised by the Tinubu Administration, should, like the American Government, do two things. The first, and most urgent, is to grant the Right of Self Defense, which translates to an inalienable right to keep and bear guns, to Nigerian Citizens. Secondly, and subsequently without wasting any time, the Federal Government, through Constitutional Amendment(s), should create State Police Commands that, in every particular State, shall take directives and orders from the Governor of the State.
Equity Global Reporters Ltd is strongly of the view that it is only these two State Policies that can change Nigeria from its present description as a killing field of the Fulani terrorists and bandits directed at innocent, harmless, unarmed and defenceless millions of Nigerians. Let the killings stop now.
A stich in time saves nine!
Sir Don Ubani; KSC, JP
Managing-Editor/CEO
Equity Global Reporters Ltd.
