No fewer than 127 civil society groups in Nigeria yesterday said they have fixed May 26 for nationwide mass action against President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration for failing to stop the bleeding and carnage in the country.
The groups, under the aegis of the ‘Joint Action Civil Society Coalition’, lamented that following its sharp increase of 43% in mass atrocities 2020, Nigeria has continued to experience a decline in security across the nation.
They said in the first quarter of 2021, the nation had recorded an all-time quarterly high of almost 2,000 fatalities from mass atrocities incidents across the country, saying that this week, across the 6 geopolitical zones, there were escalated combustions of violence resulting in even more deaths.
They further lamented the large-scale terrorist attacks in the North-West irresponsibly tagged by the government as ‘banditry’ in a bid to downplay their criminality, industrial-scale kidnappings all across the country, extrajudicial killings by State Security agents in various forms and inter-ethnic violence and the menace of political cult gangs and other ethnic militias.
The groups demanded that Buhari end impunity for abuse of power and sectionalism through his appointments, by balancing the need for competence with the federal character principle.
The groups said they were appalled to note that despite their strongly-worded statement, President Buhari’s government has failed to heed their call to fulfill his role as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and Nigeria’s democratically elected President.
