A spokesperson to President Bola Tinubu said Nigeria’s security challenges were being exaggerated and claimed countries like South Africa face worse situations.
Bayo Onanuga made these statements on Wednesday in response to news headlines about kidnappings and killings in the country.
Onanuga accused the media of exaggerating these incidents, claiming that they give the impression that the country is under siege by criminals and that citizens can no longer sleep with two eyes closed or feel safe going about their daily business.
“The frightening headlines on Tuesday were based on the report by the Civil Society Joint Action Group that calls for an emergency on the security situation, surprisingly oblivious that our security agencies have been working in that spirit for a long time, since 2009,” Onanuga said.
A coalition of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) recently called on Tinubu to declare a state of emergency on the current security situation in the country.
The group claimed that at least 2,423 people had been killed, while 1,872 were abducted within eight months of Tinubu’s administration.
“We are particularly concerned about the upsurge in abductions, noting that at least 230 incidents, in most of which multiple victims were involved, occurred within the first two weeks of January 2024 alone,” CSOs stated.
Onanuga stated that South Africa has a worse security challenge than Nigeria, with 15,343 kidnappings in 2023, while Nigeria is not among the top ten countries in the world with a kidnapping “epidemic.”
“Gun-related killings or murders are also high in South Africa. They increased by 35 percent between 2021-2022 and 2022-2023. In the fourth quarter of 2023, 6,289 people were killed in South Africa. An average of 70 killings occurred per day between January and March 2023,” Onanuga said.
The president’s spokesman urged Nigerians to appreciate the efforts of security agencies, which he claimed has made the country safer than South Africa or the United States, where 44,310 people were killed in gun violence last year.
“Surely, every life matters. Surely, any of our compatriots kidnapped by the criminals must be a matter of concern to the government, as it has always been a matter of concern to our security agencies and the leadership, whose job is to keep all of us safe,” Onanuga said.
Onanuga acknowledged that Nigeria is not a crime-free country yet, but insists that some efforts are being made to tackle security challenges, citing that last December, Lagos State celebrated four years of near-zero bank robbery with one incident recorded in Epe in 2023.
