Emergency ruling in some states

CALLS for emergency rule in some parts of the country are at least three years old. Plateau State was often mentioned, but memories of the emergency rule in the State in 2002, and fears that emergency rule could favour a party in the conflict stalled any move.

Abia, Kano, Kaduna, Bauchi, Taraba are States that have been in serious security situations that raised enough concerns that emergency rule was considered.

Senate President, David Achelenu Mark, was incensed enough in July 2010 to have said, “We should declare a state of emergency in all these areas where we have armed robbery and kidnapping. If we can declare a state of emergency on energy, we should do it for kidnapping and then armed robbery,” he told his colleagues as debates raged on the state of insecurity around Nigeria. The issue was kidnapping in Abia State.


“Presently, it is simply a jungle environment and rule must change to conform to those who operate in jungle environment and I believe that the security agencies should be able to do that. Personally, in the situation of jungle environment, where we want to apply rule of law, it could be very difficult indeed at times. Those who are involved must be handled in such a way that they will never contemplate it in life again.”

His words captured the angst about kidnapping and armed robbery. When it came to the hundreds of lives that have been lost in the country daily since 2010, actions that have been tainted by all manners of considerations: none has stopped the killers; rather the killers have been emboldened to the extent that they make demands, and set conditions for stopping their criminality.

President Goodluck Jonathan in restricting the emergency to only Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe again played politics with an important matter.
  Source: Vanguard Newspaper