Former Senator Shehu Sani says President Muhammadu Buhari is losing the popularity he used to enjoy among the Northern populace due to his failure to tackle the security challenges confronting the region and the country in general.
Sani, who represented the Kaduna Central Senatorial District in the 8th Senate, stated this on Wednesday on a Punch newspaper online interview programme, The Roundtable.
According to him, “Buhari is losing his popularity in the north because of the insecurity. The northerners are most fanatical about Buhari before now, but he is losing that because of the insecurity in the region.”
Last Friday night, bandits attacked Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, in Buhari’s Katsina home state, abducting over 300 schoolboys after a gun duel with the police. President Buhari himself had arrived in the state the same day for a week-long private visit some hours before the students’ abduction.
Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, in a recording on Tuesday, had claimed that his group abducted the schoolboys, saying the action was carried out to discourage people from obtaining Western education.
Sani said it was logistically impossible for Boko Haram based in the North-Eastern part of the country to kidnap that large number of students from the North-West. But he noted that there must have been a collaboration between the bandits and the terrorists.
He also argued that solution to the insecurity ravaging the northern part of the country was not “complicated”, adding that the Buhari administration needed to urgently consult with people who understand the security situation of the north in order to end the menace of banditry, kidnapping and terrorism.
The former lawmaker added that it was self-defeating for the Buhari regime to claim that Boko Haram had been technically defeated while the terror group continued to wreak havoc against the people on a daily basis.
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