The Presidency has faulted the impression created in an article published in Financial Times (United Kingdom) written by David Piling.
The article said to be published on January 31, 2022, titled “What is Nigeria’s Government For” is said to have highlighted rising cases of banditry in Nigeria.
In a letter by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, the Presidency said the writer of the article left out the security gains Muhammadu Buhari’s administration had recorded in his two terms.
The letter reads in full:
We wish to correct the wrong perceptions contained in the article “What is Nigeria’s Government For,” by David Piling, Financial Times (UK), January 31, 2022.
The caricature of a government sleepwalking into disaster (What is Nigeria’s government for? January 31, 2022 ) is predictable from a correspondent who jets briefly in and out of Nigeria on the same British Airways flight he so criticises.
He highlights rising banditry in my country as proof of such slumber.
What he leaves out are the security gains made over two Presidential terms.
The terror organisation Boko Haram used to administer an area the size of Belgium at inauguration; now, they control no territory.
The first comprehensive plan to deal with decades-old clashes between nomadic herders and sedentary farmers – experienced across the width of the Sahel – has been introduced: pilot ranches are reducing the competition for water and land that drove past tensions.
Banditry grew out of such clashes. Criminal gangs took advantage of the instability, flush with guns that flooded the region following the Western-triggered implosion of Libya.
The situation is grave.
Yet as with other challenges, it is one that the government will face down.
