Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has listed five key steps he will take to tackle security breaches in the country if he is elected into office as president in the February 25, 2022 election.
The former Vice President made the revelation while reacting to Saturday’s evening abduction of scores of train passengers at Igueben community of Edo State.
Police spokesperson of Edo Command, Chidi Nwabuzor had revealed that gunmen, armed with AK 47 riffles, invaded the train station on Saturday evening and shot sporadically into the air, before abducting scores of passengers who were on the way to Warri.
Many passengers also sustained bullet injuries in the attack.
While reacting to the attack, Atiku said it is the latest in a long condemnable line of security breaches previously unseen in our national history.
“The thoughts of my family, and I are with the abducted and their families as we pray for their safe return,” the PDP presidential said.
But he said the abduction of the Edo train passengers “is the latest reminder of the urgent need to reform our security architecture to better safeguard the lives and properties of Nigerian citizens.”
He listed five strategies his administration will implement to avert insecurity if elected into office:
- Amending our constitution to allow for state and community policing as a first line of security.
- Modify our security apparatus to pay a greater premium to intelligence gathering and crime prevention than our current reactive approach. It is unacceptable for terrorists to plan attacks of this nature, mobilise arms and ammunition, secure funding and move large numbers of people across large spaces without detection by security agencies.
- Deploy technology toward tracking these terrorists and degrading their existing capacity to attack our people across the country.
- Apply the diplomatic pressures needed to stem the free flow of light arms and assault weapons across the West African sub-region and our borders. By doing this, we will severely restrict the capacity for terrorists to re-arm themselves to execute attacks.
- Greatly reducing the numbers of out-of-school children on our streets and improving the economy to create jobs for vast numbers of unemployed Nigerians, thereby reducing the pool from which these terrorists recruit people for their nefarious activities.
“I firmly believe that these actions will go a long way towards reducing incidents of insecurity and providing the secure environment needed for economic growth.
And I commit to implementing these initiatives if Nigerians trust me with their mandate and elect me as their president next month,” Atiku said.