Some opposition political parties in the country have called on President Bola Tinubu to move beyond changing his service chiefs to find a lasting solution to the worsening security crisis across the country.

In the past two weeks, bandits struck in Kebbi, Kwara and Niger States, killing and abducting scores of innocent Nigerians in schools and a church; a development that saw the President cancel his planned trips to South Africa and Angola.

In Maga, Kebbi State, the gunmen, after killing the Vice Principal, Mallam Hassan Makuku of the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School, made away with at least two dozen young students and demanded ransom running into billions of naira.

The frequency of the attacks is breeding fear across the land, with many urging President Tinubu to go beyond verbal pledges to take significant steps to make the country safe for Nigerians and their businesses.

Speaking with this correspndent, the Interim National Chairman of the Labour Party, Senator Nenadi Usman, urged President Tinubu to demonstrate enough political will to stamp out insecurity in the country.

In a message sentthrough her Senior Special Assistant on Media, Mr. Ken Asogwa, Nenadi called for a deviation from tokenism to addressing the various layers of security in the country.

She said: “You need sincerity of purpose to defeat terrorism. The solution does not lie in the constant change of guards, as we have seen with the president’s recent replacement of service chiefs. What Nigeria needs is genuine commitment, not token gestures. The president must stop paying lip service to the issue of insecurity and begin the real, structured, and coordinated process of policing the nation.”

According to Senator Usman, “It took nationwide outrage for Tinubu to shelve the ill-timed idea of travelling to South Africa and Angola in the middle of this carnage. And in a bid to appear responsive, he ordered the Minister of State for Defence to relocate to Kebbi to oversee the rescue of the kidnapped schoolchildren. But where are the Service Chiefs? What happened to the Chief of Army Staff or the Chief of Defence Staff?

“Instead of deploying those constitutionally charged with commanding the armed forces, he sent a civilian. This is precisely what I mean by sincerity of purpose. The president must stop grandstanding and start securing the nation. Nigeria is fast drifting.”

On whether the approaching 2027 elections may be partly responsible for the spike in abductions, the LP boss sounded dismissive of the insinuation, noting that what is important is for the president to rise to the demands of his office.  

“I am not interested in the conspiracy theories surrounding whether the approaching elections are driving the renewed wave of insecurity. What is clear is that the Tinubu administration has impoverished Nigerians more than any other government in our history. And in a society where poverty has reached this catastrophic level, insecurity is the predictable outcome. He who sows the wind should be prepared to reap the whirlwind,” she added.

Also speaking, the National Publicity Secretary of the Young Progressives Party, Wale Egbeola-Martins, called on the Federal Government to address the foundational causes of insecurity, rather than effecting changes in the security hierarchy.

He told our correspondent, “It is extremely sad that despite what the government has done, the state of insecurity is getting worse. It appears there is no solution in sight, even though the service chiefs have been changed. The problems are multi-dimensional and go beyond changing the service chiefs. It is also beyond changing the president.

“The problems are foundational. Until we treat the problems from the foundation, we won't get a lasting solution.”

He called on all the ethnic groups that make up Nigeria to approach  the table of dialogue and “Reassess our very existence. What brought us independence in 1960 was that our leaders came together through constitutional conferences and agreed on how they wanted to be governed.”

In a separate interview with our correspondent, a security expert and Managing Director, Beacon Security and Intelligence Limited, Mr. Kabir Adams, said only a synergy between the military and para-military agencies will address the multi-layered security challenges facing the country.

He said: “The attacks on soft targets appear to be on the increase. These targets have light security protection. These include schools, churches, mosques and other places of mass gathering. Part of the reason these attacks are increasing is that the threat actors are numerous. They are about 80.

“We also have the cult gangs that have spread across the country, as well as organised criminal groups. There are political gangs and ethnic militias. If you lump all these together, they come to about 80 threat actors.”

He blamed the recent attacks on schools on the failure of policies.

“Three things lead to these attacks on schools. One is the large number of people gathering in one place. The government has not taught the people how to protect themselves, and this makes them highly vulnerable. There is a lot that can be done to improve their resilience and reduce their vulnerability.

“Take the schools, for instance. We have the Save Schools Initiative, and we have the Save Schools Declaration, as well as the National Policy on Safety. In spite of the huge sums of money that have been released to implement these programmes, including having a Director in the Ministry of Finance, given the responsibility of implementing the safe school initiative, we have not seen the implementation in the manner that it should have been done.

“Two, the ability of these desperate groups to collect money either in the form of ransom or other means has not been hampered. After the attack on the church in Kwara, th