Former Labour Party (LP) member, Peter Obi, has bared his mind on the news of the abduction of “innocent” UTME students in Benue State.
Taking to X, Obi described the sad incident as “heartbreaking” and said, it is a “damning indictment of the failure of leadership and the collapse of security in our nation”.
Juvenile Nigerians working hard for an education “are being met with terror”, Obi wailed. He said, this is happening in a country “where the share of tertiary graduates is already painfully low (about 1%) which is far below peers like Indonesia (about 13%) and South Africa (around 10%)”.
He said, Nigeria cannot afford to “lose even one more student to violence”, adding, this is “unacceptable”.
The African Democratic Congress (ADC) member said, it appears that, those “entrusted” with the mission to protect these young students are “increasingly preoccupied” with the 2027 Election, “projecting strength and power to rig elections, rather than deploying that same power and agencies to secure our roads, prevent these crimes, and rescue the abducted children who should not be in the hands of criminals but in examination halls”.
The former Governor of Anambra State described insecurity in the country as a “national crisis”, saying, it is no more an “isolated tragedy”; and, any country that “abandons its youth abandons its future”.
He continued, the situation “demands urgent, decisive, and responsible action, not excuses, not silence, but leadership that matches the scale of the emergency this deserves.”
