Emergency Rule: Rubbishing Buhari with Malami’s Parochial Politics
Attorney General of the Federation and Justice Minister, Abubakar Malami, naively declared that the Buhari administration can slap a state of emergency on Anambra State if the security situation in the state does not improve. He made the ‘slip’ while answering questions from State House correspondents at the end of the virtual Federal Executive Council meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
According to Malami, the administration has the responsibility to sustain the democratic order and will do the needful in terms of ensuring that the governorship election holds in the Eastern Nigeria state. It’s not in dispute that Abuja has that emormous responsibility. Our concern here is that the threat of emergency rule in Anambra is tainted with a very narrow politics that is unbecoming of a credible Senior Advocate of Nigeria. Coming from an attorney general, the threat is as silly as it is idiotic and overly parochial.
For over a decade, the North-East region has remained the epicentre of an unceasing bloodletting c with Islamist insurgencies snuffing out the lives of nearly 350,000 Nigerians as of the end of 2020, going by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report. None of the BAY States – Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe has ever been threatened with emergency rule.
The toll, given by the UN agency was however in a new study on the war and its impact on livelihoods, is which clearly 10 times higher than previous estimates of about 35,000 based only on those killed in fighting in Nigeria since the conflict’s start 12 years ago.
“The full human cost of the war is much greater”, UNDP said in a report, released with Nigeria’s Ministry of Finance. “Already, many more have died from the indirect effects of the conflict”, said UNDP, citing damage to agriculture, water, trade, food and healthcare.
Though the Presidency reportedly declined to comment on the death toll, Nigeria’s war with Islamist insurgencies Boko Haram and Islamic State’s West Africa Province has spawned one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with millions of people dependent on aid. The conflict shows little sign of ending.
Children younger than five account for more than nine out of 10 of those killed, with 170 dying every day, UNDP said. It is even being argued that if the conflict continues to 2030, more than 1.1 million people may die, the agency said.
