The sultan of Sokoto, the spiritual leader of Nigeria’s Muslims, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, speaks to the media at the state house in Abuja on December 27, 2011. Nigeria’s top Muslim spiritual leader sought to calm tensions Tuesday after meeting the country’s president over deadly Christmas attacks claimed by Islamists that risk inflaming sectarian divisions. AFP PHOTO / WOLE EMMANUEL (Photo credit should read WOLE EMMANUEL/AFP via Getty Images)
He made this known during the 4th Quarterly Meeting of the Nigeria Inter-Religious Council, NIREC.
Alhaji Abubakar, who is co-Chairman of the Nigeria Inter-Religious Council, lamented on the rising cost of living.
His words: “Now, the North is not secure at all. In fact, it is the worst place to be in this country, because bandits go about in the villages with their AK-47, and nobody talks to them.
“They stop at the Markets and buy things, and even collect change with their weapons.
“We have security problems in the country, bandits now go into people’s houses to kidnap, not on the highway anymore.
“Of recent in the last couple of days, they are going into institutions, in Zaria; ABU, the Polytechnic, and took away people.”
He said that in the North-West in particular, people do not sleep with their eyes closed, adding that, even on Wednesday, a village was razed down in Sokoto State, but people did not hear about it.
He added: “The insecurity in the nNrth is so high that people are even afraid of travelling from Funtua to Zaria, a journey of about 48 or 50 miles; not to talk of Sokoto to Abuja, or to Kano.
“We know what we are going through. We are so insecure in the North, that people are losing hope. People keep things in the house, so that when the bandits come, they would let them be free.
“A couple of weeks ago, 76 people were killed in Sokoto by bandits in a day. It is not a story because I went there with the governor in the eastern part of Sokoto, but you don’t hear these stories because it happened in the North.
“And we do not have Media that is strong enough to bring out these atrocities about the bandits, so people think that the North is secure.
“Food prices are on the increase, and we need to do something about it. The cost of onion is too high and beyond the reach of many people.
“A hungry man is an angry man. The rising cost of foodstuff in the Markets is an issue. The amount an onion costs in Nigeria today, is an insight into the current economic hardship in the country.
“I think we really need to sit down and look at these issues, because a hungry man is an angry man. We do not lack recommendations and solutions to our problems.
“What we lack is implementation, and that sense of purpose to do the right thing, but we do not like doing the right thing, we always want to cut corners.”
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