…Says no more payments of ransom to kidnappers
…As economic policies beginning to yield positive results
…’We must root out the scourge of kidnapping’
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has declared emphatically that there will be no more payments of ransom to either kidnappers “nor toward those policies which have trapped our people economically,” assuring that Nigerians and their economy will be liberated.
Tinubu stated these far reaching positions in an opinion reacting to the abduction of 276 Chibok school girls in the North east ten years ago by Boko Haram. The title of the write up is: Ten years since Chibok – Nigeria will no longer pay the price.
The President further declared that the scourge of kidnappings must be routed once and for all.
“As president, I have been clear that ransoms stop. Resolution through payment only perpetuates the wider problem. This extortion racket must be squeezed out of existence. Meanwhile, the costs for perpetrators must be raised: They will receive not a dime, and instead security services’ counter action.”
According to Tinubu when in March, 137 school children were again tragically taken from a school in Kaduna, northwestern Nigeria, ten years after Chibok the shadow of Chibok loomed large again, because everybody wondered why such an atrocity should still happen.
“This time, unlike Chibok, the girls and boys were brought back a fortnight later, the security and intelligence agencies deployed immediately to rescue them. Nevertheless, legitimate concerns over kidnappings persist in Africa’s most populous country. Success in Kaduna has brought families relief and praise for the military, yet the government bears no illusions.”
According to him, Boko Haram or any other criminal gang engaged in kidnapping don’t operate on the basis of any ideology, instead kidnapping has become an illegal industry rewarded with ransoms where perpetrators collect huge ransoms to further perpetuate their evil, adding that within days of the Kaduna attack for instance, the abductors were demanding 1 billion naira ($600,000).
“But compressing the kidnap for ransom market only addresses the pull factors. If we are to avoid funneling the same people into other crimes that cause normal Nigerians to feel insecure, we must address the push factors.”
The President identified the pull factors which must be addressed to discourage the continuation of the criminal elements as poverty, inequality, and a paucity of opportunity, because without addressing the issues criminal gangs can find easy recruits among those without either a job, or the prospect of one.
“Some 63 percent of Nigerians are multidimensionally poor. They are bearing the economic consequences of a failure by successive governments to get to grips with the Nigerian economy. Fiscal and monetary albatrosses have grounded the country’s flight, when surging demographics demand high economic growth to just maintain current standards of living,” Tinubu said.
He disclosed that it is in response to creating a conducive environment to stimulate economic growth for a surging population and check pervading poverty that his administration took some drastic steps by way of economic policies whose initial impact seem to have worsened the economic plight of citizens but now gradually yielding positive effect.
Just like with the kidnapping matter he also had to take some tough policy decisions on the economy as well to arrest the economic rot that lies at the heart of insecurity.
“A decades-old fuel subsidy was exhausting paltry public finances. By 2022, the cost had ballooned to $10 billion — more than the government’s combined spending on education, health care, and infrastructure in a budget of $40 billion. Currency controls that artificially propped up the naira deterred investment and led to shortages of foreign exchange. For decades we have been financially ransoming ourselves. When my government took office last May, we faced a pile of debt obligations.
“Just as with kidnappers, we had to be tough with the economy. Unsustainable market distortions had to be removed. As expected, floating the naira caused it to plunge. Given Nigeria is a net food importer, the average shopping basket has consequently risen in price. The removal of the fuel subsidy, in a country where many businesses and households rely on generators for power, has also had far reaching effects.
“These reforms have caused pain across Nigeria; they are still painful. Yet there is no better alternative: These and other difficult reforms are necessary to arrest the economic rot that lies at the heart of insecurity.
“Green shoots are now visible. In the first quarter of this year, foreign currency inflows have almost matched those for the whole of last year. A multi-billion forex backlog at the central bank has been cleared, giving foreign investors’ confidence to invest in Africa’s largest economy, safe in the knowledge they can repatriate earnings. The naira has begun to stabilise after its initial downward trend and has made huge gains against the dollar.
“Talk of macroeconomics might seem remote from the challenge of insecurity. But without the fundamentals in place, it is impossible for an enabling environment where the private sector thrives, jobs are created, and opportunity is spread across the country. It is how we ensure children can go to school without fear,” the President said.
Reiterating that no more ransom payments and no going back on major economic policies taken so far that have already started impacting positively on the economy.