Speaking on the Channels Television programme, Sunday Politics, the governor described a recent meeting of Nigerian governors as tense and emotionally charged, reflecting the gravity of the nation’s security challenges.
Nasarawa State Governor Abdullahi Sule says insecurity, particularly kidnapping, has become a national crisis that no region can afford to ignore, insisting that the phenomenon did not originate in northern Nigeria as widely assumed.
Speaking on the Channels Television programme, Sunday Politics, the governor described a recent meeting of Nigerian governors as tense and emotionally charged, reflecting the gravity of the nation’s security challenges.
He said, “It is usually very forgetful for us in this part of the world, you know we usually forget things very, very easily and we are very fast actually and very quick in pointing accusing fingers at others.”
Sule said the governors’ meeting was heated because members were frustrated by rising insecurity.
“You needed to see the stress at that meeting and the tension during the meeting as far as the issues of these insecurities are concerned,” he said.
“Sometimes people raise their voices… people are angry, people are warning, people are thinking we are not doing enough. We are accusing ourselves that we are not doing enough," he added.
According to him, the level of agitation during the meeting showed that the governors are deeply concerned.
“If the people are not worried, we wouldn’t be talking like that to each other,” he said.
Governor Sule argued that kidnapping initially became widespread in Nigeria’s oil-producing southern region before later spreading to the North.
“Let me remind you… if you go back between 2003, 2004 all the way to around 2009 in this country, no kidnapping was taking place in northern Nigeria,” he said. “But kidnappings were taking place in all the oil regions.”
Drawing from his experience in the oil and gas industry, Sule recounted how foreign and local oil workers were abducted frequently in the Niger Delta.
“At that time most of the oil workers were being kidnapped, it was a daily activity in the oil region,” he noted.
He recalled that a firm, Tetra Tech, had its workers abducted.
“One of them was kidnapped, and they made up their mind that they were not going to come back to Nigeria,” he said, explaining that the development led him to serve as a consultant and work in Port Harcourt and Trans-Amadi.
Sule said the early wave of abductions in the South was driven mainly by financial motives.
“It was mostly economic kidnapping because they kidnapped some of our people and a lot of them, in most cases oil workers, were kidnapped and oil companies would pay,” he said.
He added that the situation began to ease during the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan following negotiations and agreements addressing resource control and militancy.
Sule warned against regionalising the current wave of insecurity, stressing that Nigeria must unite to defeat kidnapping nationwide.
“We forget that the issue of kidnapping started in the South with the abduction of oil workers, then the people of the North thought it was none of their business,” he said.
“Now it is a major problem in the North. All of us as Nigerians should work together to eradicate kidnapping from Nigeria.”
He expressed optimism that the current crisis would eventually be brought under control.
“So now the kidnapping came into northern Nigeria; so this is what is happening and it will come to an end,” he said.