Giving the current spate of insecurity, including insurgency, banditry, kidnapping, among others, in the country, the Catholic Bishop of Bauchi Diocese, The Most Reverend Dr Hillary Dachelem, has declared that Nigeria is collapsing.
The priest who spoke to selected journalists in his office in Bauchi Wednesday, submitted that the sorry state the country found itself now was caused by the leaders and the led, adding that, “Nigeria is sick, Nigeria is gradually collapsing.”
While lamenting that unlike in the past, almost every sphere of Nigeria’s existence has collapsed,
Dachelem said the government had failed the people in every ramifications and called for urgent solution to save the country from imminent collapse.
According to him, things are so bad to the extent that Nigerians were not only sure of what would happen next but also suspicious of one another.
“The government has failed us in every ramification. Something has to be done urgently to save the situation.
“This is not the Nigeria of the dream of my generation; certainly, this is not the Nigeria we used to know. We are seeing and facing a different Nigeria. The Nigeria we used to know was a better Nigeria.
“Not that there were no crimes but they were minimal. It was not in an alarming rate as we have now. There were only pockets of crimes, the issues then were not overwhelming. Those into crime and criminality at the time were very insignificant compared to the number we have now.
“Majority of us are now criminals, I am not exonerating myself. A lot of things have changed, this can be picked from different spheres of life so that we can analyze,” the Catholic Bishop said.
He noted that insecurity has so heightened now to the extent that even governors with all the security apparatus they have are now even afraid of travelling by roads, declaring that if something is not done urgently, Nigeria is heading for doom.
According to the clergyman, “if you look at the area of security, not that there were no armed robbery then, you can get to anywhere in this country without any fear or hesitation, though we had some pockets of issues relating to armed robbery but they were not as prevalent as they are today.
“It is so bad now that even a governor is afraid of traveling by road. A governor was attacked by bandits despite all the paraphernalia of office at his disposal; he is also suffering from attack. If we do not do something urgently, then we are heading for doom.”
Dachelem noted that, “a lot of factors are responsible for getting us to where we are now. Generally, both leaders and the led are responsible for how we got to the point at which we are now though I will say 60% of the fault goes to the leadership. First, let me confidently say that the leadership then secondly laissez Faire of the leadership.”
He, however, strongly condemned the spate of kidnapping and banditry across the country, which he attributed to unemployment among the youth, noting that incidence of kidnappings and banditry had become one too many.
He called on the appropriate authorities to urgently tackle these headlong with a view to putting an end to them immediately, “before one day, we will all wake up and find ourselves kidnapped”.
The Catholic Priest stated that despite all that were happening today, there was still hope of a better country if the right steps were taken by the government urgently.
According to Bishop Dachelem, “it is not too late to act now. We can still get it right if we collectively work together.”
