The Minister of Defence, Christopher Musa, said terrorism has been reduced drastically across Nigeria, giving the country’s security efforts a performance score of between 65 and 70 per cent.
Musa made this known in an interview with Arise Television on Friday, where he said no nation is free from crime and criminality.
“It’s not like it used to be. There’s still terrorism and kidnapping but it’s not like it was before,” he said.
The defence minister blamed many of the security challenges on the breakdown of family values and poor social orientation.
“Many people who do kidnappings and other crimes are looking for ways of making easy money instead of hard work,” Musa said.
He also pointed out that some criminal activities might be politically motivated and designed to make the government look weak or to create an impression of the country being ungovernable.
“Despite the challenges, the armed forces and other security agencies are working tirelessly to address insecurity across the country,” Musa said.
He said: “Yes, I would give ourselves a score of 65 to 70 percent. There is no nation that is totally free of crime and criminality but the level of terrorism across the country has actually drastically reduced.
“Now we have acts of terrorism, and terrorism like I said, its a social vice, a failure of family values. We have seen fathers kidnapping children, children kidnapping each other, brothers kidnapping sisters.
“It tells you there’s something wrong in the family and we have to also look inward to see how we can now develop those aspects again, like the issue of education. People need to understand that to make money, work very hard, don’t find shortcuts.
“Most of these people who are involved in these kidnappings and all these things are looking for shortcuts.
And again you can’t rule out politics, because most of these people they are kidnapping are people that don’t have anything to offer, and you’re asking for one billion naira, knowing that the individual you are kidnapping cannot offer, so what are you doing? Who are you waiting for to pay that money?
And that’s to tell you that there are some times that you can look at it as acts of sabotage to make the government look weak, or to make the country look ungovernable, or whatever.
“But the armed forces and security forces are working round the clock to tackle those issues. I can tell you, Nigerians working with us, and I want to appreciate Nigerians. “The level of support we’re getting is a lot better than what it used to be in the past and we’re making more inroads.”
