A pan Africanist organization, Neo-Black Movement of Africa Worldwide, has condemned in strong terms, Tuesday’s dastardly attack by yet-to-be apprehended bandits on the the country’s foremost elite military training facility, the Nigerian Defense Academy (NDA), Kaduna.
The group in a statement by its Public Relations Officer, Mr. Oluwatosin Dixon, copies of which were made available to reporters on Thursday, labelled it a terror attack and a direct affront on the sovereign integrity of Nigeria and a slap on the face and an assault on our collective psyche.
It described the attack and such others as strange, and therefore called for the imposition of state of emergency on such troubled states like Zamfara, Kaduna, Katsina including Plateau where no less than 30 people were reportedly killed during the week in a suspected reprisal attack to avenge some travellers returning to Ondo State from an Islamic festival in Bauchi State who were slaughtered when they got held up in a traffic gridlock around Jos North LGA.
The NBM of Africa Worldwide called on the military hierarchy to plug all identifiable loopholes that may have led to the “huge embarrassment the attack on the elite NDA has occasioned.”
It called on the Nigeria Army not to be unmindful of President Muhammadu Buhari’s admonition that the attack should serve as a wake up call and motivate them in the fight against banditry and other forms of insecurity that have engulfed areas of some states.
It would be recalled that two officers were reportedly killed and another abducted by bandits who were said to have breached the Academy’s fence, at its permanent site, in Afaka, Kaduna State.
Bandits attacked the NDA in the early hours of Tuesday, which resulted in the death of two officers. Another was abducted and another battling to survive in the hospital.
The group called on the authorities or their image handlers to rise beyond the cosmetic and avoid giving impression they are callousness and mindless of the grave situations occasioned by lingering insecurity in several parts of the country, particularly in the North.
Mallam Garba Shehu, presidential spokesperson, had in a reaction said that the attack on the Nigeria Defence Academy might be a ploy to embarrass the President Muhammadu Buhari administration.
The development has raised concerns on the rising insecurity in the country.
“We call on the government to come out to reassure Nigerians that the recent gains by the military in their onslaught against the Boko Haram sect and bandits terrorizing the North and other parts of the country, that the attack on the elite officers’ training facility in Kaduna State, is in no way a sign of reversal of their their efforts.
“The attack on the NDA is a terror attack. Sponsors of such attack should be made public. State of emergency should be declared on states experiencing these attacks including, Plateau State
“These attacks are not normal and it will be absurd and indeed abnormal for Nigerians to accept what is going on as a normal situation. While we welcome news of plans by the military to thoroughly investigate and disclose what happened, it will however not suffice to downplay the magnitude of the tragedy that the attack on the elite military institution connote.
“We join in the call for the military authorities to thoroughly investigate the breach on its facility and sanction those found wanting,” the statement read.
