TheCable

Atiku Abubakar, Nigeria’s former vice-president and a presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has expressed worries over the excesses of Boko Haram, lamenting the inability of security agents to quell the insurgency.

He said it was unfortunate that the security situation of the country has degenerated to the present level.

Atiku alleged that had the government acted on the information that stakeholders of the region provided, things might not have taken the present downward turn.

“On every occasion that leaders from the northeast raised an alarm about the dangerous trend, we have either been ignored or called names,” he said in a press statement.

“With what I have gathered so far from online news reports and other sources from Mubi town, the situation is very unfortunate and undermining for our country.

“If there’s any iota of truth in the suspicion of the people that they were deliberately abandoned, then it becomes a dangerous trend and a bad omen for Nigeria and all Nigerians.”

Earlier on Thursday, Atiku took to his Facebook page to lash out at the government concerning Mubi attack.

“I am deeply saddened by the reported takeover of Mubi and other towns in the northeast by Boko Haram terrorists. Some of the dead are people I knew personally,” he had said.

“The primary job of government is to protect the lives of citizens, irrespective of their tribe or religion; whether they’re APC or PDP. In these dark times, the citizens of Nigeria have nowhere to turn, but to the leadership of the FG, sworn to protect them.

“I appeal to the federal government to treat the insurgency with maximum effort, and listen more to advice of statesmen in the region as current strategies are not working too well.”