Insecurity Worse Under Buhari Than Abacha – Mailafia

…Says attempt on Ortom’s life is attack on Benue people

Former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Obadiah Mailafia, yesterday said insecurity was worse under the Buhari administration than that of late Head of State, General Sani Abacha.

Abacha was Nigeria’s military ruler between 1993 and 1998, and his administration witnessed series of political assassinations.

Mailafia also said last weekend’s attack on Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State, by gunmen suspected to be herdsmen in his farm on the outskirt of Makurdi was an attack on the people of the state.

Mailafia, who stated this in an interview on Channels Television’s breakfast programme, Sunrise Daily, lamented  the state of security in the country, saying Abacha would not have tolerated such attacks.

According to him, “This is totally unprecedented. This is the worst time ever in the history of Nigeria. You can’t even compare with Abacha’s time; Abacha’s time was a golden era compared with what is happening. 

"You think Abacha would have tolerated all these? You can’t travel on the roads, killings, destruction everywhere.

“World powers want to destroy Nigeria and what they have done is to come and meet some people and tell them, ‘You are born to rule’.  There is an agenda ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo called Fulanisation and enforcement of one particular religion on the rest.”

On the attempt on Governor’s life by some suspected herdsmen, Mailafia expressed grief over the fact that some forces empowered certain people from a part of the country with weapons to terrorize citizens, adding that the people of the Middle Belt were not afraid of those who carried out the assault on their governor.

He said: “This attempt on the life of an executive governor and incumbent of a state is an attempted attack on the entire people of the state. Those who are trying to do this wicked thing need to understand the implication of what they are trying to do.

“If the governor of a state cannot feel safe to go to his farm, how will the ordinary Benue people feel going to their farms? 

"This is a very bad precedence. The circumstances in Borno are very different. Borno is a war zone, we’ve been living with these evil people for a while but what happened in Benue is totally different. We don’t know what they are trying to do but this could affect the whole country.”