Kuje attack: Presidency admits to level of hardship and insecurity in the country.

By Ibekimi Oriamaja

The Presidency has acknowledged Nigerians’ anguish and criminality, adding that President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration is doing its best.
In response to the fresh Kuje Prison attack, Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, remarked on Channels Television that he has not heard anything to suggest that the country is not enduring hardship.

“I’m a Nigerian, I have family members who live in society, I’m not from the moon, I live it, and I’ve never said that the country is without suffering,” he remarked. I have never claimed that any location or posture is without legitimacy.”

Shehu, on the other hand, has urged Nigerians against paying ransoms to terrorists and kidnappers, claiming that doing so only serves to fuel terrorism.

Families that have had loved ones kidnapped, according to Buhari’s spokesman, should call the kidnappers’ bluff and allow security authorities to perform their duty.

“You’re talking about kidnappers and people who have been kidnapped, and the President even mentioned in his Sallah message an appeal he was making to fellow citizens to expose them (the criminals), tell the security agencies where they are, and sometimes you can sympathize with the family members in that highly emotional situation,” he said.

“The majority of them are willing to pay, and they have paid, and these payments, whether anyone likes it or not, will continue to fuel terrorism, and we must learn from other lands that when you pay, you are fueling terrorism, you are fueling the hijacking and kidnapping of fellow citizens, and it will go on and on until simply people call off the bluff and allow law enforcement.”