ABUJA, MARCH 5, 2018 – Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo has spoken on the reason he and President Muhammadu Buhari have not visited Dapchi in Yobe state where 110 students were abducted two weeks ago.
Both men have been criticised for not paying condolence visits to places where abductions and avoidable deaths were recorded in recent times.
Among these states are Benue, Zamfara and Taraba.
Speaking with journalists over the weekend, Osinbajo said while the government has expressed sympathy with the people, condolence visits alone would not solve the problem.
He listed some of the measures which the government has embarked upon to reduce killings and widespread violence.
“There is no amount of condolence that can compensate for the loss of life. Benue killing is one set of killing far too much; there is no amount of condolence that can compensate for that. And I want to say that it’s a massive tragedy,” he said.
“But the question that you seem to ask I’ve been to Zamfara, I’ve been to Adamawa when this killing took place. There are those who said, ‘oh, why don’t you visit the Fulani settlement, why do visit only where Christians were?’
“I even visited Benue in September where there have been killing before; then I’ve visited them when the flooding took place and we looked at all the issues and tried to address many of these. There have been several of these issues in different places, recently Dapchi. We have expressed condolences, but no amount of condolence would do.
“The more important thing and our focus has been, is first of all ensuring security in these places.
“We have to address the security question in a much more robust way; that the police are able to do these effectively. We have deployed the military to Kaduna, two battalions to Kaduna. In Benue and Taraba axis, we have the 93 battalion, we have 72 Special Forces. We have full concentration in Taraba and all of that, and by the way, the military is fighting in most of the north-east. So, there is a situation where the military is overstretched. So I think the most important thing is, first of all, to ensure they actually address the security of the people.”
