Presidency under the command and control of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has said that if the ex President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo wished to help in addressing apparent worsening security situations in the West Africa Country, Obasanjo must first acknowledged the past failures that allowed terrorists to gain a foothold, and then support ongoing efforts, not undermine them, the Presidency through the office of the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Communications, Sunday Dare stated this few days ago in reactions to the statement of Obasanjo that Nigerians have rights to call on International community’s intervention if the government can no longer protect them, stating that, the terrorists also kill people of other religions should not be an excuse, this, Obasanjo said while he was speaking at a Christmas Carol event in Jos, Plateau State, after President Donald Trump of the United States, US had raised alarm of what the US president described as Christians genocide in Nigeria and threatened to send US troops to Nigeria if the killing of Christians continued by the suspected Islamic terrorists, a presidential statement that has seen spike in the activities of kidnapping and killings in Nigeria and thus creating more attention to the apparent unsafe nature of the country which included the abduction of 25 schoolgirls from Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School, Maga, Kebbi; the kidnapping of 38 worshippers in Eruku, Kwara; and the mass abduction of over 300 students and teachers still in captivity at a Catholic school in Niger State with daily wave of coordinated attacks across the Northern and Southern parts of the country wherein the bandits often suspected to be Fulani herdsmen have abducted monarchs, worshippers, a bride, married couples, students and travellers, taking at least 600 people as captives within 14 days, and the rising unsafe nature of things could have made the Nigeria’s defence minister, Alhaji Mohammed Badaru Abubakar to tender resignation letter on Monday while the immediate past Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa has since been appointed as the new Defence Minister and the Senate has scheduled today Wednesday for his screening inline with the law and constitutional procedures of the Africa country.

According to Obasanjo, “No matter what religion you belong to, no matter where you come from, no matter what profession, we Nigerians are being killed. And our governments seem to be incapable of protecting us. We are part of the world community. If our government cannot do it, we have right to call on the international community to do for us what our government cannot do for us.

And for anybody to say because those who are being killed belong to this region, belong to this religion, belong to this tribe, and then others too are being killed cannot be an acceptable excuse. Before I left government, I know we had capacity to pick up anybody in Nigeria who commits crime anywhere.

The capacity that we didn’t have then is after we have identified and located such a criminal, we have no capacity to be able to pick him up without moving on land or by air. Now we have capacity with drones. You can take them up. Why are we not doing that? Why are we apologizing? Why are we negotiating?”

In a statement on Sunday, Dare warned that Obasanjo’s comments risk distorting the security realities and undermining public confidence. He argued that if the former president truly intends to contribute meaningfully, he must first accept responsibility for past failures.

Sunday Dare in the statement titled “Between Tinubu’s Capability And The Ignobility Of Pseudo Statesmanship” stated that the “Recent comments by a former President and a few habitual presidential aspirants attempting to paint the Tinubu administration as “unable to protect Nigerians” are not merely hypocritical but ignoble. They ignore the hard truth: Nigeria is facing terrorists. All of them. By every definition, be they international, regional, or local.
 

Yet the very individuals who looked away when these threats first sprouted now want to sit in judgment. Nigerians know better. The suggestion that Nigeria should effectively subcontract its internal security to foreign governments is not statesmanship; it is capitulation. Before recommending surrender, the former President should reflect on what he failed to do when these terrorists first began organizing under his watch.
 

1. Nigeria Is Under Attack by Terrorists – Full Stop! No euphemisms. No soft language. The people killing Nigerians, raiding villages, kidnapping innocents, blowing up infrastructure, and challenging state authority are terrorists, whether they fly a foreign flag or none at all.
 

Nigeria today confronts a multilayered terrorist ecosystem that includes: • Internationally designated terror organizations
• ISIS-linked and al-Qaeda-linked franchises across the Sahel
• Local violent extremist groups masquerading as bandits
• Cross-border terrorist cells exploiting porous frontiers
• Ideological insurgents and criminal-terror hybrids operating in ungoverned spaces. These actors collaborate. They share money, ideology, weapons, intelligence, and logistics. Their goal is the same: To break the Nigerian state and subjugate its people. Let’s call them what they all are: terrorists.
 

2. Terrorism Took Root on His Watch and Grew Because It Was Not Stopped. It is historical fact that the ideological foundations and early cells of Boko Haram were incubated during Obasanjo’s civilian presidency. While they recruited, indoctrinated, built camps, and flaunted authority, the state failed to act decisively.
 

What began as a preventable extremist sect transformed into: • A violent insurgency. • A cross-border terrorist franchise. • A regional menace aligned with global jihadist movements. For the leader under whom the first seeds of terrorism were allowed to germinate to now issue public lectures is not just ironic, it is reckless.

3. Tinubu’s Strategy Meets the Threat Head-On. President Tinubu is not facing a conventional security challenge. He is confronting terrorism in full-spectrum form, both internal and trans-national. His strategy is clear: Kinetic Pressure;
• Modernizing military capability
• Intensifying intelligence-led operations
• Squeezing terrorist mobility and dismantling logistics
• Retaking and holding territory

Non-Kinetic Dominance:
• Restoring governance in underserved and contested zones
• Deploying economic stabilization and community programmes
• Counter-radicalization and reintegration initiatives
• Building trust to deny terrorists the human terrain they exploit. Whole-of-Government, Whole-of-Nation. Because terrorists thrive in division. Nigeria defeats them through unity.
 

Sovereignty First. Nigeria will cooperate internationally, yes, but it will not outsource its security or raise a white flag because someone who once had the chance lost his nerve. Yes. Nigeria needs the support and understanding of the United States and that is already ongoing. And of course  the collaboration of other allied nations. The crime at hand is transnational. Every ungoverned space must come under scrutiny.
 

4. Leaders Who Undermine Nigeria Strengthen Terrorists. When former leaders disparage the nation’s capacity, they hand psychological victories to the very terrorists murdering, kidnapping and extorting Nigerians – terrorising Nigerians in plain language. A real statesman offers support, not sound bites.

If Obasanjo wishes to help, he should acknowledge the past  failures that allowed terrorists to gain a foothold, and then support ongoing efforts, not undermine them. Let him put his position and connections at Nigeria’s disposal like he has done for other Countries. Not seek to put down an administration that is fully engaging in many fronts : Economic Turnaround, Providing Security and Building key Infrastructure.
 

5.Under Tinubu, Nigeria Will Defeat Terrorism. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu remains committed to securing every inch of Nigeria by confronting terrorists with strength, unity, and a whole-of-government strategy. Let all patriots join hands now and not raise alarms. 
 

This administration will not be distracted by selective amnesia wrapped in elder-statesmanship, nor will it allow those who midwifed Nigeria’s early security failures to rewrite history”.