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Buhari’s ‘Only God Can Police Nigeria’ Comment Draws Heavy Criticisms
The opposition Peoples Democratic Party, the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the Pan-Niger Delta Forum and the Yoruba socio-political group, Afenifere, on Tuesday took a swipe at President, Muhammadu Buhari over his comment that only God could effectively supervise Nigeria’s border with Niger Republic.
The groups, in separate interviews with The PUNCH, said the President’s statement was not only an indication that he had failed, but also that he had been overwhelmed by insecurity and other problems in the country.
Buhari, according to a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, on Tuesday said only God could effectively “supervise” Nigeria’s border with the Republic of Niger.
The President spoke while receiving in audience former Vice President Namadi Sambo, who heads ECOWAS Election Mission to the Republic of Niger.
The President spoke amid concerns about insecurity and influx of bandits into the country from Niger Republic and other neighbouring countries. Recall that two weeks ago, bandits kidnapped schoolboys in Kankara, Katsina State.
But on Tuesday Buhari explained why Nigeria’s border with Niger Republic was difficult to man.
In the statement by Adesina titled, ‘President Buhari pledges support for polls in Republic of Niger, describes outgoing President as ‘very decent man,’ Buhari said, “I come from Daura, few kilometres to the Republic of Niger, so I should know a bit about that country.
“The President is quite decent, and we are regularly in touch. He is sticking to the maximum term prescribed by the constitution of his country.
“Also, we share more than 1,400 kilometres of border with that country, which can only be effectively supervised by God.
“I will speak with the President, and offer his country our support. We need to do all we can to help stabilise the Sahel region, which is also in our own interest.”
He was also said to have applauded President Mahamadou Issoufou for not attempting to tamper with the constitution of his country, and elongate his stay in power, after serving for the maximum two terms.
The statement quoted Sambo as congratulating Buhari on the successful return of abducted schoolboys from Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, Katsina State, and also his 78th birthday, last week.
He pledged that ECOWAS would ensure peaceful and fair elections in the Republic of Niger, despite current political, legal and security issues.
He added that meetings were already being held with the relevant stakeholders.
Berating the President, the PDP said his declaration was an admission of failure.
The National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Kola Ologbondiyan, said this in a telephone interview with The PUNCH in Abuja on Monday.
He explained that it was obvious that the President was deceiving Nigerians when “he claimed to have closed Nigeria’s land borders.”
Statement from Buhari, a commander-in-chief, is shocking – PDP
Ologbondiyan said, “Mr President has just confirmed what we knew all along that he had failed. How were our borders protected before he took power in 2015? It is shocking and appalling that the President, a retired general, who in his life time has been a military head of state and now a civilian president, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, will speak so loosely about a responsibility he was elected to discharge but has failed to. It has vindicated our position that no one is in charge of this regime.”
Comment signifies loss of control – Ohanaeze
On its part, the apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, described the Buhari’s comment as a total loss of control of the country.
Ohanaeze’s Deputy National Publicity Secretary, Chief Chuks Ibegbu, asked the President not to shift the mandate Nigerians gave to him to protect them to God.
He added that God had given him the knowledge and will to check what was going on.
He said “It’s not God that controls borders. Why are they disturbing God who has given us brain to organise ourselves?
“How can Buhari leave his responsibility to God. Men should not abdicate their responsibilities to God. His statement signified loss of control and perhaps he should resign.”
Buhari’s comment on Nigeria’s border with Niger, unacceptable, says PANDEF
Also, PANDEF described the statement by the President as completely unacceptable from a commander-in-chief.
PANDEF spokesman, Ken Robinson, said this while speaking to one of our correspondents in Port Harcourt on Tuesday.
“PANDEF and a lot of well-meaning and patriotic Nigerians have repeatedly said the security architecture of the country has been overwhelmed by the various issues of insecurity across the country.
“So the President’s statement validates that opinion that the security system/architecture of the country has been overwhelmed. It is admission of failure, incapacity and ineffectiveness of the security architecture and structure. So, the President should do the needful.
“God does not come down to secure borders. God provides security through people and that is why we have the military and the police.
“If the President says only God can secure the border, that means he has lost faith and hope in the security set-up of the country and what he needs to do is clear. We have repeatedly said there is the need to re-jig the security configuration and bring people based on expertise and experience; not based on religion or the section of the country where they come from. Those are the issues!”
It’s height of waywardness in leadership – Afenifere
The spokesman for the pan-Yoruba group, Afenifere, Yinka Odumakin, also berated the President.
He said, “It’s so clear that these people don’t reflect on what they say to Nigerians anymore.
“How can a President who shut Benin and other borders for over a year without any just cause but lacks the will to shut Niger border because of cultural kinship utter this statement? It is the height of irresponsible and waywardness in leadership.”
President using God as a cover-up for his failure – Northern CAN
The Kaduna State Christian Association of Nigeria Chairman and Vice-Chairman (19 Northern States and Abuja), Rev. John Joseph Hayab, said the President was using God as a cover-up for his failure.
He said, “It is good for our President to recognise the sovereignty of God in the affairs of his governance but it is equally sad for our President to use God as a cover for his failure of leadership.
“God will not come down from heaven to do what He has provided us with wisdom and grace to be able to carry out those things.
“Leadership is about responsibility not just making rhetoric. Our leaders have turned governance into making speeches and press statements without taking concrete actions.
“Nigerians do know that God is our sovereign watchman, but we have elected Buhari as our commander-in-chief and he should be seen playing his role to secure us and secure our borders.”
President Bola Tinubu has described those at the forefront of forming a coalition to unseat him ahead of the 2027 presidential election as persons who have been internally displaced politically.
Tinubu, who spoke at a one-day presidential state visit to Nasarawa State on Wednesday, where he inaugurated projects, urged his supporters not to pay attention to his political opponents as they were in a coalition to unseat themselves.
“Just don’t pay them any attention. They are the political IDPs. Don’t give them a home. The hope is here,” he said.
The President, however, commended the Nasarawa governor, Abdullahi Sule, for bringing development to the State.
Tinubu also pledged his administration’s support for the governor to move the state forward.
“Sule is doing well. We will support whatever Governor Sule brings about to work harder for the prosperity and renaissance of Nasarawa State. That is what we stand for.
On his part, Governor Sule appealed to the President to use his good offices to initiate full oil and gas exploration in the Obi Local Government Area, where hydrocarbons were discovered in 2023.
He also thanked Tinubu for his support of the State.
“In 2023, there was an exploration well that was going on in the Obi Local Government Area of the State. There has been a discovery of hydrocarbon in excess of one billion.
“We are asking you, Your Excellency, to ensure that they come back and drill the next exploration well, the appraisal well, and the development package so that we can start producing oil from that site,” he said.
“We are telling you that this is the best for the country. We’ll become another Saudi Arabia if we have a deep onshore operation so that we can have integrated oil and gas facilities similar to what they have in Saudi Arabia so that we can do exploration, production, refining as well as gas and power production and be able to export finished products to other countries,” he added.
Opposition coalition
Ahead of the 2027 presidential election, opposition leaders, including the 2023 presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party and former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar; his Labour Party counterpart, Peter Obi; and a former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, have been reported as being talks to form a coalition aimed at defeating the ruling All Progressives Congress.
While fielding questions on Channels Television’s Politics Today, on May 22, 2025, the spokesman of the former vice president, Paul Ibe, confirmed speculations of a planned coalition to unseat the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
“Well, you and I know that there have been ongoing discussions between Atiku Abubakar and some opposition leaders: Peter Obi, Nasir El-Rufai,” Ibe said on the show.
“Yes, it’s out there in the open. Discussion is still ongoing, and at the end of that discussion, they will come out with a position and the direction that we’re going to follow based on the yearnings and aspirations of Nigerians.”
However, talks about the coalition gathered momentum last week when a group, the National Opposition Coalition Group (NOCG), comprising major national political figures, including a former Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi, reportedly went to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to register its newly formed political party, All Democratic Alliance (ADA).
The group is chaired by a former Senate President, David Mark.
The Trump administration has been allowed to restart swift removals of migrants to countries other than their homelands very soon, following a divided Supreme Court order requiring that they get a chance to challenge the deportations.
All three liberal justices dissented from the order, and the high court majority did not detail its reasoning in the brief order, as is typical on its emergency docket.
The ruling came after immigration officials put eight people on a plane to South Sudan in May, a decision which U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Boston found violated his court order giving people a chance to argue they could be in danger of torture if sent away from their home countries.
The migrants from countries including Myanmar, Vietnam and Cuba had been convicted of serious crimes in the U.S. and immigration officials have said that they were unable to return them quickly to their home countries.
After Murphy stepped in, authorities landed the plane at a U.S. naval base in Djibouti, where the migrants were housed in a converted shipping container and the officers guarding them faced rough conditions even as immigration attorneys waited for word from their clients.
The case comes amid a sweeping immigration crackdown by Republican President Donald Trump’s administration, which has pledged to deport millions of people who are living in the United States illegally.
Since some countries do not accept U.S. deportations, the administration has reached agreements with other countries, including Panama and Costa Rica, to house them. South Sudan, meanwhile, has endured repeated waves of violence since gaining independence in 2011.
Murphy’s order doesn’t prohibit deportations to third countries. But it says migrants must have a real chance to argue they could be in serious danger of torture if sent to another country.
In a scathing 19-page dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the court’s action exposes “thousands to the risk of torture or death.”
“The government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law, free to deport anyone anywhere without notice or an opportunity to be heard,” she wrote in the dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The justices have confronted a similar issue in Trump’s effort to send Venezuelans accused of being gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador with little chance to challenge the deportations in court.
In that case, the court said migrants must get a “reasonable time” to file a court challenge before being removed, and the majority blocked the administration from resuming the deportations while lower courts worked out exactly how long they should get.
The conservative-majority court has sided with Trump in other immigration cases, however, clearing the way for his administration to end temporary legal protections affecting a total of nearly a million immigrants.
The third-country deportation case has been one of several legal flashpoints as the administration rails against judges whose rulings have slowed the president’s policies.
Another order from Murphy, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, resulted in the Trump administration returning a gay Guatemalan man who had been wrongly deported to Mexico, where he says he had been raped and extorted. The man, identified in court papers as O.C.G, was the first person known to have been returned to U.S. custody after deportation since the start of Trump’s second term.
The Federal Government of Nigeria has said that there is no security threat within its capital city, Abuja.
The Nigerian government stated this on Monday in response to an advisory by the United States’ Mission in Nigeria warning all Americans to stay away from all military and government facilities in Abuja.
“Due to increased security concerns arising from current global developments, U.S. Mission Nigeria informs U.S. citizens that all U.S.
“Embassy employees and their families are prohibited from non-official travel to a Nigerian military site or other government venue in Abuja at this time,” the mission had stated.
In its response, the Nigerian government maintained that Abuja remained safe for citizens and visitors alike.
In a statement, Nigeria’s Information Minister Mohammed Idris said: “The Federal Government of Nigeria has taken note of the latest security advisory issued by the Embassy of the United States, restricting its staff and their families from non-official travel to military sites or other government facilities in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.
“While the Federal government recognizes and respects the right of foreign missions, including the U.S. Embassy, to issue travel advisories to their citizens, it is important to state categorically that Abuja remains safe for citizens, residents, and visitors alike.
“Nigeria’s security agencies are working around the clock to ensure the continued safety and protection of all residents of the FCT and across the country. The current security architecture in Abuja has not only been proactive but has also recorded significant successes in detecting, preventing, and neutralizing threats.”
“We understand that the U.S. advisory is based on general global developments and does not reflect any imminent or specific threat within the FCT. However, we reiterate to all diplomatic missions, investors, development partners, and the general public that there is no cause for alarm.
“The Federal Government wishes to reaffirm its commitment to the safety of all residents and to maintaining Abuja’s reputation as one of the most secure capitals in the world. Our security and intelligence agencies are monitoring developments across the country and are fully prepared to respond decisively to any threat.
“We encourage citizens to conduct their lawful activities without fear, while also remaining vigilant and reporting any suspicious activity to the relevant authorities,” the minister added.
Meanwhile, the US State Department has issued a “worldwide caution” for Americans, saying the conflict in the Middle East could put those traveling or living abroad at an increased security risk.
“The conflict between Israel and Iran has resulted in disruptions to travel and periodic closure of airspace across the Middle East. There is the potential for demonstrations against US citizens and interests abroad,” the State Department’s security alert said.
