Human rights activist Omoyele Sowore said Nigeria has lost large swathes of its territory to insurgents.
Sowore made the statement on Wednesday in Abuja in solidarity with members of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, who are preparing for a nationwide protest against insecurity in the country.
“The country is bleeding and it has to be urgently stopped. The leadership of Nigeria has failed to protect the citizens of the country.
“You are all in the country, where people are getting kidnapped from places of worship, whether it’s a Muslim or Christian.
“We have over 250 kids still in captivity and everybody is behaving as if everything is normal. Nobody’s even talking about our soldiers; Nigerian Air Force personnel are being captured by the small Republic of Burkina Faso.
“It looks like everything has broken down, and we have a duty to keep. Enough is enough, and that is why we are here to march peacefully with the NLC.
“There’s no reason for us to be giving excuses that insecurity has always been an issue. It has not always been an issue. The level of insecurity we have in Nigeria now has never been like this. Even during the period of the Civil War, which I didn’t experience but I read about, life was going on in different parts of the country.
“But today, if you go to the Southeast, it’s unsafe. You go to the Southwest, it’s unsafe. You go to the Northwest, it’s completely under siege. You go to the Northeast, it’s completely taken over.
“In terms of even territory, Nigeria has lost almost 30 per cent of the territories to non-state actors who designate themselves as terrorists. They call themselves bandits, kidnappers and so on. But the truth is that it seems as if the leadership of Nigeria has lost complete control of the country,” he said.