FOLLOWING Monday’s devastating attacks at a major transport park in the northern city of Kano, members of the opposition Action Congress of Nigeria were in the city to commiserate with the governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso and the people of the embattled city.
Among the visiting opposition politicians were Action Congress of Nigeria’s chairman Adebisi Akanda, alongside Mr. Nuhu Ribadu, who was the party’s flagbearer in the 2011 presidential elections and former chair of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
Party leader, Mr. Bola Tinubu was also part of the visiting entourage.
Official figures of the casualty in Monday’s deadly bomb attacks at the part was put at 22, although unofficial sources, including eyewitnesses who counted bodies at the scene, said as many as 75 may have died in the bloody attacks.
Although the president as risen to condemn the attacks as expected, observers are pointing again at the fact that the president has not visited the scene of the terror attacks.
“Coming on the heels of the fact that the president did not visit the hotbed of terror attacks on innocent Nigerians for three whole years while the attacks lasted in northeaster Nigeria until members of Nigeria’s opposition parties beat him to it,” an Nigerian observer based in New York said today, “it is unfortunate that he has lost yet another opportunity to show that he would risk anything to empathize to the longsuffering masses who bare the brunt of the government’s obvious inabilities to protect them.”
Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso and the other politicians later visited the injured victims at the hospital, where they expressed further condemnation of the heinous attacks.
Besides President Goodluck Jonathan, others had condemned the Monday attacks, including the president of Nigerian Christian Association who warned that the government had to do more than condemning attacks and visiting the bereaved and wounded.
“The Federal Government cannot continue to condemn these heinous acts of the enemies of unity and agents of death without prosecuting those already arrested. This does not add up in any way. The Federal Government should do the right thing by prosecuting those already in its net with proven record of complicity.
President Goodluck had earlier condemned the attack and said his government would continue “its unrelenting war against terrorists”.