The Labour Party commiserates with victims of the Unguwar Mantau mosque killings and abductions in Katsina, describing it as another proof of APC’s failure on security. The party accused NSA Nuhu Ribadu of incompetence and challenged President Tinubu to either secure Nigerians’ lives and livelihoods or step aside in honour.
*2. FULL VERSION*
Labour Party Press Statement
*————————————**LP COMMISERATES WITH KATSINA STATE ON MOSQUE MASSACRE: NSA RIBADU SHOULD TAKE REFRESHER COURSE ON SECURITY, TINUBU MUST SIT UP OR STEP DOWN*
_By Prince Tony Akeni, Labour Party National Publicity Secretary (Interim), August 28, 2025_
The Labour Party of Nigeria wishes to express our deepest condolences to the families of casualties and survivors of the Katsina mosque massacre, and subsequent mass abduction of innocent citizens by terrorist bandits, which took place last Tuesday August 19 in the Unguwar Mantau village of Malumfashi local government area of the state.
We also condole with the Acting Governor of Katsina state, Alh. Faruk Lawal Jobe, and other government functionaries of conscience who must be sorely disconcerted by yet another chapter of wanton killings involving 30 innocent Muslims who were shot dead in their mosque during morning prayers, and over twenty others in adjoining homes to the mosque who were locked inside their houses and burnt to death. In addition to this had been the overwhelming urgency of rescuing alive 76 other citizens – men, women and children – who were abducted from the environ and herded away into hell by the terrorists after the dastardly mosque killings. We, as a party, were waiting for progress on the rescue of these citizens before putting out our statement. Happily, we have just confirmed today Thursday August 28 that the mass of abducted Katsina villagers have been rescued.
A window to the hell-on-earth insecurity nightmares the citizens of parts of Katsina, Middle Belt and similar Northern states are facing in their localities is provided by Mr. Usman Usman, the councillor representing Almu ward of Malumfashi local government council, as follows: “The bandits have decreed that the farmers of these communities will only be allowed to enter their farms between the hours of 8am and 1pm, after which they must vacate the farms or be abducted or killed.” Another resident corroborated that despite each farming household previously paying a #10,000 protection fee to the bandits, they still strike at will on regular basis, cart away unchallenged their livestock and in one recent case took five residents with them into their forest lairs; a nightmare that has turned the area and its adjoining districts to a ghost land as people flee in search of peaceful livelihood elsewhere.
As a political party passionately committed in ideology, principles and empathy to an egalitarian redemption of our country and remaking her into a nation that works for all, the protection of lives and properties, the pursuit of happiness, freedom of worship and livelihood without breach is non-negotiable, in contrast to the pandemic state of insecurity in our country as demonstrated by the traumatizing broad-day horror visited on our Unguwar Mantau people.
Since the unfortunate incident last week, Labour Party has been monitoring the aftermath of the coordinated horror through the Katsina state Sen. Nenadi Usman Labour Party chapter. Sadly, while we were still holding our breaths for a comprehensive report before making this official statement, we were apprised further by our party’s local humanitarian sentry in Katsina state that less than 48hrs after the chilling assault on the Unguwar mosque, more than a dozen other Katsina communities were seized by freely ranging platoons of bandits and a pay-or-perish levy of #15million naira imposed on hapless Nigerian citizens in 16 communities in that part of our country. This information has since been corroborated to be true by local residents, including a serving councillor of Almu ward, one of the bandits overrun communities.
Aggregating these distressing data and gross shortcomings of Nigeria’s security governance by the APC led administration, our hearts bleed and our prayers go out to the immediate family, clerics of the attacked mosque, the ransomed communities’ leadership and the good people of Katsina state in general.
It is incredibly saddening that the deadly assault on humanity, continued regression to stone age savagery in wide swathes of our country by marauding terrorists and their conscience-dead sponsors in government are, by their own admission, well-known to the APC administrations of both late ex-President Muhammadu Buhari and his tourist successor, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Yet no decisive and terminal solution by the APC managers of our country appears anywhere in sight. It is even more saddening when you reflect on several factors that ought to have made the Unguwar mosque attack both avoidable and impossible.
*More Security Budgets, More Insecurity…*
One would ask: how is that possible except in Nigeria? It is only with the ruling APC administration that such paradox is a regular assault to logic and sensibility of the Nigerian people: the more security budgets rise, the more insecurity, violent crimes and killings rise across the country.
Between 2016 and 2022, Nigeria’s APC administration under late Muhammadu Buhari burnt US$9.9billion on tacking insecurity in Nigeria. The national defence budget against insurgency, which was US$2.4billiion in 2020, skyrocketed nearly double to US$4.5billion. In 2025, the administration of his successor, Bola Tinubu, jerked this up to an all-time summit of #4.38trillion or #6.57trilliion. In the equivalent period, Nigeria Police budget rose from #783billion in 2022 to #969.6billion in 2024.
The third most populous state in Nigeria with a projected current population of 10.69million citizens spread across its 34 local government areas, Katsina state has produced two presidents of our country, the best ever and also the worst ever before Nigerians woke up on May 29, 2023 to find Mr. Bola Ahmed Tinubu on the hallowed seat of their Presidency. These are PDP produced President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua of blessed memory and the first APC President, late Muhammadu Buhari of blistering memory respectively. These are beside countless late and living military generals and political stalwarts, including two-time Speaker of the House of Representatives and two-time Governor of the state, Alh. Aminu Bello Masari.
A cosmo-Nigerian state with a fair spread of virtually every tribe of the country found in it, the Yorubas, surprisingly, are the third most populous tribe in Katsina state behind the Fulani’s population of 1.2million citizens, which is itself a distant second position from the Hausas who are about 9.3million citizens. Over these populations, Katsina state is not barren of federal and state government security formations, infrastructures and personnel. Among the many security establishments in the state are the Natsinta Barracks, located on the Katsina-Jibba Road. Constructed in 1973 and commissioned in 1977, it was originally established to accommodate the 82 Battalion which was shut down in Eastern Nigeria after the civil war and relocated to Katsina and is now the home of both Nigeria’s 17 Brigade and 35 Battalion, a stone throw from Katsina main city.
The comprehensive representation of security services in the state’s condolence delegation to the victims of the Unguwar mosque murders reflects the full presence of government’s security apparatuses in the state. These included the state Commissioner of Police, the Commander of the Nigerian Army’s 17 Brigade, the State Director of Department of State Services (DSS) and the State Commandant of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC). These were in addition to the state government’s components led by the Secretary to the State Government, Alh. Abdullahi Faskari, on behalf of the state governor, Alh. Dikko Radda, who has been on a self-catering medical vacation in another part of the planet while his citizens were being mowed down like flies and survivors abducted like livestock into bandit annexed forests.
With the above plethora of security presence, paraphernalia and personnel existing and drawing huge federal and state budget shares from government, why do the free killing sprees and abductions for ransom such as last Tuesday’s mosque massacre in Katsina, Plateau, Benue and other parts of the north still happen, almost frequently and at will, without the soulless perpetrators being brought to book and their menace exterminated?
*APC, Government of Condolence Delegations*
Between the PDP and APC maladministration of Nigeria, in spite of Nigeria’s staggering annual defence budgets, police and state governors’ security votes, huge parts of which end in the pockets of corrupt sector actors and turn up in the face of the people as private estates, plazas and plush property investments in and outside Nigeria, reports of Nigerians who die everyday are worse than countries in full-blown war and chilling.
In the five years between 2006 and 2021 alone, the country’s cadaver records shows that Nigerians who died from terrorist killings were 50,252 from 2,288 terror acts, while those who died from other violent crimes – kidnappings, robbery, rape, police brutality, extra-judicial killings and sundry felonies – were 51,425. The combined figure of 101,677 citizen-to-corpse abrupt life extermination amounts to a minimum of 57 Nigerians whose lives were violently cut short every single day in the last five years of PDP’s and APC’s combined maladministrations.
The above figures do not include hospital casualties from pandemic failure of the nation’s notorious healthcare system, motorist accidents, malnutrition, infant mortality, suicides and other causes. It also excludes the death records of the four years between 2022 and 2025.
During a comparative four-year period of fierce, no holds barred full-scale international ballistics war which decimated parts of cities between Russia, a major world power, and Ukraine, Ukraine lost 73,920 soldiers and civilians between 2022 and this August 2025. This is according to the _deathometer_ metrics of renowned war research organizations including Mediazona, the Book of Memory Group and Britain’s BBC. This comes to 50 persons killed everyday in war-torn Ukraine in the last four years. Nigeria is not at war yet loses 57 citizens per day, seven corpses more than Ukraine, over a comparative period scale. Who says Nigeria is not at war?
If you are wondering or are still senselessly outraged that the Canadian government declared PDP and APC as terrorist organizations instead of political parties, gerrit now or forgerrabourrit.
*Nuhu Ribadu:*
The function of the National Security Adviser of a country as large and continentally significant as Nigeria is not wearing starched agbada flying with presidential delegations from one state ceremony of mass burials to the other to deliver condolence speeches on behalf of Tinubu’s APC administration. It is also not receiving dates and fruits from Saudi Arabia for Nigerians fasting to Allah with one hand and with another hand receiving millions of dollars to acquire sophisticated weapons for terrorists and bandits to slaughter our peaceful Muslim citizens dutifully worshipping God in their mosques while, ironically, there are no insurgency death records in Saudi Arabia or UAE from where their nationals sponsor terrorism and bloodshed in Nigeria.
Amongst others, the functions of the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, is to obtain, sieve and collate security intelligence in the action jurisdiction of all security arms of the federal government, advise the President on real-time pre-emptive actions and combat strikes that ensure and perpetuate long-term security of lives and livelihood which engender citizen gratitude, not funeral wailings and IDP camp exodus for displaced citizens. If Ribadu has forgotten these functions, he should revise his Kuru training manuals and, if they are outdated as he has become, he should take a refresher course on 21st century counter-insurgency security protocols, crises prevention, containment and management.
As the cliche goes, the principal function of government is the security of lives and properties, and by extension their livelihoods and shelter. If President Tinubu cannot provide this principal function for Nigerians, he should sack Nuhu Ribadu, reconfigure his armed services rank and file and step up his security governance over our citizens or do Nigeria a patriotic favour by sacking himself too.
*Tony Akeni Le Moin*
Labour Party National Publicity Secretary (Interim)August 28, 2025.
