Mexico Ambassador-designate, Reno Omokri has said Nigeria is safer today than it was eight years ago, citing international data to support his claim that security has improved under President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
Speaking during an interview with TRT World, Omokri pointed to figures from the Global Terror Index to argue that terrorist related deaths in Nigeria have declined significantly over the years.
“Now, first of all, we have one arbiter that judges’ security in the whole world. That’s the Institute for Economic and Peace, and they issue every year the Global Terror Index.”
“Now in 2015, according to the GTI, the Global Terror Index, 7,752 persons were killed in Nigeria. Now, last year, according to the GTI, 550 people were killed.”
“So we’ve seen that we’ve gone from a situation whereby 7,000 people, almost 8,000 people were killed in 2015, to a situation now where less than 10% of those people are being killed. So there’s improvement.”
Omokri acknowledged that security challenges remain but insisted the country has made measurable progress.
“Now, even one death is too much. We don’t want any death. But obviously, there’s security crisis, there’s security issues.”
He argued that Nigeria’s terrorism challenges were linked to developments across the Sahel following the collapse of Libya under former leader Muammar Gaddafi.
“We didn’t start this crisis. It started from the fall of Gaddafi after the United States intervened, and all of his foreign fighters came from there, and then they scattered throughout the Sahel to Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria. And that’s how we had these problems of terrorism.”
“So, things are getting better in Nigeria.”
Omokri also highlighted improvements in corruption rankings and economic indicators as evidence that the country was making progress on multiple fronts.
“And, I mean, you can see that it’s not just from the GTI. If you look at the CPI, that’s the Corruption Perception Index, Nigeria has gone from 154 in 2021 to 140 today. So that means we’ve moved 14 places forward in the latest CPI rankings.”
“If you look at our economy, you know, in two years, Nigeria has added $67 billion to our economy. We’re one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.”
“Our economy is growing at 4.23% in the last quarter. According to the IMF, Nigeria is projected to have a GDP growth rate of 3.33%.”
“So, things are getting better in Nigeria exponentially. We’re not there yet. We still have a lot of work to do. But things are getting better.”
(The Whistler)