Confirmed: nothing ever
changes in Nigeria. The more things change, the more they stay the same. This
immortal epigram of Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, the 19th century French
critic, journalist and novelist, captures the fortune of the Federal Republic
of Drama aka Nigeria. That is why when anything happens these days, I’m like:
haven’t I seen this before? I’m seeing repetition all over again. As we say in
Nigerian Latin, “Soja go, soja come, barracks remain the same.” I’m no longer
as excited or as agitated as I used to be. An Igbo proverb says what a dog saw
and is barking ferociously is the same thing a goat saw and barely bleated. It’s
a depressing feeling of “I’ve seen it all”.
The kidnap of 105 female
students of Government Girls Science Technical College, Dapchi, Yobe state, was
Chibok all over again. As it was in April 2014 so it is in February 2018. The
president has changed, the service chiefs have changed and the crime scene has
changed — but the details are so alike. We were told they were kidnapped, they
were not kidnapped; they were rescued by soldiers, they were not rescued by
soldiers. Presidential fact-finding team finally confirms abductions. DĆ©jĆ vu.
The missing link is that President Buhari and his inner circle have not blamed
political opponents for the kidnapping yet. And, yes, the first lady is yet to
cry “Diariz God o”.
What a pity of a country.
Every day, we spend billions of naira on security, but Nigerians are far from
safe. The people who are safe are the leaders, our lords and masters. Nobody
kidnaps their children. Nobody rustles their cattle. No herdsmen invade their
farms. How many presidents, governors, senators, reps, ministers and
commissioners have been kidnapped so far? As at last count, a whopping zero.
They are all well protected — a convoy of armoured vehicles, soldiers and
policemen guarding them front, sideways and back. The ultimate losers are the Nigerian
people on whose behalf the leaders are having fun.
I’ve watched in horror as
the Buhari administration keeps claiming to have defeated Boko Haram, for two
years non-stop. We saw the celebration of the take-over of “Camp Zero” by the
Nigerian army in December 2016. That, we were told, was the final nail in Boko
Haram’s coffin. The Sambisa forest had been wiped clean of the insurgents, we
were informed. There was a major State House dinner to celebrate this. The
Qur’an supposedly used by Abubakar Shekau was handed over to Buhari at the
elaborate ceremony. Yet in 2018, we’re still flushing out Boko Haram from the
same Sambisa. We are too much in a hurry to proclaim victory when there is
still work to be done.
Incredibly, anytime we
claim to have “technically defeated” Boko Haram, they unleash more horror.
While I understand the role of propaganda in situations like this — at least to
boost the confidence of citizens in the ability of government to protect them —
it can only work when it is closer to the truth. There is no doubt that our
courageous soldiers have recorded significant victory against Boko Haram — for
which appreciation and commendation are not out of place. But of what value is
painting the narrative that Shekau is about to wave the white flag when we know
asymmetrical warfare is too complex to extinguish, especially with the
horrendous north-east terrain?
There is something that
really scares me about the security ecosystem in Nigeria. Recently, I attended
a confidential briefing by the heads of the security agencies. As they took
turns to tell lies, hailing themselves and even scoring themselves 80%, I was
disheartened. It was more of a chest-thumping PR initiative than a security
briefing. I left the meeting vowing never to attend another one again. If this
is the kind of lies these people feed to the president, then Nigeria is almost
finished. And if the president, with all his experience as a former military
governor and former military head of state, believes these lies, then Nigeria
is finished.
Our security agencies are
so excellent at unleashing terror on ordinary Nigerians and failing
spectacularly at fulfilling their job description of protecting life and
property. They can arrest BBOG activists, provide security for the demolition
of the houses of political opponents, declare IBB’s spokesman wanted, harass
motorists and motorcyclists, and arrest harmless bloggers — but, with all the
billions, they cannot protect schoolgirls from being kidnapped; they cannot
protect cattle from being rustled; they cannot protect the lives of herdsmen,
farmers and villagers. Something is awfully wrong with us in this country. We
need our heads examined.
Sadly, I can sense a
feeling of hubris among some supporters and sympathisers of the PDP and former
President Goodluck Jonathan over the Dapchi kidnapping. “God don catch Buhari,”
many of them are saying. Maybe gloating has its place, especially with all that
Jonathan went through in the hands of APC over the Boko Haram crisis. But
people are missing the point: returning PDP and Jonathan to power will not stop
the insecurity. Our problem is worse than we think. There is something
endemically wrong with Nigeria and we all — Christians, Muslims, northerners,
southerners, Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba, etc — are victims. I kid you not.
I pray that one day the
eyes of our understanding will open to realise that though tribe and tongue may
differ, we are all in this mess together. We have voted government after
government since 1999, but we are still importing and queuing for petrol, the
refineries are still being repaired with billions of naira and they remain
comatose, electricity remains unstable, the roads are still a landscape of
potholes, the schools are still a shambles, the hospitals remain deathbeds,
kidnappers and robbers are still kings, and corruption is still on the rise.
Shouldn’t this tell us there is more to our problem than PDP and APC?
Nevertheless, APC deserves
all the knocks. While I was certainly disgusted with the PDP, I have never been
a fan of APC. In an article, May We Now Discuss the Issues, Please? (THISDAY,
December 21, 2014), I wrote: “I am one of those Nigerians who cannot be easily
moved by political slogans. I love the music of ‘change’ as rendered by the
APC, but talk is cheap. What we need to know now is the content of this
‘change’… APC has done a very good job of highlighting the failure of the
Jonathan/PDP administration in tackling the [Boko Haram] insurgency. What it
has not told us, convincingly, is what it would do differently.” I still stand
by my words.
It is simply amazing that
having promised us so much, the APC guys have turned themselves into a nuisance
and laughing stock in record time. Everything they criticised in Jonathan they
are replicating in bad measure. And they are so shameless about it. Even their
response to the latest ranking on the corruption perception index by
Transparency International is much like what Jonathan would say: “It is
political.” I agree, wholeheartedly, that change does not happen overnight. But
if the morning foretells the day, Nigerians are in for a peculiar kind of
change that is an inferior replica of what they voted out in 2015.
Buhari came to power on
the back of two promises: fighting corruption and tackling insecurity. The
anti-graft war has particularly been about exposing how PDP financed its
presidential campaign in 2015. I am yet to see those who financed APC being
called to answer questions. I may be wrong, but that is the impression I get
all the time. As for security, while we have dealt with Boko Haram more
seriously, we are not tackling other challenges satisfactorily. Buhari allowed
the herders/farmers crisis fester for too long. Nigerians are being killed
every day in avoidable circumstances. Critically, Buhari needs to urgently go
back to the drawing board on Boko Haram.
The saddest side to the
Dapchi abductions is the big blow to girl-child education. It is already a very
difficult job persuading parents in the north-east to allow their daughters go
to school, especially after the Chibok nightmare. Now that the Nigerian state
has demonstrated yet again that it cannot protect these kids despite billions
of dollars spent on security, how do you persuade the parents to let go of
their precious jewels again? Potential doctors, nurses, accountants and
beauticians will be too scared to go to school. They will end up as hawkers and
child brides. I am on my knees praying that these girls will be reunited with
their families as quickly as possible. Depressing.
====
AND FOUR OTHER THINGS
MISTIMED TABLE
There has been plenty
argument over the reordering of elections — whether or not the national
assembly has the right to take over that function from INEC. Ironically, I am
not looking at it from a legal perspective — the lawyers are doing a good job
on that. I am just thinking: if national assembly elections hold before
presidential, how does that confer an advantage on the lawmakers? If President
Buhari “jilts” them and they don’t get re-elected, how would they stop Buhari’s
re-election thereafter? If they are strong enough, they will be re-elected,
with or without Buhari. If not, the same “thing” Buhari used to stop them will
ensure his own re-election. Understood?
BELLO’S BILE
Alhaji Yahaya Bello, the
not-too-young-to-misrule governor of Kogi state, recently ran his mouth against
Catholic bishops in the most disrespectful manner imaginable. We know he owes
his curious ascendancy to governorship to President Buhari but he has become a
pest with the way he licks the president’s boots. He felt so good linking the
bishops to looting and tithing for expressing their legitimate concerns about
the state of the nation. What Bello does not know about Kogi politics is that
the winner will not be picked from Abuja. He needs to impress the voters if he
hopes to get a second term. Sycophancy will not save his neck. Nauseating.
GANDUJE AGAIN
Governor Abdullahi
Ganduje of Kano state has done it again — shoot first, think later. He has
promised President Buhari five million votes in the state in the 2019
presidential election. No candidate, no matter how popular, has received five
million votes from a single state in the history of Nigeria. So when a PhD
holder for UI begins to talk this way, you are tempted to give up on Nigeria.
People like him mislead Buhari into believing an election has been rigged
against him when he does not get the figure they promised in their
overzealousness. Flatterers look like friends. May we be blessed with leaders
who think before they talk. Someday.
WHICH SHEKAU?
The Nigerian army has
placed a bounty of N3 million on the head of Abubakar Shekau, the leader of
Boko Haram. “He is running for his dear life. He is desperately trying to
escape the Theatre, disguises as a woman and dresses in hijab,” the army had
said in a previous press statement release. The same army has declared that
Shekau has been killed at least three other times — without seeing his dead
body. They even said he is a fictional character, that Shekau is a nomme de
guerre. They need to sit down and take a position — either to admit Shekau is
still alive or conclude that he is dead. But how can you place a bounty on a
fictional character? Wonders.
Credit: Simon Kolawole, Thisday
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