Nigeria's President Jonathan dancing
at a political rally, just a day after his country got bombed by
terrorists and over 230 girls were abducted at a separate incident same
day
Monday, 14th of April, 2014 appeared to be a normal day in Lagos from the outset after wading through the usual traffic snarls on 3rd
Mainland bridge characteristic of Monday mornings. On arriving my
office and obtaining reports from my technicians on the state of
facilities, news filtered in from a radio station regarding bomb blast
in Nyanya, Abuja. Initially, it passed my attention like the usual news
headlines of Fulani herdsmen and Boko Haram killing hundreds of people
and razing down entire villages and farmlands, and taking hostage young
damsels as sex slaves – nothing new!
Suddenly, like a bolt out of the blue, it
occurred to me that this is the same Nyanya, where I attended my
primary school between 1986 to 1992, precisely LEA Primary School 2. The
Nyanya which is a satellite town near Mararaba and Karu, where I lived
in a small army barracks beside Mobile Police Barracks and other para
milititary and civil servants’ quarters. The grim reality of my numerous
relatives and childhood friends still living in Nyanya and adjoining
suburbs gripped me like a wild bear from behind while I felt the frost
of the fears of possibly loosing loved ones. Going through my facebook
profile and tweeter handle compounded my fears and angst with the
graphic images of lacerated and dismembered human corpses like the
shabbily handled cow meats normally visible in Oko-Oba abattoir in
Agege. So humans are not better than cattle in Nigeria anymore? I reach
for my phone to call my second family in Nyanya but my hands are heavy
and one part of my mind discouraged me from calling while the other told
me, “ be a man. Dial the number”. I called my best friend and brother,
Emmanuel Onah, but his number was switched off, at once, my heart beat
surged several millimeters of mercury as I couldn’t even talk to people
who asked why I was looking unusually quiet on a Monday morning.
The news of Boko Haram’s wanton killings
appears to be getting closer and closer to everyone in Nigeria, no
matter where you live, such that you are no longer just reading it on
papers but now beginning to feel it or even know people that have been
killed by such or having mutual friends who have felled victim either as
security personnel or civilian casualties. The crisis is fast coming
to our doorsteps no matter where we live, and the greatest mistake we
are making is assuming that the acts of terrorism are to the North alone
and people in the South need not worry. The truth is, if advanced
societies like Europe and America could suffer terrorism from both
within and without, then nowhere in Nigeria should ascribe terrorist
immunity to themselves. The time has come for us to either fight and
live or die to kiss the dust of history for which posterity will never
forgive us.
Although, my call to my relatives and
friends in Nyanya later went through the following day after the bombing
and was greatly relieved to learn that none of my relatives or friends
was part of the statistics, but the fears and Kafkaesque of nightmare
that hovered over me before the confirmations were beyond any literary
expression. Just last year, I lost a mutual friend in the person of
Lieutenant Amin, a young officer who had life snuffed out of him by
those sons of dogs during an ambush in Yobe State.
I understand that terrorists are like
missionaries in terms of spreading their missions. I am not expecting
Boko Haram members of Northern extraction to be the ones to bomb Lagos
if they ever think of doing so. I expect to see mainly recruited yorubas rather than ‘malams’. And their name may not be Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, Taliban, Ansaru, or Hesbollah.
Just some other names, but all remain terrorists irrespective of
difference in nomenclatures. Even some rawboned British and American
citizens have been either recruited into the terrorist ranks or are
quietly sympathetic to their bestial course whether for fame or fortune,
I don’t know neither can I establish the psychology behind the
attraction for evil. There are records that some few Yoruba boys have
been among the terrorists arrested in recent times. That is an alarm
signal for any complacent security intelligence chief in Nigeria
particularly the South. Kogi, Oyo, Osun and Kwara State need special
surveillance attention in this regards. After all, by this time ten
years ago, nobody could ever imagine Nigeria to descend to the present
state of chaos threatening her existence. I never imagined a Nigerian
youth wearing a bomb vest to carryout suicide bombings. I have always
thought Nigerians are the most fearful people on earth but I was wrong,
plain wrong as the word wrong as the word comes.
In sane climes, security matters aren’t
taken lightly at all. No politician dare take his trade near issues of
national security. But over here in Nigeria the situation is inverted.
Politics is imported even in churches, mosques, schools, civil service,
and the security services. Even the number one citizen is part of the
mud bath and a cheer leader in the macabre dance of nakedness. How could
a president after losing many compatriots in terrorist attacks claim to
know the perpetrators and yet fail to fish them out? The immediate
past governor of Borno State, Senator Ali Modu Sheriff should not be a
free man by now if at all we regard national security ahead of politics.
Though am not accusing him of complicity with the dreaded Boko Haram
terrorist group, I think it’s high time he and the seating governor of
Borno State, Shehu Shema lay it all bare regarding the spate of bomb
blasts and rains of gun shots that characterized the visit of Senator
Ali Modu Sheriff early this year to Borno among other shady events from
the inception of Boko Haram inspired bloodbaths. The
licentiousness with which politicians threaten bloody violence and make
incendiary remarks which often inspire sectional hatred and ethnic
cleansing with impunity is very unfortunate and smacks of a national
culture of violence. The degree of intellectual daftness that made
Olisah Metuh to mindlessly blame the bomb blast at Nyanya on the main
opposition party less than 24 hours after the incidence without any
investigation is pitiful and sheds light on the poor reasoning capacity
of people in charge of our security. Why politicize the death of your
fallen compatriots, Why?
The President of Nigeria, Goodluck Ebele
Jonathan has the unhealthy habit of never taken responsibility for
lapses in security system, but to be constantly accusing political
opponents without ever substantiating it. This is grossly unfair to the
ordinary defenseless Nigerians whose bloods ceaselessly get poured in
the alter of peace and the aggrandizement of political egos. Mr.
President, this is too bad! You must learn to accept responsibility for
security failure only then will Nigerians begin to believe your claims
of sincerity in fighting terrorism.
We must not forget that Boko Haram
actually started during the regime of late President Umar Musa Yar’adua,
and not Goodluck Jonathan, as many have forgotten and come to believe.
They are not set up to discredit the government of President Goodluck
Jonathan, as his mischievous aides will want many to believe. The
opposition party and the Northern Elders Forum initially tried to
leverage on the unfortunate insurgencies to gain political capital like
the Niger-Delta leaders did during the pre amnesty saga of 1999 to 2010
but backtracked when it backfired at them. It’s a shame for the
Northern Elders Forum and Arewa Consultative Forum to try to take
advantage of an unfortunate situation that has claimed the lives of many
promising and law abiding Nigerians mainly of Northern extraction. They
have suddenly forgotten that Boko Haram is an offshoot of their
kleptomanian leadership and misrule while they held sway as leaders of
this country in the years of yore. How do they think they can better
handle power now that age and depleting IQ has got the better of them?
The opposition to the imposition of State of Emergency and military
occupation of North East and part of Middle Belt being ravaged by Boko
Haram cum Fulani herdsmen is gross wickedness, non char lance, and cruel
insensitivity against the ordinary citizens of Nigeria who live and die
in anonymity but are yet the engine room that drive the machineries of
our nation and on whose back their insensitive leaders, sorry!
Oppressors ride in the flame of fame. Northern leaders have failed their
people woefully and are unfortunately neither shameful nor remorseful
of it. As a northern young professional, it huts me and others like me
to see our homelands up in flames and down with floods of innocent
bloods daily. First when only the Christians were being massacred and
churches being bombed, no complain of violence was made by the core
Northern Oligarchy. Now that the violence has been extended to all and
sundry, someone is complaining of genocide without doing anything to
help. May God see the tears of the North and come to her aide and rescue
the poor and widowed from quandary and medieval pauperization.
President Goodluck Jonathan has displayed
the highest degree of fatal tardiness, cluelessness, lack of
determination, and carelessness when it comes to handling security
issues in Nigeria by any leader, dead or alive. Under this government,
life in Nigeria has reached it all time low. Pick up the dailies and all
you see is blood, blood, bloodshed everywhere, be it by Boko Haram,
Fulani herdsmen, robbers, accidents, or ritualists. Do you know there
hasn’t been any good news in Nigeria this year aside the controversial
GDP rebasing ? It’s not in my character to bash a seating president or
any leader for that matter and I don’t intend doing so. The fact remains
that the issue of Boko Haram would have long be done and dusted but for
the ultra slow reaction rate of the highest oga at the top to urgent security issues.
In Yobe State for example, when Boko
Haram were daily attacking and razing down police formations and
plundering amories one after the other, reports got to the President and
he did nothing until it got to a point no single police station existed
in Yobe State, like the rest Boko Haram troubled States. That was when
Uncle Joe deemed it fit to mute State of Emergency. Even then, Nigerians
had to cry the ocean out to get him to declare it, and it wasn’t even a
full State of Emergency but a partial one in order to continue to have
the political support of the affected governors at the time. But it was
all too late. The insurgents have built strong operational structures
and connections that will be almost impossible for even the marines to
contend with. This is so cause delay is dangerous. No government is
being singled out. Every head of state in Nigeria has one security
situation or the other to contend with. Obasanjo had Niger-Delta
militants, OPC, APC, Bakassi Boys, ethno-religious crisis, and internal
crisis within the PDP and a war to finish between him and his vice,
all of which he was able to manage . President Jonathan should man up
and stop giving excuses.
The governors of Kano and Kaduna must be
commended for their efforts in at least preventing as much bloodshed in
their domain as ‘expected’ , considering what both states used to be
notorious for in the past when it comes to violence and religion
inspired crises. But there’s still much work to do. Our intelligence
chiefs have to step up their games and if possible consult people who
have handled security intelligence effectively in the past. I still
think Major Hamza Al Mustapha could be an asset, depending on what angle
of the prism we choose to view him from. Col. Frank Omenka still has
the joker map of Nigeria’s security intelligence apparatus in his head.
He should be brought back and made to use his priceless skills for the
good of his fatherland this time. The focus of our fight against
terrorism this time must be in terms of intelligence gathering. D-notice
should be sent out by DMI, SSS, and NIA timely and press houses must
show high degree of responsibility by not flouting it. The President
should watch his public utterances on security matters. It ‘s wiser for
Mr. President to remain quiet if he has nothing inspiring to tell the
masses. He is not an orator, that is all the more reason he needs to get
intelligent media officers and advisers around him, who understand the
mood of Nigerians and how to connect with them empathically, not the
caliber he is presently working with. You know the likes of Prof. Jerry
Gana et al. You need aides who will encourage the people and win the
masses’ sympathy for you, and not the other way round, whose
inflammatory comments only serve to create more enemies and further
prize the people away from their leader. High ranking army and security
officers must stop leaking classified secretes to their friends in press
houses. On the other hand, journalists and news editors must adopt
responsible attitudes in sourcing and disseminating information, knowing
the sensitivity of their jobs.
The bombing of Nyanya should be the
turning point at which we either do something as one people or perish
together like flies and say bye bye to our corporate existence as a
nation. I personally don’t believe Nigeria’s unity must be by force.
Only the leaders like the status quo because it affords them more money
to share and more roost to rule. Ordinary Nigerians, particularly the
youths in Northern Nigeria must brace up to the occasion, ignore their
leaders, and take their destiny in their own hands or else they are
another generation-X. The majority of casualty on both sides of the war
of terrorism are still the youths. While the world is fast changing and
creating more young millionaires in business, entertainment, and ICT
our youths in the North are deep in the vast evil forest of sambisa
raping minors, inflicting eternal sorrows in the memory of families, and
getting blown up in their suicide vests in the quest of a delusional
paradise of 72 virgins. The time to act is now. We must all play our
role without thinking about governments or politicians; they have all
failed woefully.
If you are a poet, pick up your pen; if
you are a soldier, cock your rifle; if you are a student bring on aluta;
if you are an academic, proffer strategies; if you are a financial
expert, block or bust terrorist fund transfers; if you are a scientist,
track them down; if you are a doctor; reject terrorists; if you are a
lawyer, prepare legal actions against them; if you are a tout, pick up
your stick, stone, and cudgels; we must all come out en masse to fight
off terrorism and barbarism with all we have got. No more seating on the
fence. No more conspiracy with evil. No more fear of reprisal from the
sons of darkness. No more hiding in the woods. No more running away from
our homes. We must all stand to cast the sons of darkness back to the
oblivion called hade from which they came . The time to act is now!
Christian Okwori , COREN, MNSE.
Twitter : @owoichoengine.
Email: owoichoengine@gmail.com
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