A President in Search of Enemies

0

jonathan-fashola

By Erasmus Ikhide

PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan Administration is a labyrinth of confusion. Nigerians? aspiration that he would someday put himself in the right column of history has been dashed, once more. He ought to be the fate of Nigeria and the fate could not be sustained. Now, a thousand years will pass and the guilt of his government will not be erased.

From day one, there have been air of bewildering complicities or vague intricacies bordering on his choice of policies and the direction of his (mis)government. His earlier stance to stave off Boko Haram militia has been contradicted by the recent failed cease fire deal. It is this lack of direction that clouded Mr President?s supposed ideal of governance; which presupposes that a nation with a more benign democratic system has the moral right to rout a savage group which trains its minds, emotions and biases on butchery, theft, pillage, rapine and death.

At the core of the fight against Boko Haram insurgents is a great delusion: the vibrancy or buoyancy of the military apparatus is at stake. The fight against the nihilist group is a shambles, and a totem for every Nigerian who hates government without purpose. Just as bad and awful, the Boko Haram current haggle with the Federal Government over the release of the already traumatised Chibok girls once again exposes Mr Jonathan Administration as a government in perpetual denial. This administration is not only in denial mentally, there is a measure of gloating; an air of helplessness for itself, sheer hopelessness for the masses of the people and total abdication of his constitutional responsibilities.

By this cease fire deal, Mr Jonathan has practically exaggerated the malevolent power of Boko Haram in an effort to legitimise his bankrupt rule. His governance tactics suggest he is a leader in search of enemies. Mr President has been more stark at blaming opposition political party for instigating the terrorist sect, even though every Nigerian is a victim of the deadly group violent campaign, opposition party?s faithful alike.

Pitifully, he has openly disembowelled his government on two fronts: it shows disdain for the armed forces for which he is a commander-in-chief, and he also thrives in composite corruption. Less than 24 hours into the immediate cease fire deal, a band of insurgents rammed over two communities in Borno State, killing at least 15 persons.

Mr president is not fully aware that the North-East has become a condominium of war. But what President Godluck Jonathan said is not what he meant and what he had done goes unspoken. For a president to jump into maelstrom of a major policy somersault without weighing its consequences is the height of presidential folly.

In 2011, a Presidential Committee on Security Challenges in the North-East Zone, set up after bomb attacks by the Islamic sect, submitted its final report, asking President Goodluck Jonathan to consider granting amnesty to members of the sect wishing to surrender their arms to the Federal Government. The panel, headed by Ambassador Usman Gaji Galtimari, recommended that the Federal Government should consider the option of dialogue and negotiation which should be contingent upon the renunciation of all forms of violence and surrender of arms, to be followed by rehabilitation. In November 2012, the sect said it was willing to cease all hostilities and attacks if the Federal Government should arrest a former Borno State governor, Alli Modu Sheriff and meet its other demands. Sheriff has since become PDP financier.

Copiously, the sect demanded compensation to all the families of their members that were killed in the battle field from 2009, including their leader, Mohammed Yusuf; the release of all their members that were captured in battle by the government as well as reconstructing their place of worship (Markas Ibn Taimiyyah) in Maiduguri. On January 7, 2013, the insurgents for the second time within a space of time restated its commitment to ceasefire in order to pave the way for dialogue. One Sheikh Abu Mohammad Abdulazeez Ibn Idris, who claimed to be a top member of the major faction of the group led by Sheikh Abubakar Shekau, spoke on behalf of the group.

?We, on our own, in the top hierarchy of our movement under the leadership of Imam Abubakar Shekau, as well as some of our notable followers, agreed that our brethren in Islam, both women and children, are suffering unnecessarily. ?Hence, we resolved that we should bring this crisis to an end. We therefore call on all those that identify themselves with us and our course to from today lay down their arms.?  Few weeks after, Abubakar Shekau denied any such agreement between the group and the Federal Government. He publicly denied the claim and was quoted to have said: ?We are stating it categorically that we are not in any dialogue or ceasefire agreement with anyone. And we have never asked anybody in the name Abdulazeez to represent me, Abubakar Shekau, the leader of this movement.

?I want the world to know that we have no dialogue with government. I have on several occasions attempted to pass this message across via the Internet and Youtube and we later realised that some agents of government kept removing our messages from the net and preventing its online publication so that our messages will not be heard. ?They know that if the world hears our position on this fake dialogue, their efforts of deceit would be exposed.? Thereafter the sect expanded its coast of terror on innocent citizens, slightly unhindered. In April 2013, the Federal Government set up another committee to consider the feasibility or otherwise of granting pardon to the sect and to collate clamours arising from different interest groups who wanted the presidency to administer clemency on members of the barbaric group. The committee was also charged with the task of recommending modalities for the granting of the pardon, should such step become the logical one to take under the prevailing circumstance.

The president followed this up in May with a promise to release a number of Boko Haram members, including all women in prison custody. Few months after, July to be specific, Nigerians happily looked forward to the end of the insurgency when the Federal Government said it had signed a ceasefire agreement with the militant group. Minister of Special Duties and Chairman of the Peace and Dialogue Committee in the North, Alhaji Tanimu Turaki, announced the ceasefire agreement on the Hausa service of Radio France International.

Then, Turaki assured that the ceasefire was not something that was done for a specific period of time. He asserted that it was something that would be forever. He confidently said it was sure there would be any basis for anybody to renege on the agreement. Unfortunately, people?s hopes were smashed once again as the sect leader, Abubakar Shekau, in a video message denied Kabiru Turaki?s claim. ?Let me assure you that we will not enter into any truce with these infidels. We will not enter into any truce with the Nigerian government,? Shekau reportedly said.

Since then, there is no cessation to violent hostility. In May this year, Minister of Youth Development, Boni Haruna, told the country that President Goodluck Jonathan had granted conditional amnesty to the terrorists group with a view to putting permanent halt to insurgency in the North-East. He added that series of integration programmes had been lined up for the members of the sect who would surrender their arms and embrace peace Shortly after he made the statement, the Presidency swiftly debunked the statement. Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Dr. Reuben Abati, said Jonathan did not mention the word amnesty in his Democracy Day broadcast that Boni Haruna relied on to make the statement.

From the outset, Mr President proudly ventilated his skittishness, say he wouldn?t dialogue with faceless butchers, yet bloodletting has lingers on to date. The questions have been, is it really difficult to put the Boko Haram rabble to rout? Is it just that President Jonathan Administration is profiting politically from the warfare? Nigerians are in the known that hundreds of billion of Naira is yearly budgeted  for armaments and welfare of the armed forces. We are also in the known that they are still complaining lack of weapons and non-payment of their allowances, which partly led to mutiny and subsequent Court-Marshall of numerous soldiers, recently.

Now, the conundrum are mixed ? tweaking the army in too many ways ? making more victims of them and exposing them to ridicules. It?s doubtful to believe that the Nigeria military is equipped enough to step up to the Boko haram?s plague. That is why the purported ceasefire reached between the militia sect and the Federal Government didn?t come as a surprise, if at all there was one. President Goodluck Jonathan has been treating the Chibok girls with contempt like every other issue bordering on the nation?s survival.

Ever since, the madness unleashed by the terrorist sect has left the entire nation scampering and traumatised. The terrorist group has pushed the North-Eastern part of the country to the brink of social and economic collapse, thereby rendering the governors of the states incapacitated and the possibility of steering them on the right economic path has dissipated. It is all part of the grand design to squander a chance to upgrade and equalise the virtually backward states with the rest of the nation. Still the states in the region have lost their franchise to vote in the coming 2015 general elections. It is more so because the State?s are controlled by the opposition political party, the APC. Who is profiting?

Boko Haram has proven itself to be a bloodcurdling terrorist movement, adroitly hiding under the garbs of Islam as its melting port. Nigerians living in the North-Eastern part of the country are now faced with stark choice: they are living in the most desolate fringe of the earth in war and in destitution! Those who managed to slug it through the barren Cameroon or Niger boarders are at the mercies of Marabouts who butcher victims on the dunes in propitiation to the claim of piety.

You can now understand why Nigerians have been hankering for a strongman; a political leader who would stamp out insecurity, corruption, reverse growing inequalities and make the country tall abroad amongst the comity of nations. The international communities are waiting for a Nigerian President who would have the ball to smash insecurity, overhaul the armed forces, stamp out stinging corruption and end years of dithering over economic growth. It is only a president with common touch and toughness who can snare the sacred cows that have fed fat from the common till.

Political and economic reforms would fail without thoroughly stamping out corruption. Such leader must be conscious of the present condition of things: that hospitals are mere consulting clinics; roads are buffeted with deep craters, schools are run-down, power generation has decayed because of mindless graft.

We need a leader who will appreciate that this can only be achieved by reforming the existing anti-corruption institutions and make them completely less beholden of the appointing authority. The cost of achieving this will be rocky and brawling but it will no doubt take the nation to actual its manifest destiny and bring her to political and economic maturation. That is what we need now.

Erasmus Ikhide, a public affairs analyst wrote in from Lagos, Nigeria

Tell: 23480 5622 5515

Follow me on Twitter (@ErasmusIkhide)

Send your news stories to [email protected] Follow News Ghana on Google News

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here