Mr. President Sir.
Why has your government abandoned the Kaduna College of Forestry kidnapped students, leaving their parents traumatised, and scampering everywhere, when Nigeria has an army and the primary responsibility of government is to provide security for life and property?
Is that what governments do? I have in mind here, how the U. S came all the way to Nigeria to rescue its lone kidnapped citizen. Are Nigerians less human?
One of the earliest policy decisions of U. S President Joe Biden, even as he was repudiating many of his predecessor’s actions through the signing of executive orders to that effect, was to re- affirm his decision to pull American soldiers out of Afghanistan.
The Afghan war, apart from costing the United States trillions of dollars over the years, accounted for no less than 2,312 of its soldiers just as boredom has set in among the soldiers.
The Boko Haram war started in 2009 and has had comparable consequences on Nigeria, especially its military. Apart from some of our soldiers paying the supreme price, billions of dollars have been spent, and still being spent.
May the souls of our departed compatriots rest in peace.
While at some point Presidential spokespersons claimed that Boko Haram had been degraded, and was now only attacking soft targets, the fact of their resurgence this past week, sending thousands away from their homes in Yobe, and planting their flag in Kaure, in the Shiroro Local Government Area of Niger state according to the governor, must have got some people thinking.
It would have been bad enough if Boko Haram were all that Nigeria is contending with. Unfortunately, a worse security problem, given its ubiquity, though much more prevalent in the Northwest and the Northcentral, is banditry. Increasingly too, insecurity in the Southeast, especially targeting security personnel, has assumed extremely ominous proportions.
The result is that Nigeria has become completely overwhelmed.
Worse is the fact that the personal safety of our men and women in uniform can no longer be guaranteed as predators want to seize their guns over a swathe of territory to which they have been thinly spread. This is a problem which, on the long run, is certain to reduce their effectiveness at a time when the country needs them at their optimal best.
Given these realities, especially at a time when the economy is fast going south to a level a state governor could say that the Feds were printing money, it is obvious that funding the various security interventions all over the country will soon become a problem in itself.
These are some of the reasons President Buhari should now stop doing the same things, over and over, in the hope that they would produce different results. Even a normally soporific National Assembly is beginning to rouse itself.
I have the following suggestions, which I categorise as external and domestic, to make for the President’s consideration as possible ways of stemming our terrible situation.
EXTERNAL
Like the President, I personally abhor the idea of involving mercenaries even though the man mostly in the eye of the storm, security-wise, Governor Babagana Zulum of Borno state, thinks otherwise. I believe that hiring mercenaries to rescue us would detract hugely from, rather than enhance, whatever remains of Nigeria’s reputation. Instead I would rather suggest that President Buhari requests from the U.S, U.K and Israel, a limited number of what, in these countries, are called “special forces”, which will rely not on numbers, but on technology, to come and help rid our forests, communities and highways, of Boko Haram/ISWA terrorists, as well as those other vermin’s who President Buhari’s ascendancy in 2015, and again in 2019, directly or indirectly, attracted to Nigeria in their thousands: foreign murderous Fulani herders and bandits who now predominate Zamfara, Katsina, Niger but has also taken over all Southern forests. In the particular case of murderous foreign Fulani herders, the fact that not a single security agency questioned the Fulani Nationality Movement which has publicly been inviting Fulani from all over the world to come help them conquer Nigeria, which they claim Allah gave them, has worked like an aphrodisiac on their compatriots all over West Africa.
Indeed, not a few Nigerians believe that this was why the President eased entry into Nigeria. It must also be why governor Ortom recently said on television that Boko Haram, ISWA, bandits and Fulani herders are all working for the same purpose, namely, to grab ancestral lands. Reports have it, for instance, that about 50,000 farmers were dislodged by them, this past week, from 13 villages in the Doma Local Government Area of Nasarawa state, following heavy AK 47 gun attacks; guns which the federal government would not allow regional security officers to own, in a so called federation.
But their objective is bound to be mission impossible because in the entire South and the Middle Belt , they will have to practically kill every living thing to take over ancestral lands. This they should know.
This, indeed, is one instance when President Buhari must prove himself impartial since the Defence minister has gratuitously cancelled his (the President’s) order that those carrying guns illegally should be shot at sight. The minister recently went on television to declare that these murderous bandits cannot be shot on sight because they are innocent until proved otherwise. President Buhari, like Obasanjo vis a vis, OPC, should now read the riot act to these murderous Fulani herders if truly “he is for.everybody”.
Back then to external assistance.
The President must be ready to extend guarantees to the countries that those Boko Haram sympathisers who former President Goodluck Jonathan honestly confessed had infiltrated his government, with no proof they are no longer in government, would not shipwreck their efforts and compromise their safety. If divulging the plans of the British officers who came to help rescue the Chibok girls made them withdraw under President Jonathan, the chances of such happening now that the North, apparently premeditatedly, has almost total control of the country’s security apparatti, should be much higher. Therefore, if the President accepts this proposal, he must ensure that only his trusted aides are put in the loop. That done, Nigeria could soon be rid of this indescribable insecurity wherein nobody who values his/ her life, no matter in which part of the country, can confidently set out on a journey of 50 kilometres away from his/ her abode.
A sad, completely dispiriting state of affairs which has seen many National Assembly members, like many other Nigerians, bade their villages bye, at least for now.
INTERNAL/DOMESTIC
Unfortunately, many of the possibilities which were open to President Buhari in 2015 have literally disappeared . In May 2015, having just helped in voting him into office, we were optimistic in the Southwest that, given what we believed we knew of him, the President would rule for all Nigerians. Unfortunately, his very first set of appointments, though domestic, blew off that optimism. I was so personally disappointed I went into a long argument on Ekitipanupo with the late, but forever cherished, Dele Babatunde and Dr Dokun Adedeji, both of who claimed it was wrong to judge the President by the nearly all- Northern appointments. Being older, I told them that morning, indeed, shows the day.
I have not been disappointed since.
Nigerians subsequently did not have too long to wait to know that would be the unerring pattern. By the time the President was two years in office, it had become crystal clear he ruled for only a section of the country. His appointments, especially in the security agencies, showed that so unmistakably that the First Lady- God bless her – had to cry out.
Today in the South, however, we no longer worry about the appointments as they have not made a dent on the usual Northern comorbidities – poverty, illiteracy,. diseases and insecurity. Interestingly, our dozing National Assembly woke up last week to implore, yes implore, President Buhari to take federal character into consideration when making appointments, even though it is constitutionally prescribed. There is no better way to show a weak arm of government.
Security has so completely broken down in Nigeria that whoever wants to help the President must start off by telling him the truth as Borno state governor Zulum said he went to do last week at the Villa. Truth is very key in governance but I suspect that this is one area in which culture has not helped the President. Given that his kitchen cabinet is very insular, the well-known Fulani culture of respect for elders must mean that he is not getting all the facts, and advice which advisers from other parts of the country would have given him, albeit with all due respect. I doubt, too, if he is not being deliberately shielded from knowing the Nigerian reality, particularly the state of our insecurity.
This is why the President must now urgently seek help from respected Nigerians, who will represent their people from various parts of the country. It is not impossible to find one or two persons of integrity from each Nigerian ethnic group who, over a one week summit can, completely devoid of personal interests or ambitions , but solely for the sake of Nigeria, sit down with the President and after fully interrogating the Nigerian condition, would tell him the honest truth, the only exception being that, if they are to be involved at all, politicians must be an absolute minority. It is best they are not involved at all. They should all wait to receive the report of the summit from their representatives like every other citizen. Politicians have done enough damage to this country. For that one week, President Buhari should be helped to forget everything about partisan politics. Neither should it be a religious affair either, even though we have some respectable Nigerians among them.
Each ethnic group should, preferably, pick their representatives through their apex cultural organisation, e g Afenifere for Yoruba, Ohanaeze Ndigbo for Igbos and Arewa Consultative Forum for the Hausa-Fulani. Politicians should concern themselves with things like elections.
Enough is enough.
There are decent, honest and patriotic Nigerians in each and every part of the country who will honestly advise President Buhari on the way forward.
In other countries, the Upper chamber is known for its wisdom. This has not been the case in Nigeria since 1999 when President Obasanjo started changing its leadership like they are school pupils. Thanks to their own gluttony, and excessive love of money, they will take anything from any President.
To benefit from the summit, however, President Buhari must put Nigeria first. He must not allow the much talked about cabal any role in it. If he is able to do this, he would have started afresh, to erect the building blocks of what should be a positive legacy for himself in the annals of Nigerian history.
As I always conclude, may God guide him aright.
Credit: Femi Orebe