The extraordinary security meeting convened by Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State has again brought to the fore, the slide in the security situation in that state. The broad-based meeting brought together security agencies, the media, traditional rulers, legal practitioners and road transport workers among others to fashion out ways to contain the Boko Haram insurgency.
Of recent, there have been coordinated attacks, killings and capture of territories including military formations by the Boko Haram insurgents. This has in turn triggered influx of displaced people to Maiduguri, the state capital to seek refuge from the terrorists’ onslaughts.
The meeting was thus to seek synergy and evolve proactive responses to the worsening security situation in the state. But it also exposed the frustrations of Shettima with the increasing resilience of the Boko Haram insurgents which the federal government claimed to have technically defeated since December 2015.
Shettima’s predicaments are evident not only in the excuses he offered for not criticizing the Buhari administration’s handling of the war but also in his explanations on why he did not get on well with the Jonathan regime. They are also evident in his personal disposition to the overall conduct of the war which he described as that of ‘incurable optimism’ even when facts on the ground should give him sufficient cause to worry.
In justifying his antagonism to the Jonathan regime’s handling of the insecurity vis-à-vis his inability to speak up against the current regime even when increasing damage is being wrought on the state, he said he was treated as an enemy of the presidency during that regime. But since Buhari assumed power, he has had unfettered access to the president who listens to his complaints and takes measures to address them unlike the previous administration. For him, he has not had any reason to be frustrated with the presidency unlike the previous regime.
Evident from the reasons for the extraordinary security meeting and Shettima’s justification of the role he previously played, is his increasing frustrations with the overall situation of the war. This is self evident. Its corollary is that contrary to the impression we had hitherto been given, Boko Haram insurgency is far from being defeated and decimated. Not with increasing attacks that have led to the fleeing of hundreds of people to the state capital. Not with the increasing tenacity and lethal capacity of the insurgents to confront our soldiers resulting in high casualty levels and the carting away of their arms and ammunitions.
The target of the meeting was therefore to sensitize the people of the state and get their cooperation to the reality of the lingering insurgency. It was an admission that the overall picture of the war is not as comfortable as had been painted. This is also obvious from Shettima’s preference for optimism instead of realism as the situation demanded.
But any optimism that ignores extant realities on the ground, translates to foolhardiness. That he had not criticized the current regime’s handling of the war because he has unfettered access to the presidency even when his people are dying smacks of insincerity of the highest order.
It is clear Shettima is not satisfied with the progress of the war. He admits the huge sacrifice of the military, the efforts of the presidency and his state. But the reality is that all this fell short of what is required to bequeath lasting peace to that region. It is also clear that his desire not to hand over the subsisting insecurity to his successor is fast turning out a pipe dream.
Even with the gaps and obvious cover ups in the arguments of Shettima, his frustrations can still be empathized with. That he summoned courage to engage the public on some of these nagging issues perhaps is an admission of his earlier mistakes. We say this because of the scandalous politicization of the war on insurgency before the current regime assumed the mantle of leadership. We are all privy to embarrassing inability of our leaders to form national consensus on the justification for the war.
We are no less privy to the dangerous deployment of the war to nurture partisan interests. We also how some key elements in the north sabotaged that war through baseless allegations that not only demoralized the soldiers but made it difficult for their commanders to maintain discipline among the rank and file.
It cannot be forgotten in a hurry the tendentious and inflammatory statements of former governor of Adamawa State, Muritala Nyako that the war was a contrivance by the Jonathan regime to depopulate the north. Nyako in his controversial letter to northern governors went at length to discredit that war and its prosecution. Shettima was not known to have condemned that disastrous outing by Nyako. Neither did we see any serious reprimand from the northern elite.
So if he did not have robust relationship with the last regime, the reasons are very obvious. At any rate, he was part of that regime until he defected to the opposition. It is inconceivable that the Jonathan regime could have given him unfettered access to the seat of power under extant realities. So the blame should be shared by both parties. It will not be surprising if the dispositions of Shettima during the Jonathan regime had much in common with the campaign to bring down that regime.
By the same logic, his inability to criticize the Buhari regime is largely because he is part and parcel of that government. His subdued silence can be understood especially given claims bandied that the insurgents have been decimated; cannot muster the capacity to attack military formations and are in their dying days for resorting to attacking soft targets. It would have been inconceivable for him to have come up to debunk these claims given the primacy of security in the campaign manifesto of the ruling party.
But with the resurgence of the lethality of the insurgents, their unlimited and surprising capacity to sustain attacks, Shettima appears to have been entangled in a fix. He either acquiesces with government’s claims that the war has been won or the reality of the sufferings of his people occasioned by the raging war. By convening that meeting, he appeared to have opted to identify with his people. But in doing this, he has to invent justifications for his actions. That accounts for his strident efforts to justify his dispositions to that war both during the Jonathan regime and now. That is also the basis for his claims that he was treated as a pariah during the previous regime as against the accommodation accorded him in the current one. So how do we expect him to criticize Buhari? How do we expect him to fault a key programme of an administration he is part of even if the issues presented are at variance with facts on the ground?
He does not need to bother us with trite and puerile excuses. He needs no explanations for the positions he took. The reason for his action is not hard to fathom as it is in the nature of partisan politics. It is also very evident in his subdued presentation of the actual security situation in that part of the country. But the tone of the meeting gave out the desperate situation which the raging insecurity in that state represents.
Shettima’s predicaments denote an uncanny paradox. It is a paradox of the negative politics and trivialization of serious national issues to satisfy objectives of parochial and self-serving nature. It is the logical protuberance of our inability to form national consensus on serious issues of our collective existence. He is an inevitable victim of the monsters we created which have turned round to haunt us.
It is hoped a hard lesson has been learnt. Beyond this, we need to unravel the enigma the Boko Haram insurgency denotes. We are yet to unravel what Boko Haram really represents, the source of their funding, where they are based and their key Nigerian sponsors. For as long as we are unable to get at the root of all this, so long will the insecurity in the north east remain an albatross.
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