The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Journalist Salkida as Boko Haram negotiator

    Before now, the name Ahmad Salkida was a relatively obscure one. Not much was known of the name within the journalism profession or the medium he worked for. Searches conducted on him showed a profile of a freelance journalist; amateur reporter with the defunct Sentinel magazine owned by the late Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu and then the Daily Trust newspaper in Maiduguri as a reporter from where he seemed to have acquired the huge contacts that were to catapult his profile to national limelight courtesy of the Boko Haram insurgency.

    Amazingly, he joined the journalism profession with only a primary school leaving certificate having dropped out of secondary school. That was in the 90s when the profession had come to give much preference to university graduates, some with doctorate degrees. As luck would have it, even with this educational deficiency, he still found accommodation within the newsroom and that came to be the making of a man that was to play a key role (albeit by default) within the scheme of our national affairs.

    Perhaps, the first inkling of this character emerged when the Boko Haram sect spoke some time ago, of an unnamed journalist as one of their respected confidants to stand for them in a planned negotiation between them and the federal government. He had then arranged a negotiating team on the side of the sect with Dr. Datti Ahmed as the arrowhead. That outing was short-lived because Dr. Ahmed wrote to withdraw from the assignment citing seeming betrayal on the part of the government team. Other efforts at a negotiated settlement of the matter did not come out successful as the insurgents continued with their devious and murderous activities. We have thus been left with the pernicious activities of this terror group culminating in the controversial abduction of the Chibok school girls.

    Not much was heard of Salkida since his initial outings except his relocation to the United Arab Emirate with his family for fear of his life. He was later to explain that he left the country due to threats by the local authorities and the inability to secure a job on account of his professional relationship with the high echelon of the Boko Haram sect.

    But his profile has again resonated courtesy of the abduction of the 200 or so Chibok school girls in Borno State. He has regained his voice, this time in a most relevant manner. Both the local and international media have been awash with his speculated efforts to see to the release of the girls. He has come to assume the mantra of the proverbial rejected stone which nobody can afford to do without. Salkida was reported to have met with President Jonathan at the Villa. He was also credited to have embarked on a dangerous and risky mission that could have seen to the release of the girls but for the alleged last minute call from the president from a security summit in France canceling that backdoor negotiation.

    The report also came with a very frightening dimension that the next thing we are likely hear of the girls following the botched outing of Salkida could be a video footage by Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau showing a systematic slaying of the girls. This dimension appeared to have come with all the trappings of blackmail intended to force the federal government to hurriedly accept whatever backdoor negotiations that may have been arrived at by the journalist-turned-hostage-negotiator. Or at best, it was designed to hold the government culpable for whatever harm that may come the way of the girls subsequently. Such has been the nature of the buck-passing and blame game since the girls were abducted.

    The unfolding story which emanated from the western media may have been fuelled by the insistence of Shekau that the group will only release the girls if members of the sect currently detained by the security forces are freed by the federal government. This appeared to have raised the stakes for apologists of negotiated settlement of the Boko Haram insurgency. The need for caution so that no harm will come the way of the abducted girls has further supported the idea of talking with the insurgents even in the most obscure and informal manner.

    But if these reports from the foreign media lack in official confirmation, the doubt surrounding their veracity has been obliterated by the confirmation of Salkida’s efforts by Mallam Shehu Sani, a civil rights activist who enjoys close contacts with families of some Boko Haram members. Sani who had arranged the meeting of former president Olusegun Obasanjo with the slain Boko Haram members’ families in Maiduguri about two years back said Salkida should be appreciated as his intervention could have seen to the release of the girls. He has also insisted that it is “significant for Nigerians to note that negotiation is the only safer option to get the girls back”.

    Salkida has thrown further insights into the activities and the motivating force of the terror group offering his assistance to resolve the grouse of the group and restore peace in the country. Writing on Twitter, the 40 year old journalist born into a Christian family but later converted to Islam said the most effective way for the federal government to fight terrorism “is to study those behind it and review what strategy works and those that do not work”. He said Boko Haram is a case of “corrosive doctrine that is poorly managed by the authorities” and if effective measures are not taken today, the phenomenon will intensify even after Jonathan would have been out of power. According to him, the whole thing is not just about who is in power as “the central theme of the Boko Haram insurgency is to undermine the institution of democracy and those who support it”. He has spoken.

    For all one may wish to care, Salkida has thrown further insights into the propelling force for the Boko Haram insurgency. He was there with them from the beginning and was supposed to have edited a journal for the group but for some differences on the thrust of that publication.

    That Boko Haram is a case of warped ideology not well managed, has never been in doubt. Also not in doubt is the assertion that its central objective is to undermine the institution of democracy and all that is western including education. In the same vein, its weird urge to institute a theocratic state is common place.

    It was therefore to be imagined how ridiculous it came when Governor Muritala Nyako of Adamawa State was busy the other time inventing some disjointed and illogical basis for the festering of the phenomenon. Salkida would want our leaders to study those behind this terrorism and that is a key point. If we had done that, we may have had a better handle to the festering crisis. Is it a surprise that up till now, our security forces have not been able to unmask their local godfathers and sponsors except the arrest and arraignment of Senator Ndume on terrorism charges?

    Again, the fact that Salkida came all the way from the United Arab Emirates where he is hiding to talk to some people in this country which outcome could have seen to the release of the girls speaks volumes. It illustrates the point most poignantly that the sponsors of the insurgency are within, their contacts with foreign terrorist organizations not withstanding. They are not ghosts. And as long as we have not been able to unmask these people, so long will the insurgency persist. That is the real task and the quickest way to end this madness.

  • Who will bury their dead?

    Who will bury their dead?

    “That the hypocrite reign not, lest the people be ensnared.”

    In a city called Lano, the king died, and the people decided to abolish the monarchy and install a novelty: a mayor.

    The position was on offer to the highest bidder. Muslims wanted their richest man Adamu to buy it and therefore enthrone Sharia. The Christians with their gung-ho bishops queued behind Isaac who was their plutocrat. If the Muslims knew Adamu with his liberal zakat offering, why could the Christians not praise the Lord for the munificence of tithing from their beloved Isaac?

    It was hard to tell who was richer until Suleiman Solomon or Solomon Suleiman materialised. No one was sure of the name order. But this man who sometimes wore the Islamic turban or the Christian cross and who knew his psalms as well as his recitation of Islamic text, preened over his pots of money. He preserved the mystery of his name order by calling Solomon his last name when he supped with Christians and Suleiman his surname when with Muslims. He owed eternal debts to the father of the faithful for the two faiths he bestowed humanity.

    Though he claimed his blessings came from his tithing and zakat, the elders of both faiths disavowed him and called him a corrupter of the faith. But the city elders who presided were moved by Solomon Suleiman’s campaign line: Muslim money for Muslims, Christian money for Christians. So, he promised that once he became the mayor, he would split the city’s money in half. Half of it would go to the Muslims and the other half to the Christians.

    The fundamentalists were defeated and the majority tagged along with their new interfaith hero. He was equal parts god and equal parts the devil, noted the citizens. The Christians said the part of him that called Jesus belonged to God, and the Muslims said the part that worshipped on Fridays at mosques belonged to Allah. The other part, depending on whether you spoke to a Christian or Muslim, belonged to the devil.

    The Lanoites went along in relative harmony until things began to unravel. One midnight, the two-year-old son of Nurudeen Mukhtar caught a serious fever, and in another part of town, the pregnant wife of John Jacobs was on the verge of delivery. They could not access their usual hospitals because of the distance. Mukhtar decided to visit Sacred Hearts Clinic. His son’s temperature had reached such a fiery point as he and his wife could not manage until the crack of dawn.

    So, out of desperation, Mukhtar bore his son on his shoulder and hurried to the Sacred Hearts.

    The frustration began early. On introducing himself to the nurse on duty to register his son, Mohammed, the nurse quickly replied, “but you should know that people with such names cannot receive treatment here. Why don’t you go to one of your hospitals? Even if I wanted to help, I would be in trouble.”

    Meanwhile the little boy, more febrile and fragile by the second, looked with an eye that looked as though about to expire. The father cried, and begged, and asked the nurse to have mercy.

    “It is not about mercy,“ declared the nurse. “It is about faith.”

    John Jacobs’ wife, Elizabeth, had no option but to rush into Ansarudeen Hospital, which was the closest and only one within range. When he and his wife managed to enter the premises, they expected sympathy. His wife, already irritant and cursing her husband for choosing that time of night for her delivery, would not listen when the spouse begged for forgiveness.

    The real forgiveness, however, was not forthcoming from the resident doctor who saw them and knew from their dressing that they could not be true believers. If he found out that they were believers, he would chasten them before reluctantly administering help. But the Jacobs did not want to forswear their trust in Jesus. So they both decided to say they were Christians and the doctor, a true believer, told them to go to the hospital of their God.

    “Can’t you see my wife’s condition?” protested John Jacobs.

    “Can’t you see that this hospital is named Ansarudeen? Even if we tried to help, you may die. The sovereign of cure is Allah, not Jesus,” replied the physician.

    While both families tried to overcome their crises, commuters and travelers had to come to terms with their roads. Suleiman Solomon had constructed two sets of roads, one for Muslims and one for Christians. That very night a transporter was passing through Lano, and then he met a roadblock. It was a Muslim roadblock with policemen clad in peculiarly Muslim police uniforms. They asked the driver his name, and he said he was Hussein but the policemen discovered that about a quarter of his passengers were Christians.

    They told the Christians to disembark, and that they were not allowed to take advantage of Muslim facilities. The Muslims remained on board while the Christians were ordered to walk a bush path for about seven kilometres where the Christian road began. They complied. After several hours of trekking they met the bus and the driver who obliged at the end of the Muslim highway, and found their seats. Before they reached there, they witnessed a dramatic scene. A very hungry beggar had Christian currency and wanted in that hour of night to buy tea and bread from a seller who catered to Muslims in the neighborhood. The Muslim would not sell and the Christian beggar wondered why he would not sell. “Can’t you see you have not sold anything all night? You get a customer and you say no,” the beggar intoned.

    “Your money is sinful,” replied the seller.

    But a Christian roadblock awaited them with Christian policemen dressed in Christian police uniforms. Hussein was not permitted to drive, so one of the Christian passengers took over the steering, while the Muslims entered the bush like the Christians and met at another intersection of Muslims. About two yards separated both roads, and it was called conversion pass. The Muslims rejoined them in the bus at about 4am and they decided to rest. But a strange and ravenous wind howled in and scooped the bus from the edge of the road and it rolled over into a deep ravine.

    That night, not faraway, buzzed with a Christian party and people had had their fill of rice and stew and lots of drink. Somehow the word passed round that the tomato in the stew was purchased from a Muslim market. No one was able to authenticate it. Even when one or two persons came to deny the rumour, it was too late. Nausea had caught everyone and they ran to the conversion pass. They looked over the ravine and puked profusely. The throaty choir of retching, puffing, rasping, coughing, spitting resembled a coarse comedy if it did not sound like a dirge. It could have been a funny sight as all of them in their glorious shirts and dresses decided to retch on the road and into the ravine.

    They did not know that a more terrible act of the devil had happened at the receiving end of their vomit. All the passengers and driver died as the vehicle caught fire and burned everyone beyond recognition.

    The next morning, the question was where to bury the bodies. They could not identify who was Muslim or Christian, and they could not bury them in any of the available cemeteries because there were only Christian and Muslim cemeteries.

    Even if they were to bury them, they could not put them in a casket. It was not acceptable to swaddle a Muslim in a Christian casket and vice versa.

    Suleiman Solomon or Solomon Suleiman pondered these riddles. It became the least of his worries when the news also broke that a Muslim boy died outside a Christian hospital and a woman delivered a stillborn girl on the roadside.

  • What about anti-state capacity?

    So much has been expressed about the limitations of the Jonathan presidency and the governing Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the context of so-called state capacity, especially concerning the developing April 15 kidnap drama starring the Islamist militia Boko Haram and over 200 abducted students of the Girls Senior Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State. Perhaps the ultimate codification of the perceived ineffectiveness of the administration in bringing back the girls was supplied by a former United States of America presidential hopeful, Senator John McCain, who instructively declared on Cable News Network (CNN), “We shouldn’t have waited for a practically non-existent government to give us the go-ahead before mounting a humanitarian effort to rescue those girls.”

    Such disturbing qualification may be on-target, but it apparently misses the point in a significant sense, which is common to all criticisms of the Jonathan government on the basis of alleged deficiency in state capacity, without considering the obverse, which may be defined as anti-state capacity. In other words, it seems not to be sufficiently appreciated that “a practically non-existent government” is being challenged by a practically existent terror machine.  From all indications, such one-dimensional thinking has been counter-productive because it essentially underrates the opponent and encourages a reactive attitude where it would be useful to be proactive.

    It is inconceivable that the insurgents carried out perhaps their most daring and defiant operation since 2009 when they declared war on the state without scenario building. Is it possible that, given the sheer scale of their mission, they did not anticipate the worldwide outrage and condemnation that followed? Is it possible that they did not from the beginning of the plot have a defined purpose for the sensational abduction? Is it possible that now, nearly two months since the unpleasant incident, they have lost control of the narrative?

    Certain developments last week reinforced the reality of a terror force that has been inadequately credited with insurgency intelligence and insurgency capacity to the detriment of the government and the country. First, in what seemed like an oblique admission of inadequacy, Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshal Alex Badeh, made revealing comments at the Defence Headquarters, Abuja, during the visit of a civil society group, the Social Welfare Network Initiative (SWNI), in connection with the public campaign for the girls’ freedom. He said, “We are fighting more than Boko Haram. We are no longer fighting Boko Haram but Al-Qaeda in North and West Africa.”  Then he revealed his fears, but recovered quickly enough to give an appearance of capability. According to him, “Al-Qaeda is formidable, but we will defeat them. As for our girls, we will bring them back.”

    Another happening hinted at, if not exposed, the government’s incapacity; but it was interestingly dressed as bigheartedness although it had the look of large foolishness. After signals that the administration was unenthusiastic about the militants’ guerillas-for girls swap proposal, President Goodluck Jonathan introduced a twist on Democracy Day, May 29. He told the anxious populace in a symbolic broadcast, “My government, while pursuing security measures, will explore all options, including readiness to accept unconditional renunciation of violence by insurgents, and to ensure their deradicalisation, rehabilitation and reintegration into the broader society.” In the same breath, he also publicised the planned intensification of counter-terrorism actions, saying, “I have instructed our security forces to launch a full-scale operation to put an end to the impunity of terrorism on our soil. I have also authorised the security forces to use any means necessary under the law to ensure that this is done.”

    Jonathan’s amnesty offer to Boko Haram members may just be his own way of deescalating tension in the polity, and shouldn’t be taken seriously. It is easy to imagine the terrorists laughing over the proposal, if not laughing at him. He demonstrated intriguing denialism against the background of the fact that Abubakar Shekau, the militia’s notorious leader, spelt out unambiguous conditions for the release of the caged students.  Shekau said : “All I’m saying is, if you want us to release your girls that we kidnapped, you must release our brethren that are held in Borno, Yobe, Kano, Kaduna, Enugu and Lagos states, as well as Abuja. We know that you have incarcerated our brethren all over this country…We will never release them until our brethren are released.”  Maybe only Jonathan can explain how his amnesty idea could substitute for prisoner exchange.

    Perhaps the administration needs to be reminded that it is battling against a murderous group, which has again and again proved to be unpredictable. The inescapable implication is that the government may be running out of time to secure the girls’ freedom, and would need to act expeditiously to prevent the group from having a rethink that might not favour releasing them.

    Understandably, Jonathan is most likely anxious to avoid being perceived as  vulnerable to bullying tactics, particularly considering the fact that  he has often been criticised by the country’s political opposition for alleged weak leadership. However, this is a wrong occasion for him to attempt to change that perception, which may indeed be valid.  This is not the time for bluffing. Jonathan’s announced instruction to the armed forces to escalate the conflict sounds pretentious in the context of international assistance regarding the country’s anti-terror effort.

    Moreover, given that the concept and practice of prisoner exchange or prisoner swap are not strange, yielding to the idea may not be a bad idea after all. Of relevance to the country’s situation is the model of Humanitarian Exchange or Humanitarian Accord popularised by the experience of Colombia in which the government reached an agreement with guerillas to swap prisoners for hostages, an idea that was pushed by the families of the captives.  It is easy to imagine that in the Chibok case the affected families, if not the empathetic public, would readily endorse such arrangement.

    It is a wonder that the administration keeps sending confusing signs about its intention. Jonathan attempted to project empathy when he said last week, “I share the deep pain and anxiety of their parents and guardians and I assure them once again that government will continue to do everything possible to bring our daughters home.” It is unclear what he meant by “everything possible”, but it would appear that possibility is defined outside the framework of humanitarian exchange, which is sad indeed.

  • Fashola’s commonsense

    Fashola’s commonsense

    Culture entraps a generation. A few men of vision open the cage. It begins with ideas. Ideas illuminate society. Doers take over with courage and they galvanise the people along the lines of the vision.

    In South Africa, Alan Paton wrote a searing novel, Cry, The Beloved Country, a work that jolted a society driven by caste based on colour. Others also penned, including playwright Athol Fugard and epics like Mazisi Kunene’s on Shaka the Zulu, the first blood of rage against caste. The courage, however, roared from the loins of Nelson Mandela upon whose levers South Africa broke out of the fetters of prejudice. He caught the fire of change and lit the tinder of equality in the land.

    We saw a short note recently from the governor of example, Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, the governor of Lagos. His ruminations on the World Economic Forum hosted by this country in Abuja would make many a columnist’s ink freeze with envy. In short, clinical sentences with sapient punch lines, he gave us his takeaways from the forum. It is Sociology 101 for Nigerians.

    He noted five highlights. One, that we start our meetings with prayers and end them with prayers as though we run a vast tapestry of mosques and churches, wasting tremendous man hours. Two, in meetings, we interrupt sober sessions by serenading ‘who is who’ when we should go to the business of the day. Three, a knock on journalists whose cameras and torsos shade out the profiles of guests from the eyes of other attendees and even television viewers. Four, the facility and efficiency with which Transcorp Hilton conducted the affairs, a cut away from the routine failures of protocol and order in many of our public events.

    His take was less, to me, a knock on Hilton but more on the failure of our institutions across the board to rise to occasions. The fifth take focuses on education, and how a foreign personage rallied the corporate world to save a dying need. Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown dredged up $10 million to secure 500 schools up north. It was a call to fiscal discipline.

    These takeaways from the governor of example were a cultural call to arms. It is a commentary on a culture captive to epicurean slothfulness and levity. It shows we are a people who love pleasure more than work, who tolerate chaos, who surrender to fate, who grapple to simultaneously worship God and man, and fail in between. Finally, it shows we love money for its plenty rather than make plenty of our money.

    His take on prayers reminds me of the investors’ forum Nigeria held in Toronto over a year ago. I was sandwiched in the hall by two Canadians whose faces shone with quiet contempt as our organisers insisted on opening and closing prayers that lasted forever. The prayers alternated between Muslim and Christian, even though the events opened earlier and closed later than schedule. Our obsession with faith makes the faithful fake and fake faithful. It has crossed over into politics where we must consider the god a man worships to elect him or her as though wealth creation, job creation, good hospitals, schools, discipline and maintenance of prosperity and value depend on whether the candidate gazes at star or moon.

    A comedy flows from his second take. At every event, we begin with long and winding introductions of chairmen, guests of honour, etc. Some VIPs deliberately attend events late for ego massaging. If the person – a governor, party apparatchik, business mogul, etc – arrives two hours late, the MC interrupts to pay homage to the person. No attention is paid to the fact that he has not shown respect to others there, and even the organisers of the event. They usually do not come alone. Their long and boorish retinue also assume the cocky air of their principal. Such display of supercilious extravagance is worsened, as Fashola notes, when he would have to displace others who respected the event by coming early. It is always an alawada moment in this country and it is made more farcical by the obsequious demeanour of reverence of everyone else in the hall as they wave, bow, clap and sing for the criminal of time.

    The Transcorp example is typically Nigerian. Usually we do not do the right thing. But the hotel has shown us one thing: things will work when we put our minds to them. The failure of hospitals, of election agencies, school boards, tax agencies, power companies, etc, is the failure of discipline.

    PM Brown’s story tells us that we do not want to run a country based on compassion. Our compassion is often in the wrong place. We are sorry for our aunt, so we steal public funds to fund her son’s naming ceremony, etc. If $10 million can safeguard 500 schools, it means two things. One, we have a business community unmoved by a sense of social engagement. They would rather fund vanity like a TV show on finicky celebrity than an education endowment. I wrote last year, that if we start a programme where the well-heeled adopt a bed, or ward, or equipment, etc, in hospitals across Nigeria, we shall see how easily we can tackle the problem of health care. But the rich spend money either to get power because they did not earn the money, or stash them away so they can have Dubai weddings and Madrid birthdays unmolested by the physiognomy of poverty back home.

    Fashola’s takeaways are a brutal set of words, subtle in indictment but total in its umbrage. This is a culture unsuited for the 21st century. We can pray, but let us work. We can salute VIPs but not as late comers. We can spend money but on the right things. Let our hotels and hospital work and not wait for the white man to show them the way. In one word, let us abandon the lazy culture of feudal Nigeria and embrace the industry of the internet age.

    In more sensitive societies, Fashola’s notes would needle us into mass introspection and institutional sobriety. But this is not revolutionary America where one Thomas Paine wrote a short note titled Commonsense. The pamphlet emboldened the nation to action. It told home truths that eventually led Americans to a war that ousted the British. It was the shortest writing that ever roused a people. It was longer than Fashola’s takeaways but no less penetrating in insight. We need such commonsense for our common sense and, ultimately, common wealth.

  • Living with terrorism

    By all indications, Nigeria is now home to terrorism. Similarly, its dire manifestations: killings, destruction, shock and awe have come to stay with us. Even with international coalition to fish out and release the abducted Chibok school girls, the terrorists have in the last couple of days, shown beyond unmistakable terms that they will not let go. They appear determined to demonstrate their capacity to strike in any state of their choice especially in the northern part of the country.

    That ought to be the proper reading of the twin bombs that killed over 120 people in Jos, Plateau state with scores of others inflicted with varying degrees of injury. Before then, there was another successful bomb attack in Kano that wreaked unmitigated havoc in human lives and property.

    The message which the renewed bombing and killing of innocent citizens is meant to convey is the terrorists’ unlimited capacity to inflict pains on our people beyond Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states where local and international attention is currently focused. Therefore, the target of the terrorists and their sponsors is not just about the abduction that has been accomplished but how to enforce their devious and wired agenda on the rest of the country.

    Campaigns and demonstrations that seek to focus on the abducted girls may miss the point if a holistic perspective of the phenomenon is not undertaken now. It is even possible that having been put under pressure in the north-east axis, the terrorists will begin to focus on other areas of less attention. There is therefore the compelling imperative to evolve measures to prevent terrorism from spreading to other parts of the country. And because of the very unlikely prospect of the scourge fizzling out very soon, our citizens should brace up for a long drawn battle with terrorists. Matters are not remedied given that we are confronted with an asymmetrical warfare.

    For a country that is battling with high level poverty, ignorance and disease, the effects of the current war on high defense budgets will leave very little if anything for the pursuit of our development programme. We are thus left with a vicious cycle of poverty and underdevelopment. That is the sad fate those who promote this evil scourge have consigned this country to.

    Already we have been forced to allow foreign countries into our territory on account of this self-inflicted problem. As desirable as foreign intervention may be at this point in time, it comes with its own shortcomings. It has its repercussions for a sovereign nation irrespective of the fact that international cooperation has been a major feature of the fight against terrorism due to its peculiar nature. Those who are helping have come with their own terms. The days ahead will witness a massive deployment of resources to fight terrorism. It will involve the acquisition of sophisticated technology such that the foreign countries offer. It will entail a comprehensive security network through out the length and breadth of the country to reduce the relative ease with which terrorists penetrate vulnerable segments of our communities. All these will take a lot from the national purse. The defense industries of the advanced countries will have patronage.

    Yet, this is a problem this county could have avoided but for greed, self-serving and sectional promptings.

    And for a society that lacks the basic data on its citizens and foreigners as well, the situation can be that hopeless.  With the uncontrolled influx of neighboring African countries, the inability to differentiate some of them from Nigerians, it can only be imagined the difficulty to be encountered keeping a tab on movements and suspicious elements.

    Our society is at the moment very porous with security counting for little in the daily calculations of the ordinary people. It is therefore to be expected that such a society will harvest plentifully from the evil machinations of these purveyors of terror. The fact that even the most sophisticated and highly advanced countries have not been able to rid themselves of terrorism is a sufficient indication that we are in for hard times if those who sponsor Boko Haram do not have a change of heart.

    Since bad habits die hard, it is safer to assume that terrorism has come to stay with us. It will not quickly disappear in the same manner armed robbery, kidnapping and militancy have not.

    Apart from any comprehensive programme the government may put in place to detect and make terrorism a very risky endeavor, we must begin to prepare our citizens to brace up for the scourge. It is time to commence very aggressive and comprehensive sensitization programme to acquaint our people with the necessary precautions and safety valves against terrorism.

    The high casualty recorded in the Jos incident would have been avoided had the local population been properly schooled on the right responses when bombs are detonated. For now, such campaigns are not on and not many know what to do in such circumstances. Plateau State commissioner of police Chris Olakpe captured the above scenario very succinctly when he warned the public against rushing to bomb blasts scenes as the possibility of another primed to explode soon after was very high. As it turned out, it was a second explosion that wreaked much of the havoc in the Jos incident. He also gave another tip on what people should do immediately they hear a blast near them. He advised that when such blasts occur, people close by should lie down to avoid being hit by flying objects.

    Another security expert Dr. Ona Ekhomu has also come out with a piece of advice on how to detect the making of improvised bombs and the materials that go into them.  He said “accumulating gas cylinders or bags of fertilizer are terrorists’ attack pre-incident indicators which could signal the imminence of a bomb attack”. He also spoke on monitoring people who behave in very suspicious and secretive ways as it fits into the characterization of terror agents.

    These tips are very useful and needful given that terrorism is unlikely to disappear from our shores so soon. We must therefore brace up for the reality it has become, educate and sensitize our people on how to detect the making of bombs so as to aid in apprehending culprits. And since the possibility is there that some of the terrorists will still succeed in their devious endeavors, we must arm the people on the right responses whenever there is a bomb explosion.

    The Jos experience has shown clearly that the message of keeping off bomb blast scenes is yet to be internalized. It therefore calls for a more comprehensive sensitization approach, deploying modern means of mass communication including the traditional ones to drum these messages into the ears of the ordinary people.

    These are the measures that will add value to the current fight against terrorism and not endless street demonstrations. We must proceed beyond the current euphoria to institute and internalize measures not only to detect terrorists but reduce the pains associated with their activities due to ignorance on the part of the public.

  • A king’s confident prophecy

    If there are no complicating factors, or even despite the possibility that there could be, the campaign to have Akinwunmi Ambode succeed two-term Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola in 2015 may well and truly be on a successful course, which is the inescapable implication of his endorsement by Oba Rilwan Akiolu, the preeminent Lagos monarch who may be considered a reliable source of information on the thinking in the charmed circle of political kingmakers in the state. At 70, and having been on the throne as King of Lagos since 2003, Oba Akiolu could not have been speaking flippantly when he declared, “The elders of Lagos have said that Ambode will be governor.” His May 15 utterance at a book launch at the Civic Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos, undoubtedly provided food for thought in  the political sphere in particular and served as a pointer to the fact that the power struggle for the high office had begun in earnest in the All Progressives Congress (APC), even if informally.

    Beyond the surface, the book presentation had the quality of a finely planned public relations stunt to sell Ambode’s governorship aspiration, if not his canonisation. Two books, Public Sector Accounting by Ambode who will be 51 next month, and his biography, The Art of Selfless Service by Marina Osoba, were the ostensible reason for the gathering of dignitaries, but Oba Akiolu left no one in doubt about the more significant purpose of the occasion. He said: “It is true that we are launching a book, but we know why we are here. Some aspirants have sent delegations to me…You will still meet in your party and take a decision on who will be governor. But in my capacity and in accordance with the wish of God and the elders around, I will make my position clear on this matter.” The king, in a fashion typical of Yoruba elders, resorted to wise sayings to drive his point home. His words:  “When you see someone that is dancing upstairs, you should know that some people are beating the drums downstairs for him.”  He elaborated, saying, “The elders have been meeting…We review things regularly…The elders have said that Ambode should be the next governor of Lagos. Other aspirants have a right to aspire too.”

    It is noteworthy that Oba Akiolu was modest enough to suggest that there was a theoretical possibility that his standpoint could be contradicted by party hierarchs and decision makers, especially given the fact that the party primary would be the ultimate deciding factor. However, the reality is that he was probably being diplomatic, for he said in the same breath, “Those of you who are annoyed, you should be patient. He is a Lagosian and he will be governor.”

    Evidently, not everyone shares Oba Akiolu’s conviction, and this actuality was demonstrated by the subsequent appearance of an organisation, the Lagos Development Advocacy Group (LDAG), which not only opposed Oba Akiolu’s position but also proposed a different individual for the position of governor. According to the group, “As we all have observed in recent times, pundits, commentators and even faithful party members have engaged in several analysis and debates on what should qualify any true breed Lagosian for the exalted seat of Lagos State Governor. Some of the issues that kept coming up are senatorial zoning, religious affiliation and many other sectarian and primordial considerations deliberately orchestrated in favour of some individuals eyeing the seat.”  Then it delivered a punch, saying, “After rigorous, conscientious search and consideration amongst the prospective candidates and other public officers, we found Mr. Babatunde Williams Fowler, BWF, as the most qualified in this regard and hereby make a clarion call for him to join the race for the exalted position on the platform of All Progressives Congress, APC, which he belongs to.”

    It is ludicrous, to say the least, that the group tried to make a case for an apparently unprepared individual, for that is the connotation of asking Fowler to enter the ring when he has not himself  overtly indicated interest in the position. Or is this his way of declaring his aspiration, meaning that the group could be fronting for him, contrary to the argument that it is calling on him to participate in politicking?   Interestingly, from the look of things, no one is prompting Ambode, in contradistinction to Fowler; rather, he is being promoted, with the important implication that he is already in the race and, therefore, conscious of the demands of such political ambition.

    It is instructive that Ambode himself reinforced his preparedness, saying, “When you work under the guidance of these two people, there is no room for failure. The letter of commendation by Fashola is my gold medal for public service.” He was, of course, referring to Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, a former governor of the state and acclaimed architect of the continuing transformation of the megacity, and the incumbent helmsman, Fashola,

    Although Oba Akiolu did not elaborate on the perceived qualities that qualified Ambode for governorship in the eyes of “the elders” he referred to, available details about the aspirant’s public service record are impressive and compel attention. Significantly, he was Accountant- General of Lagos State between 2006 and 2012 when he retired voluntarily to pursue other dreams after spending 27 years in the state’s civil service, including a stint as Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance, and as Auditor-General for Local Government. This background is striking on account of the fact that it highlights Ambode as probably the most experienced individual in terms of familiarity with the state civil service operations to seek the position of governor since Lagos State was created in 1967.

    It is notable that, in reaction to Ambode’s ascendancy, some observers have pointed out that Oba Akiolu’s support may not be the same thing as having the backing of the party supremos. However, it is understandable that the powers that be in the party have not been openly declarative, even if they might also have endorsed Ambode by deduction from the king’s declaration. It is part of the beauty of democracy to keep every aspirant’s dream alive until the axe falls on it, which is a probable reason for seeming public neutrality by the kingmakers. Even though it is a possibility, it is unlikely that they are still undecided, given Oba Akiolu’s confident prophecy, which he is perfectly entitled to. “But all things are in the hands of God Almighty”, the king concluded on a philosophical note, with the clear suggestion that left to man the issue was settled.

  • Arewa Forum, others

    It is getting clearer that there are entrenched interests within bent on stalling the development and overall progress of this country. Even with intense national consensus on the need for fresh bearing out of the multifarious socio-economic and political problems of the country, the actions and utterances of some interest groups and persons constantly come into conflict with this new understanding.

    When it is convenient, they pontificate on nationalism; the indivisibility, unity and secularity of the country and related idealistic concepts. Surprisingly, as soon as there are national discussions on how to get these pristine ideals on, what you find are positions that cast serious slur on the commitment of this people to our national survival.

    It is either they are in very stiff opposition against the processes that will harbinger these desired changes, equivocating or they are seen exuding conducts unbecoming of those desiring national stability and co-habitation.

    The on-going National Conference intended to fashion out a stable and equitable federation and stave off the disruptive influences of the subsisting volatile order may soon become a victim of this vicious disposition. The conference has been making progress in some of the issues before its committees. And our expectations are that those for which there was consensus at that level will receive the dispassionate consideration of the plenary.

    But we have suddenly begun to see signals of clear attempts by the same vested interests to incapacitate the delegates from arriving at decisions that will move this country forward. The target is to feed some delegates with those falsehoods and biases that have been the undoing of this country such that 53 years after independence, primordial tendencies and ethnic bigotry have been on their highest ascendancy.

    One of such retrogressive moves was aptly demonstrated by a memo from the Arewa Consultative Forum ACF to northern delegates in which it directed them to oppose the recommendation of one of the committees for an additional state for the south-east zone. In that memo, the forum canvassed the issues of population and landmass as the basis on which the envisaged state should be shut down by northern delegates. It went at length to bandy its version of the landmass and population of the zones and argued that based on these, many more states should be created in other zones of the country instead.

    Yet, the forum is not unaware that some of the bandied figures had long been discredited because of their inadequacies. Even then, landmass such as that occupied by the dreaded Sambisa forest in Borno state may count for little in discussions on the desirability or otherwise of a state for the south-east to make for fairness and balance.

    In the past, population and landmass never formed part of the calculations of the military while creating states. To invent these questionable parameters now just to scuttle the additional state is nothing but another attempt to perpetuate a fading status quo.

    The forum is within its rights to express its views on sundry national issues. But to author a memo to northern delegates solely for the purpose of opposing the creation of an additional state for the south-east has with it all the trappings of the same self-serving ethnic agenda that has stultified the progress of this country. It is very sad coming from such a body. Even then, there were northerners in the committee when the consensus for an additional state was reached. Those who voted for the new state are progressive minded people genuinely concerned with the necessary concessions that will guarantee a common sense of belonging and move the nation forward. Such patriotic Nigerians do not need the prodding of a sectional pressure group on whose doorsteps most of the problems plaguing their zones can be traced.

    When the concession of an additional state was arrived at during the National Political Reforms Conference of the Obasanjo era, northern delegates were overwhelmingly part of that process. Why goad them now into opposing a decision they had taken in good faith if not to sabotage our quest for national stability? The forum has also been working hard to ensure that all the observed imperfections of our federal order for which restructuring has become inevitable subsist. What can be more unpatriotic and uncharitable as this?

    And if one may ask, for whom is the forum working given this negative posturing? This poser is further reinforced when the position of the forum in such other issues as the current insecurity in the north-east zone and others that affect the north is put in perspective. Even this concept of a monolithic north has been seriously ruffled by a combination of events of the recent past.

    Ironically, those behind the forum have at another level been canvassing for the establishment of grazing routes and zones in the six geo-political areas of the country. They see this as a solution to the clashes between Fulani herdsmen and farmers in many states especially in the same north. They want the ancestral lands of these indigenous people to be forcefully acquired by the federal government and allocated to the herdsmen for their private commercial cattle rearing endeavors. This has been so even when evidence has shown such a practice to be at variance with modern methods of animal husbandry. Why are we finding it hard to embrace modern practices? Why do we prefer solutions that will open up old prejudices if it is not to keep this nation continually in crisis?

    Incidentally, these cattle are to be sold at their market value with the herdsmen smiling to the banks with huge profit. The question then is: why should the farmers forfeit their ancestral farm lands to Fulani herdsmen who are propelled by profit motive? How different is their business from those of other sections of the country that buy land in the same north in order to further their businesses? Why has it not been possible to acquire vast areas of land and allocate same free to southerners who do business in the north? That is the incongruity in the case for grazing routes and zones said to have passed through the second reading at the House of Representatives. Even then, the possibility of such zones forming the base for the herdsmen to confront and attack their hosts given their highly volatile and pugnacious antecedents is one sore point against this ill-motivated and stale piece of legislation.

    The same suspicious tendencies can be gleaned from the posturing of some northern elite on the war against terrorism. Even when Boko Haram insurgents have made it clear that their target is to institute a theocratic state, you find the same apologists inventing spurious reasons to point to the contrary. They will point to the killing of Moslems and destruction of mosques to dispute this point as if they are on image laundering for the insurgents. But they must have been shamed by the forced conversion of abducted Christian school girls from Chibok into Islam.

    These negative and sectional promptings have also been very evident in the utterances of some leaders of that zone among them serving governors. The same predilection accounts for the avowal of northern senators to oppose further state of emergency in that part of the country despite the precarious stage of the battle against Boko Haram now. Unless such people and interest groups part ways with old prejudices and place national interest above all considerations, this country may never know peace.

  • Lucky, laundry manager

    Even in the context of constant flux and the implication that everything is perpetually evolving, the latest contribution by Lucky Igbinedion, a former governor of Edo State, to the business of image laundering, or more precisely, reputation laundering, stretches imaginative elasticity to yield point.  Ahead of his 57th birthday on May 13, he reportedly declared in an interview with journalists in Abuja, “In the darkest of days when the state was broke and could not pay salaries, I would run to these two people and they would borrow me money. They borrowed the state money.”  The lenders in question,  excuse Igbinedion’s illiterate usage, were his father and Esama of Benin Kingdom, Chief Gabriel Igbinedion, and the Chairman, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Board of Trustees, Chief Anthony Anenih. In case anyone needed corroboration, Igbinedion said, “Chief Anenih is around the corner here, you can go and ask him whether I borrowed money from him or not.” What about his dad? Shouldn’t he also be asked whether he actually lent money to Edo State through his son?

    His claims prompt disturbing dimensions, including reflections on the riches of the named individuals, their motives, their possible gains from such deals, especially in economic terms as well as in relation to manipulative influence in the corridors of power.  It stands to reason that Igbinedion may have unwittingly provided insights into the phenomenon of “political godfatherism”, long identified as a major drawback of the country’s politics, with negatively weighty implications for socio-economic development.

    From a more formal perspective, Igbinedion’s revelations, if they are to be believed, hint at illegalities, particularly on account of the implied non-official nature of the process, which is why they have the character of disclosure.  Apparently, the stated deals were known only to a closed ring of collaborators, outside the view of lawful institutional structures that should otherwise be aware of, if not endorse such course of action.

    From the look of things, Igbinedion manifested not only social anxiety, but perhaps also a sense of guilt. Seven years after he left office following two four-year terms from 1999 to 2007, he seems to have suddenly awakened to the fact that his track record may need clarification, especially in the light of superlatively superior governmental performance by Adams Oshiomhole, who has governed the state from 2008 and was elected to a second term in 2012. Indeed, Igbinedion’s power years pale into insignificance, except as a model of ineptitude, when compared with Oshiomhole’s tenure, which is widely acclaimed as demonstrative of good governance and an example of competent administration. Moreover, against this background, it is possible that Igbinedion may have a guilty conscience for frittering away his time in power, which is generally perceived as an era of wastefulness and wasted opportunities. Sadly, he cannot turn back the hands of the clock, but the evidence that it may be on his conscience is, at least, something positive about him, even if inconsequential.

    Igbinedion’s defensiveness mirrored a subconscious burden conveyed by his words. “For you to loot,” he declared, “there must be something. Edo State had no money to loot.” This latter-day logic is contradicted by the fact that in January 2008 he was declared wanted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) concerning 142 counts of financial fraud. Specifically, he was alleged to have embezzled $24 million (12 million pounds) using front companies, and he gave himself up in the same month.

    Furthermore, in December 2008 he was convicted by the Federal High Court, Enugu, on corruption-related charges.  He was actually fined N3.5million after pleading guilty to a one-count charge of neglecting to make a declaration of his interest in Account No. 4124013983110 in a new generation bank in his declaration of assets form.

    Astoundingly, Igbinedion said, “If anything, it is the state that owes me money and not me owing them.”  If the borrowing and lending were open only to him and collaborators, as the picture he painted suggests, it is intriguing that he has an obviously misplaced sense of the state government’s financial indebtedness to him. It is unclear whether he implied that he also lent money to the state, which he did not recover before his exit, a suggestion that is perhaps intended to incorrectly portray him as having a social conscience. He should have been sincere enough, if the quality is not beyond him, to detail the inflow of funds allegedly borrowed from clandestine sources as well as the outflow of payments to the same for public information.

    This character took hyperbole to new heights with his claim that somewhere along the line he got tired of the office of governor and desired to quit before the end of his tenure, which would have been unprecedented in the country’s political history and earned him a place in the pantheon of frustrated patriots, if he could be dignified by such description.  According to his tale, “Between you and I, if not for family pressure, I contemplated resigning, especially during my second tenure. I just asked myself why I was going through all these troubles.”   Igbinedion must have scant regard for public intelligence, if he actually believes that the people can be fooled by such sob story.

    Then he somersaulted, uttering words that expressed absolute nonsense. “First and foremost,” he began, “you do not have the money to do some of the projects you want to do even though there was no way I would have completed the projects with the whole money in the whole world.”  Tragically, this declaration unveiled his unpreparedness for helmsmanship as well as fundamental visionlessness.  Without intending to do so, he also betrayed the fact that he ran a government of uncompleted projects, meaning that he left a legacy, if it could be so called, of inchoateness, which amounts to nothing.

    He was delusional, a condition he is entitled to in his private space, but which is unacceptable in the public sphere and especially when it is about the serious business of governance.  He chose to grade himself, an exercise that is prone to selective perception at best, and total misperception at worst. In Igbinedion’s case, he couldn’t have been more off-track. His self-assessment: “In terms of performance, I am glad history is beginning to reveal itself. I performed credibly well. The perception and expectations are two different things.”   The truth is that most times dirty laundry isn’t a matter of subjectivity and there are times when washing them clean enough could be problematic. This is Igbinedion’s challenge.

  • Swap the girls now

    Swap the girls now

    It began as absence of water. It has climaxed as absence of leadership. How it will end, especially as the saga of missing hundreds of girls surges on, lies in a foggy horizon.

    The crisis of Boko Haram was predated by the crisis of water, when the drying of the Lake Chad signaled the decline and fall of its status as the Nile of northeastern Nigeria. The lake provided not only jobs, but also livelihood. Not only livelihood, but also culture. Add to its culture an ambience of peace. It flourished an empire, spawned a big city, opened its portal to all faiths and all peoples, and glorified Africa’s longest reigning dynasty, the Seifawa.

    Then drought came but so did doubt. An environment of self-confidence led to questioning the certainties of generations of the economic practices and harmony of its residents. Farmers did not enjoy the nutrients of the soil. Traders could not ferry across to markets. Fishermen nestled their nests rather than fling them for catches. Markets shrank. Drought weakened a doughty people. Where there was food, they had gloom. A diverse and robust economy kept the politicians and leaders at bay. Commerce failed, but a few became powerful.

    The immiserated many followed to the lead of an indolent few, a peacock class with messianic agenda. Fruitful people became restless and idle. The first explosion was the Maitasine riots in Kano in the 1980’s. They blossomed in blood and rapine, but they hailed from the Maiduguri area, where Boko Haram first tenanted its zealots.

    General Alabi Isama assisted by soldiers like now Senate President David Mark quelled the uprising. The Sambisa Forest, now mythicised as an impossible fortress, was cordoned off, and the rabble of militants was ravished by a deft response under a so-called weak and indecisive Shehu Shagari in the second republic.

    Even then the Lake Chad was losing its swath of water to the systematic encroachment of the desert. We failed to plant enough trees. We failed to protect the water. It was the first failure of leadership. Places abound in the world today where they saved lives and civilisation because they saved the water. In the United States, the picturesque state of Colorado with all its luxuriant parks and lakes would probably be gone without care. All the trees in its lush capital Denver are hand-planted.

    The second level of leadership failure was the routine neglect of education and commerce by successive state and federal governments. The feudal north hid under a religious cover and entrenched a cynical brand of politics that elevated a few and alienated the rest. Disaster seeds are planted in eras of silence. One of them, now an APC chieftain, once gloated as governor that Borno citizens could not read, and could not understand the adverse media reporting about his failure. After the Maitatsine riots, no one inoculated the society. The disease gradually grew like invidious cancer, and the result was the rise of Yusuf. He rallied the indolent and illiterate, and gave them a society that the government allowed to evaporate.

    “Feed them first, and then demand virtue of them,” wrote Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in his novel of patricide, The Brothers Karamazov. He also noted in the novel that what people want is not God but miracle. I believe if you associate the miracle with God, they will go with whatever the God is. Yusuf gave the boys miracle, and he had authority over them. This disaster was seething in quiet promise while the ruling class swaggered. When the monster matured, everyone was blindsided.

    Yusuf was killed, and the group’s rage escalated. But some of the governors of the region had used them for political violence in the same way the Niger Delta political class used the militants.

    Boko Haram became born and festered in killings, stealing, arson and kidnapping. This leads us to the third example of leadership failure. This involves corruption, ineptitude and incompetence. This began under Yar’Adua, under whose reign Yusuf was killed. But the man was ill, and did not act. However, much of the violence flared under President Goodluck Jonathan. A number of things have gone wrong. One, about N2.7 trillion of security budget has gone unaccounted for since 2011. The U.S. Congress lashed the Nigerian military as ill-equipped and ill-trained. They said our armed forces are even afraid of the insurgents. Foreign powers are now giving us technology that we could have acquired with the princely security budget allocations.

    Two, a disconnected leader. President Jonathan did not respond to many of the killings and depredations of the group other than by rhetoric of surrender. He has been uninspired, and he has hidden under a hallucinatory logic fueled by his acolytes that everything is a conspiracy to hang his presidency. The north wants him to fail, and that is the reason for the insurgency. So he appointed a northern oligarch as national security adviser. He has been of no effect. Sambo Dasuki, the NSA, is a prince. But the insurgents are paupers, and the prince has not saved the nation from the paupers because they belong to a different world. His defence minister Gusau’s reign is highlighted by internecine brawls with service chiefs.

    Jonathan’s acolytes have adduced the same conspiracy theory to obfuscate all Jonathan’s failures in infrastructure, power, education, corruption, etc. The terrorist has become the bogeyman.

    The same logic animated disbelief by Jonathan, his wife, and others in his circle when the Chibok girls were whisked away. Hence it took three weeks for the president to utter a word after his famous Azonto trip to Kano and Champaign fizz in Ibadan. It took the outrage of the world and the persistent reporting by CNN to jolt Jonathan and his “Chai! There is God O” wife to know that not everything is conspiracy. Even at that, he is saying he does not want to swap the detained terrorists for the girls. Some politicians and leaders hold that indefensible position. Hoisting a moral premise that we cannot negotiate with terrorists, they say it negates law and decency. Hogwash. They also say it is American principle.

    I love principle, but to quote Oscar Wilde, “persons are more important than principles”. Persons are real, and principles are based on persons. Principles cannot bring those girls back alive. If Shekau is not sincere, at least let us give him the opportunity to fail. But to say that we cannot swap is an act of hypocritical folly. In the past few years, the president’s uncle, the garrulous Edwin Clark’s son and Okonjo Iweala’s mother, among others, were kidnapped. Would they tell us that they were freed without negotiation and release of funds? Let us not be hypocritical. If any of our leaders were like the Chibok man who had two daughters and four cousins with the BH boys, would the issue of swap spark debate? It is an act of not only folly but example of disconnection with the people.

    In securing information on Osama Bin Laden, the U.S. gave an Arab partisan a Ferrari in exchange for a phone number. Talk about swap. What shall we lose if we give up those in detention, and get the girls? Not much. The released guys can fight us, but that is a price we can pay. It is an opportunity cost. Would we rather that the girls die or are sold off, or that the prisoners are released? Now that the world powers are with us, we can now track and destroy these guys.

  • Still on Chibok and beyond

    Riddle over the abduction of about 200 school girls from Chibok, Borno State will for quite sometime, continue to dominate public discourse locally and beyond. In the last couple of days, there has been heightened international attention on the matter especially given the spate of protests over the abduction and the inability of the government to secure the release of the girls.

    At the last count, no less than four world powers and international agencies have indicated interest to assist the federal government in its efforts to get the girls freed. Leading these countries is the United States which promised to give Nigeria all required support and assistance to save the abducted girls and bring the reign of terror unleashed by Boko Haram on parts of the country to an end. Britain and China have pledged to deploy high resolution satellite imaging capabilities to locate the girls’ whereabout.

    With this renewed interest, expectations are very high that respite will come the way of the girls in the days ahead. But this hope will have to confront some of the challenges that have trailed the abduction. There is the issue of time lag. It has taken about three weeks since the incident. This time frame is enough for the insurgents to conceal whatever information that would have been of help in facilitating the search and rescue operation.

    Unconfirmed reports that the girls have been ferried out of the country pose another challenge. Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has boasted he will sell off the girls or marry them out as war booty. If this happens, deploying satellite imaging to locate a concentration of girls of the magnitude under estimation may prove futile.

    Even then, there are still issues with the actual number of the abducted. The military, apparently dissatisfied with conflicting figures emanating from the school authorities and the Borno State government had to saddle that government with further dissemination of information on the matter. They may have also been piqued by the reluctance of the state government for full disclosure in respect of the actual number of students registered and their gender.

    Matters were not helped when it was discovered through the intervention of the West African Examination Council WAEC that there were indeed male students enrolled in that school. That apart, the inability of the authorities to supply or publish the names and photographs of the girls for proper documentation did not go down well with the federal government. The excuse of the host government was that such was against the religion of the girls which was presumed to be Islam. And when eventually a list of the names came out from the Christian Association of Nigeria CAN northern chapter, the 180 names released had only 15 as Muslims while 165 were Christians. This may have fuelled speculations that there is more to the abduction than ordinarily meets the eyes. It may have also accounted for the reaction of the wife of the President who had heaped the blame of the mishandling of the incident on the Borno State government. She was even reported to have suggested that the abduction was contrived. Many have picked holes with the conduct of Mrs. Jonathan on this singular issue. She may not have given the issue the finesse it required especially given the conflict between what she was doing and her husband’s approach to the matter. The undefined roles of first ladies either at the federal or state levels on state matters may have further earned her criticisms. And when she wept alleging they wanted to kill her husband and make her a widow, she must have incurred the anger of many who felt such posturing was unedifying of the wife of our number one citizen.

    But then, some of the doubts surrounding the abduction can only be ignored at the expense of the overall success of the rescue operation irrespective of the number of countries involved. There is no doubt that information emanating from the Borno State government left room for suspicion. There were issues with the number of those abducted, the gender composition of those registered for the exams and their religion. And as it turned out, they were mainly Christians. That puts to serious question the claim that information about the girls could not be made public because of their religion and the purported fear of stigmatization. It is trite to say without knowledge of the actual number of girls abducted it will be difficult to say when they have all been rescued.

    Even then, further disclosures from WAEC that it wrote the Borno State government on the need to transfer the students to safe centres but were told that adequate security would be put in place at Chibok is also a key issue. It would have been helpful for that state government to give account of the type of security it put in place to ensure the safety of the girls. These are very potent issues irrespective of the sentiments and anger that have trailed the abduction.

    Many would want none of these details but quick action to have the girls released. That is how strong the sentiment had been. But beyond this sentiment, is the underlying need to take a critical perspective of the matter so as to enhance the overall success of the rescue operation. Besides, terrorists want maximum impact for effect. It would appear that objective has been achieved by the insurgents through the selective kidnap of girls pursuing western education they deem evil. That was why Shekau had to come on board to further ruffle the sensibilities of the public by threatening to humiliate the girls. The shock and emotions elicited by that threat have achieved the objective of the terrorists. To underscore this point very poignantly, the media was awash shortly after with news of the abduction of another eight girls or so in another part of the same state.

    The point here is that the terrorists went for the girls because of the impact they intended to create since killings and destructions have more or less become very familiar news.

    Given the attention this singular abduction has generated, the terrorists may have now discovered that this is one area they have made real success and may begin to focus on it so as to get even with the authorities in their weird endeavour. We may witness more of the abduction of school girls and children if adequate responses are not made to beef up security around schools. They may begin to focus on the more vulnerable to create public discontent and discredit the government.

    The abduction has sufficiently aroused public sympathy on the unmitigated evil which Boko Haram has been. The pledge of other countries for logistic support to secure the release of the girls and combat terrorism is most welcome. Nigerians of all hue have also been sufficiently aroused to the dangers posed by the insurgents. That is why we have seen a plethora of condemnations from all political divide not only against the abduction but the Boko Haram insurgency.

    A common string running through all these sentiments is that apart from freeing the girls, it is high time terrorism is wrestled to the ground. And that is the real issue. President Jonathan has promised that this singular abduction will see the last of insurgency in the country. That is heart-warming provided the promise is matched with the necessary and sufficient capacities to stamp out these purveyors of hate, awe and terror.

    The heightened interest against terrorism provides the needed ambience for Jonathan to fully deploy needed military arsenal; smoke out the insurgents and quash all their activities in the north-east. He has been made to take the blame for insufficient action or inaction. He must now do the needful and rise or fall together with its outcome.