It is four years+ since our Chibok girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. We await the release of the remaining Chibok girls. Inexplicably our Dapchi girl-child, 15 year old, Leah Sharibu is not released. Why have we not extricated this one single girl from the terrifying clutches of Boko Haram?
How is it possible for the Boko Haram to again, just last week, dent Nigeria’s territorial integrity and our security apparatus by raising a terrorist, foreign flag over Nigerian territory? However, as proud Nigerians, we cannot understand why the armed forces appear only after the murderous event. This is in no way to disregard the supreme sacrifice made by so many, largely unsung, gallant officers and men and women, with 23 now Missing In Action (MIA). Because of that sacrifice that we cannot afford to lose another life military or civilian. The armed forces were well-funded during the military era and also judging from the billions stolen by generals and admirals and buried in soak-aways in the civilian era. Can the armed forces be pro-active to prevent ‘take over events’, village massacres, and fake or genuine terrorist activity?
But Boko Haram is not the only battle front in Nigeria.
There is another equally vicious enemy, masquerading as fellow Nigerians! Government and President Buhari must prevent themselves from being seen as Nero ‘Fiddling while Rome Burns’ while people scream in anguish as they die, rot and roast in villages torched by fires, holocausts, set by the vicious herder militias!!
What manner of cumulative evil is one death per day, 10 deaths per day, 20 deaths, 30,40,50, 60, 100, 200 up to and even beyond 300 murders in any single day or night of attacks by Nigerians on Nigerians? The president’s claim that the perpetrators are Gadhafi spawn rings hollow from all reports of survivors. True or false, it should make him spring into action to protect the territorial imperative and is no excuse for allowing the farm destroyers to run amok, unchallenged by our mighty armed forces nationwide which deny complicity. Close all barracks, cancel all leave, and redeploy them to the village war front, garrison the villages to eliminate this scourge.
In Ghana this incursion has been nipped in the bud. And if they really are Gadhafi spawn, are they invincible, invisible or merely being wrongly reported to Buhari by his intelligence? Does that presidential ‘ID’ not instantly make them instant invading terrorists and mercenaries? Government and National Assembly (NASS) warn of fire and brimstone against South Africa when one single unfortunate Nigerian is killed. But strangely, they have collective inertia and incoherent plans when Nigerian villagers are wiped out. No one is brought to justice. We appear to be at war with a fake or ghost enemy. This calls for commando type units to protect Nigeria’s rural populations before the farms become deserts and Nigeria has a serious famine. We will be forced to give up eating cows reducing their value to zero except to be used for bride price! It is an unbelievable propaganda paradox for the Ministry of Agriculture to ‘rightly’ claim a triumph about rice production, which is good, while ignoring the huge threat to Nigeria’s food supplies of the bloody onslaught of herders. Government must be aware that forced peace without justice and seizing one side’s weapons of self-defense is no peace.
We cannot bring back the dead. Their ancestral line is destroyed. Child survivors will never know their history or even their name. The Buhari government’s failure to save life is a Human Rights failure to meet SDG 8,9,10,16 to protect. It prompts suggestions of complicity about the mounting murderous death toll on and around the Plateau and will have election 2019 consequences as too many voters have first-hand trauma knowledge. Bermuda has its ‘Bermuda Triangle’ of mystery and strange accidents, disappearances of boats, ships and planes and people. The herder-instigated farmer killings create a deadly Plateau Triangle including Benue, Nassarawa states and spilling into Benue, Adamawa and Bauchi and now Sokoto and nationwide. Certainly NASS is impotent. Government must stop the matter today instead of offering alternatives including abandoning one’s ancestral property to the terrorist invaders. And yet we all still shed cow blood for meat provided by the blood shed of thousands. Have we no shame? When is enough blood enough bloodshed?
As we mourn, we congratulate France’s multi-ethnic team for lifting the World Cup in a good clean game. Give opportunity to the youth and witness their Mbappe after Brazil’s teenage Pele. Meanwhile Nigeria’s Footbal Federation members rather risk expulsion /suspension of Nigeria from FIFA than obey FIFA rules thus biting the hand that feeds them and the game of football in Nigeria with millions of often untraceable dollars. Football administrators should be above ‘winning’ or viciously destroying the game.
So even more congratulations to ex-governor and ex-Minister Fayemi for re-winning the Ekiti elections. Educated Ekiti, have witnessed the horrors of anti-judiciary thuggery, Shakespearian Macbethian medical theatrics and a tragic stream of unsolved political murders. Can Fayemi put any demons of his past performance aside and bind all the people of all political parties in a spectacular service manner? Nigeria sorely needs a new breed of leader-Obama, Mandela? You choose. Ekiti’s development cannot afford to lose a minute of one day in the next four years.
- Uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16.
