LAST week, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, stirred and roused the British parliament with a powerful and memorable speech on the abduction of more than 200 teenage schoolgirls in Nigeria by Boko Haram militants. The parliament backed him with a standing ovation and supported every measure he deemed fit to take to help Nigeria secure the release of the girls. His enthusiasm and sense of purpose left nothing to the imagination regarding what Mr Cameron would have done moments after the abductions had such an egregious crime taken place on British soil. Contrastingly, nearly three weeks after the abductions took place, President Goodluck Jonathan engaged in handwringing as he bemoaned the paucity of information on the teenage girls’ captivity. He has neither addressed the National Assembly to place new anti-terror measures before them for their approval nor has he addressed the country as a whole to rally them behind him and give vent to the empathy the constitution expects him to always deliver with matchless aplomb.
Instead, and as has become unfortunately obvious to the rest of the world, the Jonathan presidency oscillated between the doubts he entertained about whether there was indeed any abduction at all, as his wife Dame Patience Jonathan underscored in her disjointed and lachrymose response to the grave issue, and exhibition of plain and embarrassing helplessness and impotence. Apparently unable to convince himself that the abductions indeed took place, the president could not tackle the menace with the sense of urgency and brilliance the occasion demanded, assuming he had those virtues in him, nor could he rouse the country behind him, nor yet could he marshal the limitless forces available to him to get all the information needed to anchor his actions and options. Of course the possibility of visiting the distraught parents of the abducted girls is looking more remote by the day. And if a visit does take place on a hypothetical tomorrow, it will be nothing but a miserable afterthought.
The president and his wife, who has a knack for meddling in state affairs, at a point requested for the photographs of the schoolgirls, as if they hoped to publish them in the media. It does not seem they were even sure of the number of girls abducted. More worrisomely, the entire apparatus of government has been enveloped in confusion and, again as the international media observed, in abject ineptitude. Finally, all pretence that President Goodluck Jonathan had a modicum of competence in him to face the enormous task of governing a complex country of about 160 million people evaporated with his feet shuffling. His supporters may try their damnedest to pin the abduction debacle on his enemies, particularly those they consider his hegemonic and oligarchic northern opponents, but the obvious and unflattering fact is that the abduction saga has shown President Jonathan to be unsuitable for the job.
During his last media chat, a clearly harassed and befuddled President Jonathan mournfully asked for international help to free the girls. But even before he asked, the international community, which had seemed more concerned and outraged than he, had sought to impose help on him. That he has finally caved in is a testimony not to his concern about the girls’ plight, which he did very little to ameliorate for more than two weeks, or his feelings for their parents, but his recognition of the futility of his own puny efforts and the abysmal confusion that has sapped the energies of his security forces. From all indications, the international pressure on Boko Haram will bear fruit and secure the schoolgirls’ release. There is however no certainty that all the girls will come back, or that when they return they will not be psychologically damaged beyond what our expertise can palliate, assuming the government is capable of paying attention to such delicate matters.
However, whatever damage the country will record will not be limited to the schoolgirls or their parents. Much more than the abductions per se, Nigeria itself must now have to endure a far worse humiliation and damage than the victims, having shown such gross incompetence in responding to the sporadic and audacious actions of the Boko Haram commanders. The country’s pride is broken, not just by the humiliating blows from Boko Haram, but by the simple fact that for such a matter as the Chibok abductions, the country has been compelled to throw its doors and windows open for help of any kind and from any source. It will take decades to live down this humiliation. Nigeria is not run on the basis of editorials of the international media, but if in 2015 there is no change of leadership, the world, not to say scathing international critics and editorial writers, would question our rationality and wonder just how gluttonous we had become in absorbing punishment.
