When former President Olusegun Obasanjo speaks, we are wont to take him very seriously. Apart from having presided over the affairs of this country at three different times, he is very highly respected at home and also by the international community having been engaged in peace negotiations and sundry activities in and around the globe. He has also been actively involved in shaping the content and direction of this country right from the civil war days till date.
Whatever opinion such a personage volunteers on the affairs of this country, is bound to have profound influence on the thinking and direction of its people. Not a few Nigerians were therefore taken aback last week when he spoke to the CNN on how best to handle the Boko Haram menace in the country.
Apparently unmindful of his previous views on the matter, Obasanjo had criticized the handling of the Boko Haram insurgency by the Jonathan administration on the grounds that it did not apply the ‘carrot and stick’ in fighting the scourge.
Hear him, “to deal with a group like that you need the carrot and stick. The carrot is finding out how to reach them. When you try to reach out to them and they are not amenable to being reached out to you have to use the stick”
He said Jonathan is just using the stick.
The purport of Obasanjo’s contention is that Jonathan is only applying maximum force to the Boko Haram menace without engaging them in some form of dialogue. For him, this approach cannot effectively address the potent danger posed by that sect. That is Obasanjo’s opinion and he is entitled to it.
A couple of weeks back, the same Obasanjo had berated the same administration for its slow action in fighting the scourge. He had then drawn parallels between his deployment of soldiers to Odi and Zaki Biam in Bayelsa and Benue states respectively and the Boko Haram challenge arguing that the menace could have been nipped in the bud if the government had acted fast as he did in these two states.
But Jonathan sharply rebuffed that assertion arguing that the deployment of troops in Odi was a colossal disaster as it did not solve the problem of militancy in the Niger Delta region. He said the invasion only succeeded in the killing of innocent children, old men and women without hurting a single militant.
Apparently sensing the dangers in his recommendation, Obasanjo through his former spokesman Femi Fani-Kayode attempted to reverse himself arguing that he never recommended the Odi approach to be applied to the Boko Haram menace. He said what he meant was that a solution ought to have been found or some sort of action ought to have been taken rather than allow the matter to fester overtime like a bad wound and get worse. Not many believed in this revisionism then.
If Obasanjo had no intention of recommending the Odi strategy to the Boko Haram menace why compare the two? Why talk of quick action and the nipping of the matter in the bud if those references are not to the quick use of force? Was it possible to nip the Boko Haram insurgency in the bud then through negotiations whose duration Obasanjo himself could not predict?
Thus, despite Obasanjo’s attempt to clarify his position on the matter, he left no one in doubt on his preference of brute force in handling Boko Haram.
It is therefore very astonishing for the same character to now pontificate on the so-called carrot and stick approach as the best solution to the menace. If he was aware of such a strategy, why the copious references to the brute show of military force in Odi and Zaki Biam? Again, why did he not apply the carrot in those instances only for his predecessor Yar’Adua to give meaning to it?
Today, the relative peace in the Niger Delta region owes its success to the late president. Yet Obasanjo was there for eight years and only found the stick the most appropriate option to militancy. May be then, he had not been sufficiently schooled in the carrot dimension to problem solving and can be excused on that ground.
But this later day convert of the carrot approach has so contradicted himself that it is now difficult to understand where he stands on the matter. In one breadth he accuses Jonathan of being tepid and not acting fast and decisive. In another, he carpets him for solely relying on force rather than reaching out to the insurgents. These are contradictory positions with little value for our understanding of his real stand on the matter.
In the face of this double speak, one is left with the inevitable impression that Obasanjo is being less than honest in the matter and should not be taken seriously. It seems his anecdotal positions are designed more to get even with Jonathan for whatever reasons.
More fundamentally, the allegation that the carrot is not being applied in the instant case, contradicts the more. It was the same Obasanjo who sometime ago, reached out to the loyalists of the late leader of the original Boko Haram Mohammed Yusuf in a peace effort brokered by Mallam Shehu Sani in Maiduguri. Was the man who hosted him at that event not killed shortly after for daring to receive him? There was also the peace effort brokered by Dr. Datti Ahmed which failed mid-way due to mistrust among the parties. There have been other offers that failed to take off the ground due to suspicion on the quarters from which they were emanating. Even then, the federal government has said time without number that it is not averse to a peaceful end to the crises.
All these go to underscore the point that Obasanjo’s carrot approach has been part of the calculations in ending the menace. He may quarrel with the progress in this direction. But he must admit that at no time was that possibility foreclosed.
The point of divergence has been the insistence of the federal government that it cannot negotiate with ghosts. It wants the leaders of the group to come out, table their grievances and commence the negotiations. But because of the atrocities committed by the group, nobody would dare come out to be identified as their leader for fear of reprisals. That has been the main issue even as there is a welter of public opinion against negotiating with such a criminal and murderous group.
Obasanjo cannot claim ignorance of the fact that Boko Haram in its present form is nothing but political grievances masquerading under a religious garb. It has its root in the way the last presidential primaries of the PDP were conducted and he was a prime actor in the events that brought about that pass. That party should hold itself accountable for the orgy of violence unleashed on this country by Boko Haram. The simmering bad blood between Obasanjo and Jonathan is an admission of failure by the PDP led government. At the root of it all, is the touted ambition of Jonathan in 2015. Maybe Obasanjo wants to recompense for his sins in the mortal mistake of scuttling the zoning arrangement of his party. That could be the potent handle to Boko Haram insurgency.
