A politician’s grief is often very brief – especially when he or his kin are not on the receiving end of some tragic happening. When they make their public shows of empathy, it is often with an eye on the photo opportunity or to pre-empt any criticism about being unfeeling.
But this week Nigeria’s apex leadership outdid itself. What President Goodluck Jonathan did in scurrying to Kano to preside over a reception for defecting ex-Governor Ibrahim Shekarau barely 24 hours after 80 innocent Nigerians were blown to smithereens by terrorist bombs at Abuja’s Nyanya motor park is beyond the pale.
We are talking of 80 souls, for God’s sake, blown away in one moment of madness in the nation’s capital! How does the president react? One photo-opportunity at the bedside of a victim and quick as a flash he’s off to Kano for a bout of singing and dancing.
Politicians must truly be remarkable people who can switch from one emotion to another the way we turn light bulbs on and off. It just shows how desensitised we have become and what low stock we now set by human lives that rather than accept that he had made a mistake, the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) spokesman, Olisah Metuh, launched into an inane defence of the shameful outing.
In search of rationalisation, he embarked on time travel – landing in 1984 where he pounced on the fact that the then British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, continued with the Tory Party conference in Brighton after a terrorist attack that killed five.
What he did not tell us was whether Britain was under the kind of siege that has seen hundreds of people blown to bits by bombs in Nigerian villages and towns every week. It is always convenient to throw such isolated examples.
The PDP spokesman should tell us how the leadership of Norway reacted in 2011 when a gunman killed 77 young people on the island of Utoya. Aside other actions, the nation declared 30 days of mourning. That was just one incident! Here such things happen every other day and we react by going dancing.
No one is saying the government should shut down – because that would be impractical and pointless. But we have to show that we value human life and respect our people; and that as leaders our actions are not driven only by naked ambition and lust for power. In any event, the Kano excursion had nothing to do with governance: it was purely partisan politics – an occasion for Jonathan to inveigh against his arch foe, Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso.
While we were still digesting this, the nation woke up to the shocking news that barely 24 hours after that brutal Nyanya attack, Boko Haram insurgents invaded an isolated secondary school in Borno and abducted over 100 girls.
These days barely a week goes by without one such outrage or another. Leaders who respect their people would understand that these are not ordinary times and keep a low profile – especially when they cannot provide solutions to the evil ravaging the land.
Instead we continue to be assaulted by the arrogant and illogical statements from the likes of the PDP’s National Publicity Secretary, Olisah Metuh. In his latest offering he accused the All Progressives Congress (APC) leadership, governors – even Rotimi Amaechi of being the sponsors of Boko Haram. Others whom he has identified as being the founders and financiers of the sect include former Head of State, Muhammadu Buhari and suspended Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi.
It is only in frontier territory that this sort of outrage can happen. You impugn people’s character in such a manner in the name of politics! Buhari has threatened to go to court if he doesn’t get an apology within seven days. Hopefully, Metuh and the PDP would be inundating the courts with proof soon.
The volatile partisan air that has overtaken the land cannot obliterate historical facts. Credible chronicles have been written tracing the emergence of what is now known as Boko Haram to the influences of the defunct radical Islamist group Maitatsine which flowered in parts of northern Nigeria in the 80s and was eventually wiped out in the early 1990s.
The present incarnation of the sect emerged from a radical group that met at the Ndimi Mosque in Maiduguri around 2002. They were led by the sect founder, Mohammed Ali, and were implacably opposed to the government of the then Borno State Governor, Mala Kachalla, who they viewed as irredeemably corrupt. Ali would later extend his activities to the Kanama community in Yobe State where he met his end in 2003 after clashes with the police and army.
It was the survivors of this battle who regrouped in the Ndimi mosque under the leadership of Mohammed Yusuf. Up until the clash between sect members and the administration of the then Borno State Governor, Ali Modu Sheriff, in February 2009 over the use of helmets by motor cycle riders, they remained largely a local phenomenon.
But in July 2009, the sect would have a pivotal run-in with law the enforcement agents who stopped a procession of the group on their way to bury a prominent member of the sect. The clashes from that one incident snowballed into a massive orgy of burning and looting across Bauchi, Borno and Yobe States.
In the process, several policemen were killed. The intervention of the military brought the situation in Maiduguri under control and led to Yusuf being apprehended. Unfortunately, after soldiers handed him over he would be killed by extra-judicial means whilst in police custody. From that point on the thirst for revenge against federal government led by then President Umaru YarÁdua seemed to imbue the sect with a new zeal for mayhem that very few would have predicted.
As Nigerians thrashed around looking for explanations for the enduring power of the sect, many recalled a pregnant statement made in the heat of the 2011 PDP residential contest. So much has been made of the statements by Alhaji Lawal Kaita to the effect that the North would make Nigeria ungovernable if the PDP forced Jonathan down their throat as presidential candidate in 2011.
Metuh has also referred to comments made at the party’s convention that year by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar to the effect that those who make peaceful change impossible make violence change inevitable.
These statements are now the lazy and convenient explanations for the scourge of terror sweeping the land. Unfortunately, these things don’t add up. Anyone who has followed the rise of Boko Haram and the emergence of its leaders like Yusuf and Abubakar Shekau would know that mainstream northern politicians had very little influence or contact with the group.
If anything, the sect’s leaders had only contempt for them. We seem to forget that it is this same sect that has threatened to kill everyone from the Sultan of Sokoto to former President Ibrahim Babangida, Buhari and others. A few days ago, they killed a monarch who dared complain about their activities.
Indeed, if anybody should be accused of being the driving forces behind the Boko Haram, it is those from within the ruling party. We have the weighty testimony of a President Jonathan to that effect! Speaking during an inter-denominational service to mark the 2012 Armed Forces Remembrance Day, he shocked the world by claiming that the sect had infiltrated his government.
“Some of them are in the executive arm of government; some of them are in the parliamentary/legislative arm of government while some of them are even in the judiciary.
“Some are also in the armed forces, the police and other security agencies. Some continue to dip their hands and eat with you and you won’t even know the person who will point a gun at you or plant a bomb behind your house.”
Before it became fashionable to accuse the APC of terrorism, this same administration fought attempts in 2012 by the United States government to declare Boko Haram a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO). The excuse? Such designation cause travelling inconveniences for Nigerians at foreign airports. The administration also argued that it was capable of resolving the problem with its own local solutions and didn’t need the American action.
Fast forward to 2013 when the US went ahead anyway and labelled Boko Haram an FTO. Without any sense of shame, the same government that was so keen to give comfort to the sect it claimed to be talking to, tripped over itself to welcome the move.
A couple of weeks ago, President Jonathan told an African Union Conference of Ministers of Finance, Economic and Planning in Abuja, that terrorists like Boko Haram and others who had access to very expensive weapons were clearly receiving external support.
All of this flies in the face of the partisan charges being levelled against the opposition. If indeed the government and PDP know what they claim, then it is a mystery that decisive action is yet to be taken. A government that has all this information about the ‘terrorist’ activities of opposition leaders and has not apprehended and prosecuted them, can only be described as a joke.
But then, recent Nigerian history is replete with such antics. It was standard practice under the regime of the late General Sani Abacha to accuse every opponent or critic of the junta of coup-plotting. Many were jailed for participating in phantom coups that existed only in the imagination of the dictator’s goons.
The antics and utterances of the PDP and the government show that they still don’t grasp the gravity of the insurgency. If Jonathan and his men think that partisan posturing is the way out, then they should go ahead and solve the problem. But commonsense suggests that this is a time to rally the nation rather than demonising the opposition.
