Four weeks ago, President Goodluck Jonathan and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), using the service chiefs forced Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, into acquiescing to a six-week postponement of elections that the entire country had been primed for.
The military ostensibly needed the time to finish off Boko Haram – or at the very least degrade its fighting capabilities. So they fired off a missive to Jega informing him they would be unavailable for middling assignments like general elections. Boxed into a corner, the commission did the pragmatic thing rather than expose its ad-hoc staff and potential voters to unknown hazards.
But it was also a badly kept secret that the ruling party desperately needed breathing space to stave off what would have been a St. Valentine’s Day electoral massacre had the polls gone ahead on February 14 as scheduled.
So, while the army would be busy bruising the head of the insurgents in the North East, the PDP would take the six-week breather to equally degrade the surging momentum of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari.
In that time, the ruling party hoped its monetary advantage would come to tell as the opposition depleted its resources. It would have more time to destroy the credibility of INEC and its leadership as well as besmirch the reputation of APC’s leading lights through negative advertising. But more importantly, it hoped that positive spin-off from a successful military campaign against the insurgents would work to the advantage of the incumbent.
Everything that has happened since the fateful night of February 7 when a doleful Jega announced the movement of the polls, confirms that the postponement was forced through to buy time for Jonathan and PDP. So have their chances been dramatically improved over the last four weeks?
It’s been a long time since the nation enjoyed any measure of sustained success against the insurgents. The gains achieved in the military campaign in the North-East, in conjunction with multinational support from Chad and Cameroon, are heartening. Boko Haram have been forced out of places like Baga, Mubi and Monguno, and for the first time in a long while they are the ones turning tail and running.
That marks out the liberation of territories as the signal achievement of the last month. It lines up with the expectations of the administration.
But any expectations that Jonathan and his party would not seek to make political capital out of the military gains were swiftly dispelled when barely days after the battles the president showed up in fatigues on the frontline for photo opportunities. The victories quickly became PDP’s property and not a national achievement to be owned by the whole country and its people.
Given that these gains happened on his watch, no one can restrain him from dashing to claim credit. But he should also be ready to take responsibility for allowing the mess to fester to the point that a huge chunk of sovereign Nigerian territory was seized by the insurgents. If he wants to take credit for cleaning up a mess that developed under him, he’s welcome.
However, he must understand that it is the electorate who would determine whether he deserves any credit for what the military has accomplished so far. As for me, I am sufficiently impressed with the speed with which Jonathan sewed his Nollywood General’s uniform.
If only he had acted with such alacrity in confronting the insurgency as it evolved over the last five years, we may not be where we are today. Did 15,000 have to die, did millions have to become Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), or tens of thousands become refugees in Cameroun? Did the rural economy and local governance structures of the North-East need to be devastated before the Nigerian state could be roused from its slumber? And for this the president is proudly strutting around with a walking stick!
All the election-focused frontline photo shoots cannot obliterate the fact that the president had all of five years to do the needful, but he dithered at critical points.
How can we forget that years ago when many were canvassing the very tough action that is now being taken, Jonathan was against dealing with Boko Haram harshly because he didn’t believe we should unleash the military against ‘our own people’? What is he doing now?
How can we forget that when in 2012 the United States wanted to declare the sect a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) in order to target and cut off its financial supply, this administration sent very senior officials to the State Department to lobby strenuously against the move? They found listening ears in the then Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.
At that point, a delegation of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) led by its president, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, fed up with its members being murdered by Boko Haram arrived Washington to push for FTO designation and tougher measures against the insurgents. Imagine their shock when they found officials of their own government lobbying furiously for the very opposite.
Today, Jonathan and his party put the gains of the military down to the arrival of recently purchased armaments. The president has been accusing all his predecessors of not equipping the armed forces. At a campaign stop in Lagos not too long ago he alleged that Buhari didn’t buy a single rifle for the military when he was Head of State.
What he was inferring was that the military were not properly equipped. Now it is fashionable to admit the truth in order to project the image of ‘the great armourer’ of the Nigerian military. But anyone who has not been afflicted by political amnesia would recall that Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima, said the same thing eons ago. For having the temerity to suggest that the insurgents were better armed than our soldiers, the Presidency unleashed a barrage of verbal attacks against him.
How many recall that at some point the wives of a group of soldiers posted to the frontline staged an embarrassing public protest insisting that their spouses wouldn’t move an inch unless they were properly equipped?
How many lives were lost before the president finally accepted that truly our soldiers were outgunned? Today, the president sends delegations to go and appease the parents of the Chibok girls. This is the same man who with his wife made public statements claiming that the abductions never happened! In one of the lowest points of the Jonathan tenure, the First Lady wept theatrically and claimed that the whole episode was the work of her husband’s political foes.
The truth is that the Jonathans don’t do empathy very well. Today, the president is posturing as the champion of communities like Baga. But many will recall that when news first broke that Boko Haram had massacred an unprecedented 2000 persons in the community, not a peep was heard from the Presidency. Instead, Jonathan was busy sending condolence messages to the people of France over the killing of 12 people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine!
If he truly loved the military he would not have waited until the election week to do what he claims his predecessors left undone. People are not fooled. They can tell that this love-in with the armed forces is election-flavoured. It is just too late in the day to start to show leadership in this critical area.
A tired old cliché says that the hood does not make the monk. It is action, not a well-cut uniform, that makes a credible Commander-in-Chief. When President Barack Obama signed off on the execution of Osama bin Ladin he didn’t need to dress up like General Norman Shwarzkopf of the Iraqi Desert Storm war fame.
It is going to take more than the two-week military offensive in the North-East to alter perceptions about Jonathan’s performance as it concerns insecurity. Voters are going to be asking themselves: between General Buhari and ‘General’ Jonathan who will do a better job in guaranteeing national security? You are that voter: decide and vote wisely!
