That shall we say now, but shall we continue in silence so that violence may abound? We forbid.
Many will contend that all have been said of the Federal Government’s impotence in tackling Boko Haram. We have heard, now as before, that we are witnessing a failure of intelligence. But what we have not established is whether the failure derives more from naivety or corruption. We know it is certainly not equal parts. We just don’t know in what measure naivety and corruption share the ignoble pie.
We have said also that President Goodluck Jonathan falls shy of appreciating enough the gravity of the epidemic. Not just because of the cavalier fatalism of his speech that it will all vanish someday. His deeds show it. Barely two years ago he flew across to Brazil after Boko Haram bombs and guns made carrion flesh of human lives at home. His men said in a world of e-governance, he could direct affairs from anywhere. He resonated more with the samba of Brazil than with the heartbeats of the bereaved. Last week, he did same. His face wrinkled with grief in a hospital the day 75 persons died from the Nyanya bus terminal explosion in Abuja. The next day, he danced on their wounds at a campaign ground in Kano and jetted to Ibadan to clink birthday glasses with the Olubadan.
So who is the real Jonathan, the one with compassion or the campaign man with a will to power or the merry man at Ibadan in the ambience of champagne?
No one wanted the President to donate blood, but the soulless act of the Kano visit came to high relief when a diplomat was donating blood to the victims in Abuja. On that day, the president revealed he gave money to delegates through Kano State Governor Kwankwanso to give to delegates to ease his electoral victory in 2011. Sin upon sin, this time the sin of inducement for electoral victory.
But that was not the time for such detonation of angry words when others, including Speaker Aminu Tambuwal and former Governor Bukola Saraki paid visits and donated blood.
Again, the PDP spokesman and Goebel’s mock reincarnate, Olisa Metuh, said the opposition APC was responsible for the bombing. Neither the president has publicly called him to apologise nor has the party sanctioned him for such reckless effusions in mimicking Hitler’s publicist.
This is not the sort of drama from the presidency that affirms a sense of sobriety and aggressive thinking in stamping out Boko Haram. If the president acts with such Janus-faced devotion to war, what do we expect from the intelligence agencies, the military and the other staff involved in the combat against the bigots.
That is why no one has a right to be silent about the weaknesses in the fight against terror. Lives are being lost, markets shut down, schools in paralysis and societies on hold.
Terror was the matter the same day he danced in Kano and joyed in Ibadan when 129 girls were whisked away by the red-blooded militants. Was that news not enough to call off any such matter? Was it out of place for the president to say that the nation was in sackcloth and dour moods and no time for barnstorming and birthday revelry? Even his supporters in Kano, who are no strangers to such bloody inanities, would have understood. Ditto the Olubadan.
The story of the girls became another narrative of lies and distortions. The army headquarters said it rescued over 80 of them. The news reporting in the media should have been more wary because the army’s own story did not show any rescue. In their footloose account, they reportedly found the girls already free. You don’t rescue free people. The girls who fled in defiance were the heroines of the tale. The army recanted but it calls in question how much of earlier press releases from the army about captured militants and weapons impounded bear credibility.
All of these reports tell us how shabbily we are fighting this war. Again, Saturday Punch of April 19 reported that N76 billion was wasted on technologies to monitor the terrorist mischief in Abuja. All of it has broken down. Is this accountability or corruption or incompetence? According to the report, the programme did not cover the area of the Nyanya bombing even if it worked. Year after year, princely sums are devoted to defence, specifically against Boko Haram. What has happened to all of it?
The APC has called for a summit with neighbouring countries, including Chad and Niger. Those countries can help, but the nation ought to wring the hands of France. Our neighbours are, at heart, still French satellites, a decision they made in the years of President Charles de Gaulle. France has not taken the matter as seriously as it has deployed forces and diplomatic pressures on French-speaking nations on the continent like Mali. The insurgents there have been subdued.
But the issue of summit barely addresses more fundamental issues. If the neigbouring countries fail to rein in the militants from entering our country, is it now their responsibility once they are in Nigeria? Where are our cameras to monitor the movements of these militants and the personnel to react? What role do the civilian JTF boys play these days? The insurgents attacked two schools in about a month. How was it that cameras could not track them down, if they were available?
Lagos State has established a model for all of Nigeria with real-time cameras covering vital arteries and institutions in the state. The governor of example, Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, has showcased this and it has worked with evidence in tackling criminals and unearthing cells in the state. It is a sharp contrast to the N76 billion extravaganza.
As the penman of conservatism, Edmund Burke, once asserted, “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” In this case, is it that our government is doing nothing, or they cannot do the right thing? I weigh with the latter.
It is not as if we don’t have the resources or potentially the men. The point is, the government is not ready. Declaring a state of emergency was hailed last year. Clearly it is hard to call it a success when the group clucks defiantly while we bleed and weep. They lull us into false triumph with strategic retreats and wake us into horror with bombs, shootings and abductions in their macabre rhythms of silence and thunder.
Said Winston Churchill who knew about winning a war that seems hopeless: “no one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it.” Our government still doesn’t know how to deserve it.
