Tag: swap

It began as absence of water. It has climaxed as absence of leadership. How it will end, especially as the saga of missing hundreds of girls surges on, lies in a foggy horizon.

The crisis of Boko Haram was predated by the crisis of water, when the drying of the Lake Chad signaled the decline and fall of its status as the Nile of northeastern Nigeria. The lake provided not only jobs, but also livelihood. Not only livelihood, but also culture. Add to its culture an ambience of peace. It flourished an empire, spawned a big city, opened its portal to all faiths and all peoples, and glorified Africa’s longest reigning dynasty, the Seifawa.

Then drought came but so did doubt. An environment of self-confidence led to questioning the certainties of generations of the economic practices and harmony of its residents. Farmers did not enjoy the nutrients of the soil. Traders could not ferry across to markets. Fishermen nestled their nests rather than fling them for catches. Markets shrank. Drought weakened a doughty people. Where there was food, they had gloom. A diverse and robust economy kept the politicians and leaders at bay. Commerce failed, but a few became powerful.

The immiserated many followed to the lead of an indolent few, a peacock class with messianic agenda. Fruitful people became restless and idle. The first explosion was the Maitasine riots in Kano in the 1980’s. They blossomed in blood and rapine, but they hailed from the Maiduguri area, where Boko Haram first tenanted its zealots.

General Alabi Isama assisted by soldiers like now Senate President David Mark quelled the uprising. The Sambisa Forest, now mythicised as an impossible fortress, was cordoned off, and the rabble of militants was ravished by a deft response under a so-called weak and indecisive Shehu Shagari in the second republic.

Even then the Lake Chad was losing its swath of water to the systematic encroachment of the desert. We failed to plant enough trees. We failed to protect the water. It was the first failure of leadership. Places abound in the world today where they saved lives and civilisation because they saved the water. In the United States, the picturesque state of Colorado with all its luxuriant parks and lakes would probably be gone without care. All the trees in its lush capital Denver are hand-planted.

The second level of leadership failure was the routine neglect of education and commerce by successive state and federal governments. The feudal north hid under a religious cover and entrenched a cynical brand of politics that elevated a few and alienated the rest. Disaster seeds are planted in eras of silence. One of them, now an APC chieftain, once gloated as governor that Borno citizens could not read, and could not understand the adverse media reporting about his failure. After the Maitatsine riots, no one inoculated the society. The disease gradually grew like invidious cancer, and the result was the rise of Yusuf. He rallied the indolent and illiterate, and gave them a society that the government allowed to evaporate.

“Feed them first, and then demand virtue of them,” wrote Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in his novel of patricide, The Brothers Karamazov. He also noted in the novel that what people want is not God but miracle. I believe if you associate the miracle with God, they will go with whatever the God is. Yusuf gave the boys miracle, and he had authority over them. This disaster was seething in quiet promise while the ruling class swaggered. When the monster matured, everyone was blindsided.

Yusuf was killed, and the group’s rage escalated. But some of the governors of the region had used them for political violence in the same way the Niger Delta political class used the militants.

Boko Haram became born and festered in killings, stealing, arson and kidnapping. This leads us to the third example of leadership failure. This involves corruption, ineptitude and incompetence. This began under Yar’Adua, under whose reign Yusuf was killed. But the man was ill, and did not act. However, much of the violence flared under President Goodluck Jonathan. A number of things have gone wrong. One, about N2.7 trillion of security budget has gone unaccounted for since 2011. The U.S. Congress lashed the Nigerian military as ill-equipped and ill-trained. They said our armed forces are even afraid of the insurgents. Foreign powers are now giving us technology that we could have acquired with the princely security budget allocations.

Two, a disconnected leader. President Jonathan did not respond to many of the killings and depredations of the group other than by rhetoric of surrender. He has been uninspired, and he has hidden under a hallucinatory logic fueled by his acolytes that everything is a conspiracy to hang his presidency. The north wants him to fail, and that is the reason for the insurgency. So he appointed a northern oligarch as national security adviser. He has been of no effect. Sambo Dasuki, the NSA, is a prince. But the insurgents are paupers, and the prince has not saved the nation from the paupers because they belong to a different world. His defence minister Gusau’s reign is highlighted by internecine brawls with service chiefs.

Jonathan’s acolytes have adduced the same conspiracy theory to obfuscate all Jonathan’s failures in infrastructure, power, education, corruption, etc. The terrorist has become the bogeyman.

The same logic animated disbelief by Jonathan, his wife, and others in his circle when the Chibok girls were whisked away. Hence it took three weeks for the president to utter a word after his famous Azonto trip to Kano and Champaign fizz in Ibadan. It took the outrage of the world and the persistent reporting by CNN to jolt Jonathan and his “Chai! There is God O” wife to know that not everything is conspiracy. Even at that, he is saying he does not want to swap the detained terrorists for the girls. Some politicians and leaders hold that indefensible position. Hoisting a moral premise that we cannot negotiate with terrorists, they say it negates law and decency. Hogwash. They also say it is American principle.

I love principle, but to quote Oscar Wilde, “persons are more important than principles”. Persons are real, and principles are based on persons. Principles cannot bring those girls back alive. If Shekau is not sincere, at least let us give him the opportunity to fail. But to say that we cannot swap is an act of hypocritical folly. In the past few years, the president’s uncle, the garrulous Edwin Clark’s son and Okonjo Iweala’s mother, among others, were kidnapped. Would they tell us that they were freed without negotiation and release of funds? Let us not be hypocritical. If any of our leaders were like the Chibok man who had two daughters and four cousins with the BH boys, would the issue of swap spark debate? It is an act of not only folly but example of disconnection with the people.

In securing information on Osama Bin Laden, the U.S. gave an Arab partisan a Ferrari in exchange for a phone number. Talk about swap. What shall we lose if we give up those in detention, and get the girls? Not much. The released guys can fight us, but that is a price we can pay. It is an opportunity cost. Would we rather that the girls die or are sold off, or that the prisoners are released? Now that the world powers are with us, we can now track and destroy these guys.