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By Timawus Mathias
Last week, President Goodluck Jonathan took some courageous steps. He finally paid an official visit to Borno and Yobe States of Nigeria, two states that for all of President Jonathan’s tenure have become “failed” states due to the worsening insurgency of the Boko Haram.
Obviously, President Jonathan’s security apparatus could not throughout the tenure, assure him of the appropriate security cover to enable him pay a visit to the tormented and traumatised states until now. This is a serious indictment. The late National Adviser Andrew Owoye Azazi even after a budget of nearly N1trn could not venture a bold and publicised personal visit to the area, much less secure the President to attend. It was General Sambo Dasuki who braved it to Maiduguri, Damaturu and Potiskum. The criticism of the President for his inability to show personal courage has not been murmured discreetly, but loudly and at times abusively. Invariably, it is personal upon the President is it not? He needs only feel it appropriate to visit his county’s crisis flash point, and have his security details set about actualising his Presidential desire.
Twice, President Jonathan was upstaged in the management of this national calamity. First by former President Obasanjo, who turned up in Maiduguri at the residence of the in-law of slain Boko Haram leader Muhammad Yusuf and indeed left us with a viable roadmap to reconciliation and quantified settlement. Then the 9 Governors of the All Progressive Congress walked the streets of Maiduguri without the panic lockdown that attended President Jonathan’s visit.
In his time, President Shehu Shagari was boldly in Kano at the height of the Maitatsine riots, and in 1984, General Muhammadu Buhari braved the Maitatsine in Yola where he led his visiting team within firing range of the extremists past smouldering Jimeta Market. He was to follow up with the setting up of a judicial commission of enquiry headed by Justice Muhammad Uwais.
A President paying a visit to a disaster or war ravaged zone like Borno and Yobe States serves to encourage the people and give them the assurance of Government’s concern and sympathy. Such visits also provide ample approval mileage to a serving President. President Jonathan’s inability to brave a visit carried devastating political implications and implied that the entire security structure was weak and in fact incompetent.
Another act of courage was President Jonathan’s spoken tacit support for men of the Joint Task Force. In reply to the plea from Borno Elders, the President replied point blank that he would not remove the JTF from Maiduguri without an undertaking from Borno elders of responsibility for any more bloodletting. A clearly angered President accused his “hosts”, of playing to the gallery over the unfortunate activities of the Islamic sect.
The Boko Haram insurgency even at infancy was a mere criminal act contrary to the laws of the land which states that Nigeria is a secular state with guaranteed fundamental rights. But ours is a country where you can get away with almost any crime, drive without a licence, and without vehicle registration, utilise fraudulent educational qualifications and get employed and be continuously promoted till you retire, be identified as a criminal and bribe courts to declare you are not so, abuse public office flaunting every provision in the constitution and not be sanctioned. The cumulative total of our institutionalised corruption, abuse of office by political office holders, and the capacity for culprits to get away with anything brought our country to its knees as we presently are.
When President Umaru Musa Yar’adua relying on security analyses gave orders for a pre-emptive action on Boko Haram, it was the step required of a leader. But the follow-up required even after Yaradua’s death, was a judicial panel of enquiry that would have given the public the stakes the nation was up against. It did not happen. Instead the ruling party rode the back of the tiger for a guarantee of the mandatory electoral 25% of Presidential votes. The foxes mingled with the sheep, and today walk free with murder and the death of thousands of innocents only on their conscience.
A situation in which insecurity in any state means that the affected state would bear the extra budgetary costs of maintaining security undermines the State. In the face of insufficiency and ineffective fund release of budgetary provision for armed forces, police and internal security, professionalism cannot but be compromised to a point the security community becomes suspect also. The Federal Government alone funds the Police and the Military, and should fund all extraordinary security challenges in states that entail the use of a Joint Task Force, even at that, justified only by a judicial probe of circumstances.
Between President Goodluck Jonathan and the Borno Elders Forum, lies knowledge of the truth about Boko Haram. The two parties, staring each other in the face at that town hall meeting should have told each other and us, that whole truth, instead of play to each other’s gallery. President Jonathan said he knew and dined with them.
The Boko Haram spectre is a stain on his tenure record and only naming them and taking decisive action can blot the stain out.
On the other hand, the Borno elders are between the hammer, which is the Joint Task Force, and the anvil, which is the brutal Boko Haram. But they cannot pretend not to know those behind the mayhem which has completely dismembered the entire Kanem-Bornu. They should boldly name them.
Between these two parties lie all truths and the way out of the insurgency.
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