Chibok 100 days; if Buhari, Bauchi had died…

Chibok 100 days; if Buhari, Bauchi had died…

Sociologists assert that criminals are always a step ahead of law enforcement agents in strategies. But responsible and patriotic security agents are always proactive and not reactive to stem the tide.

But not so much in Nigeria. Our security agents are very reactive, albeit in a slow and timid way. This always give the criminals the leeway to carry out their acts and vanish into thin air. That is why millions could be spent on close circut cameras (cctvs) ina place like Abuja and crimes go undetected.

Wednesday 24th July, 2014 marked the 100 days since the over 100 Chibok Girls were abducted and taken away in a convoy of vehicles in a state under a state of emergency where armed soldiers like water are every where but with little or none useful.

Never mind that the Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Alex Sabundu Badeh has said, almost more than two months ago that they knew where the girls were. Just Last week, the Director General of the State Security Service (SSS) Ita Ekpeyong repeated the same mantra and some want us to give him a standing ovation.

Also, never mind that it took a teenager; 17 year old Pakistanis female education activist, Malala Yusufzai to convince our President to meet with the agonising parents of the abducted girls, almost 100 days after. Never also mind that many in the Presidency never believed that the girls were abducted in the first place.

But you can mind the fact that our President is fast becoming a prisoner of those who advise him and are hell bent on doing anything to ensure they continue feeding fat on our commonwealth beyond 2015. So, they feed him veiled information and as gullible, vulnerable and susceptible as our Oga at the top is, he swallows it hook, line and sinker only to be embarrased later. Yet, we have learn no lesson to make a headway.

So, it is hundred days plus, our girls are still in captivity with only-God-knows-what they are going through. Some parents died out of share agony, but our President feast at any given opportunity as if life is more than normal in his fiefdom.

Few days back, Sheik Dahiru Usman Bauchi was a guest of the President where they observed Iftar together. Few days back, General Muhammadu Buhari refused to be a guest of the President at the Council of State meeting where the Chibok girls abduction topped discussion.

Both the Sheik and the General have been the most critical of the current insurgents and always lay the blame where they rightly think it belongs. They have been very outspoken and always condemn the activities of Boko Haram.

On Thursday 24th July, 2014, the duo were targets of suicide bombers but escaped by whiskers. Why the duo would be the targets of Boko Haram is still very unclear considering the fact that they have been named as possible intercessors between the group and the government in the past. The group had repeatedly expressed their respect and confidence in the duo among others. Would they make a u-turn to eliminate them? Or are there those who do not want an end to this insurgency?

The duo of the Sheik and the General are religious and political idol to many Nigerians and beyond. For anyone who was in Kaduna and witnessed that wary and gory thursday, the escape of the duo was a miracle. A miracle for Nigeria and Nigerians and not for the duo. If the two were killed as planned, the aftermath is better imagined.

But the strategic swift decision to impose curfew by the state government on the town immediately saved the day.

To illustrate this, at the Alkali road scene of the blast, when Sheik Bauchi was made to stand atop a car for many to see that he was unhurt, the people form human shield around him despite the knowledge that after an initial
blast, another could go off within same place and time.

Same happened at the Kawo scene involving General Buhari. If Buhari had not alighted from his vehicle for many to see and calmed the bulging crowd, the reaction that would have followed the rumoured news of his condition would have left very unsavoury phenomenon.

But despite the heroic acts of the Sheik and the General to calm frayed nerves and thousands of their followers and admirers, many parts of the state was tense with people already thinking of the worst. At the Asikolaye, Nnamdi Azikiwe by-pass resident of the Sheik, knife could cut through the tense situation there with the ever busy road becoming a risk zone.

The mass following the two enjoy is fearful. Their followers and admirers could go to any lenght to “avenge” their death. But the question is on who? Who wanted the duo dead? Why? And for what reason, what did they stand to gain?

If that had happened, the reactions that would have followed across the nation would have been disastrous and containing it would also have been enormously up-hill task with dare consequences. This is why the authorities need to change tactics and ensure this phenomenon is brought under control to tame the tide before it consumes the nation.

Less we forget, Kaduna State has fairly well manage consequences of such blast. The residents are highly sensitive and enlightened about this plague that often take the lead in the fight against suspects and perpetrators. This has led to arrest, killing of prime suspects in the past with the aid of security agents through assisted intelligence by the various communities.

In Rigasa, a densely populated Muslim majority community in Igabi Local Government Area, at the last count, nine Police personnel were murdered in cold bold in addition to a polytechnic lecturer, traditional rulers, youths among others; all Muslims. But the community rose, took their fate in their hands and rid the community of the insurgent.

This was until the 2012 attacks on two Churches in Zaria and one in Kaduna. The reprisal that followed left too many dead; majority of the victims were poor, innocent, hard working Nigerians who knew next to nothing about the attacks cutting across all faiths, ethnic and socio-political divides.

Across the North, brilliant and promising young officers are being cut down in their prime in a way that not even the civil war witnessed. Traditional rulers and religious leaders who speak out against this scourge have life snuffed out of them. Prominent and retired senior security officers have suffered same faith. And daily, women and children suffer worst fate with no relieve in sight.

For anyone who knows Kaduna; a miniature Nigeria and the window to all parts of the country, same and even worst would have befallen the state and smoldered the whole nation if Buhari and Bauchi had died in the twin blasts.

This we can ill afford now and the authorities need to rise to the occasion. Time without numbers, some powers that be and those who should know better have said they know the brains behind the insurgents, yet they play the ostrich. Except they are gaining from the daily spilling of innocent bloods, the time to act is now before we all loose it.

Nigeria is greater than any individual, group or their ambition. The time to place it above all is here for the sake of all.

Loss at the polls; Fayemi not first to concede defeat

Loss at the polls; Fayemi not first to concede defeat

One good thing about conceding defeat in any contest, especially politically, is that it deflates the victory candour and elated celebration in the camp of your opponent and the winner.

In Nigeria, the winner takes all mentality is so brazen and discerning, especially since the coming of President Goodluck Jonathan to the presidency.

Between 1999 and the time Jonathan succeeded late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua, the Federal Government as well many State Governments operated what was tagged government of national unity. It invites candidates from the opposition to join the government. This went a long way in neutralising certain tension in the polity.

But not so since the coming of Jonathan. And you may be right to say this single act would have defused some of the obnoxious hara-kiri we now witness in the polity.

It is this winner take all mentality that is making the ruling party (PDP) thumbs it chest for the victory at the Ekiti guber polls. But Governor Fayemi deflated the air in the feet of the victory dancers in Fayose’s and PDP camp by conceding defeat and congratulated his opponent.

But since that act, many have inundated us with how maiden Fayemi’s decision is. Many took it to the level of pronouncing him the first politician in recent Nigeria’s democratic history to have tread such noble and less traveled path. But no, loss at the polls; Fayemi not first to concede defeat and congratulate his opponent.

In 2003 after coming from no where to beat his boss who once moved him from Permanent Secretary position to the class room, Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau got a congratulatory message from Dr Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso after defeating him at the polls.

Kwankwaso did not only conceded defeat, but congratulated Shekarau and also urged his (Kwankwaso) supporters to be calm, pray for the security, peace, unity and good of Kano state under the new government. Shekarau went ahead and broke the jinx of “two term” tenure in Kano. He got re-elected in 2007 while Kwankwaso went ahead and became a Federal Minister incharge of Defence under Chief Olusegun Obasanjo while keeping away from Kano politics.

Kwankwaso, like whirlwind took Kano by storm in the 2011 election and snatched victory from the incumbent Governor Ibrahim Shekarau who fielded one of his lackeys. While Kano voted PDP as governor, they rejected PDP as President and voted CPC just like Sokoto, Kaduna among others.

Professor Charles Soludo left his footprints in the apex bank of the nation; CBN. He tried his political luck at the Anambra guber race on the platform of PDP and lost to the then incumbent and now former Governor Peter Obi on the platform of APGA.

Soludo did not only conceded defeat, he went ahead and congratulated Mr Peter Obi and moved on with his life.

And like many Speakers before him, Honourable Dimeji Bankole emerged the Speaker of House of Representatives like a storm, tried and was as independent of the executives as possible. He made a mark and left with his head high despite lazing the route out for him with corruption charges. But the Courts later cleared him of all charges.

Bankole re-contested the same seat on the platform of the PDP and lost to his opponent on the platform of the then Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) now All Progressive Congress (APC). He did not only conceded defeat but went ahead to congratulate his opponent and the winner in Ogun state.

From the above, we can see Dr Fayemi was not the first to have conceded defeat and embrace his opponent in recent times.

But like Kwankwaso, Fayemi may bounce back to reckoning again in Ekiti if not in national politics.

Let us not turn history upside down. This is just for the record.