It is indeed pertinent to ask if President Goodluck Jonathan, the
armed forces over which he presides as Commander-in-Chief, and other
security agencies, will go after the terrorists that abducted more than
200 teenage girls into their hideout in Sambisa Forest, in Borno State.
That question can be posed in another way: Can President Goodluck
Jonathan go into Sambisa Forest? The point is that the question of
willingness is closely allied to that of capability. But before one goes
on to look at the issue of capability, it is important first to settle
that of willingness because that is at the very heart of President
Jonathan’s administration’s strategy towards prosecuting our own battle
against terror.
From the very beginning when the terror insurgents resurfaced during
his administration, President Jonathan had showed himself incapable of
rising to the challenge. He lacked the will to take on the terrorists
and failed to exercise the power invested in him as president to bring
the terrorists to their knee. He was all too tentative, in turns weak
and vacillating on what to do.
Even though what he needed to do was clear –crush the rising revolt
with one firm and determined blow and thereafter take the initiative
from the terrorists- he was clearly unprepared for it. More so, as the
Northern oligarchy that lost the election that brought him into office
were yet breathing fire and speaking from both sides of the mouth about
the dangers posed by the terrorists. It’s no wonder today that he is
effusive in his gratitude and showering of praise on Mohammadu Buhari
for his belated condemnation of the terrorists.
But lacking both the decision and the decisiveness to act, the
President went about making virtue of his weakness by saying he wanted
to respect the law and avoid the mistakes of Odi and Zaki Biam. But the
criminalities that prompted the military outrage of Odi or Zaki Biam
were not the handiwork of terrorists. Yet, Jonathan blossomed in
weakness and continues today to luxuriate under the delusion of
respecting the rights of beasts who are neither human nor respectful of
the minimum standards of human relations. He dithered way too long in
the pit latrine that flies now swarm around him.
He allowed the sore of intermittent outbursts of hoodlums to fester
into the cancer of routine terrorism with international dimensions. Now
Nigerians wonder how things got to this point where terror has taken
over our land, where school children are shot on their way to sit public
examinations and hundreds of teenage school girls are rounded up in
their hostels and herded into forests within national territorial spaces
known to the ruling authorities. The impunity of terror is spreading
fast as was reported in parts of Mushin in Lagos where rival criminal
gangs terrorised, robbed and raped residents for many hours without a
whimper from the police.
Which brings me back to my earlier question- Will Jonathan go into
Sambisa Forest, will he, can he effectively deploy the apparatus of
state power to take on the terrorists? For his initial lack of
initiative, he now has a tough row to hoe. His job has been compounded
and he cannot and must not expect any relief any time soon- not when his
thoughts are wholly directed at retaining his tenancy at Aso Villa.
His strategy against terror, if he has any, has become too routine to
be effective just as the battle his poorly motivated, battle-weary
military pretended to be waging against the terrorists has been too much
prolonged. You don’t have to be Hannibal, heard of Napoleon, read Sun
Tzu or fought alongside Shaka to know nothing good can come out of it.
It is a non-starter of a battle. We need not confer the grandeur of war
on these boys scout-like skirmishes yet. So let nobody call this a war
on terror.
The postponed meeting between the President and the state governors
last week confirmed the routing bog into which the response to the reign
of terror has fallen into. The much anticipated meeting was an
anti-climax as all that came out of it was the same call on the military
and the security agencies to work to rescue the abducted school girls.
Wonder what comfort this would be to their traumatised families.
This confirms my suspicion that the military, personified by Goodluck
Jonathan, is not ready for Sambisa. Or they wouldn’t make false
military claim on the rescue of the school children or, in fact, got the
actual figures of the abducted wrong while going on with their jaded
promises of ensuring the end of terror.
Although by their initial silence on, justification of and covert
accommodation of the activities of the terrorists, the Northern
oligarchy stands complicit in nurturing them, not minding the
blame-trading, unreflective letter of Murtala Nyako who appeared to have
been sleeping while terrorists prowled his territory. But by playing
footsie with them when he ought to have sent hot lead into their midst
and scattered them into the winds, Jonathan can neither escape blame nor
responsibility for the terrorists gaining ground. So entrenched are
they now that their enclave in the forest of Sambisa is a no-go area for
even the military. The President until recently kept far from the
terror zones in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa and even travellers in far-flung
places like Lagos and Ibadan are now held by the terror of insurgent
attacks as was the case a few days ago. This is pure madness, where
people can no longer see order or feel the protection of state power.
The terrorists have been lionised beyond measure, their capacity
given mythical proportions. Sambisa is now the metaphor of the
forbidden, of the criminalities of the Nigerian society writ large.
Nigeria does have a huge fight ahead of it. Large sections of our
society are being brutalized. The enslavement -and I use that word
deliberately- of over 200 teenage girls in the 21st century in their
fatherland by criminals whose hideout is well-known routs whatever
anyone can imagine. We now have 234 more potential terrorists on our
hand and for no fault of theirs!
The trauma of such enslavement may never be healed. The exploitation
that must go with this enslavement is painful to imagine. That the
parents of these hapless youths are alive to witness this and powerless
to act is beyond words. The shame is not theirs but of a people that
would allow it. We are all held in Sambisa until the terrorists are
destroyed. As a metaphor of our failures and challenges many are the
Sambisa and Soka forests in which Nigerians are bound. There is the
Sambisa of corruption, the Soka of misappropriation, of dereliction of
duty and, above all, inept leadership.
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