On the Boko Haram insurgency, the insecurity crisis, and #BringBackOurGirls: I was in Sierra Leone on the day Boko Haram [bombed] the UN building in Abuja. As soon as I returned to Nigeria I called the inspector-general of police to hear his views on the issue. I was not impressed with his explanation. I also talked to the then national security adviser and his explanation was substantially blank. I went to Jonathan, the president, on the same issue. His reaction, and his view that Boko Haram were ‘a bunch of riffraffs’ left me even colder. The one incident that overtly and graphically exposed the ineptitude, ineffectiveness, inefficiency, carelessness, cluelessness, callousness, insensitivity and selfishness of Goodluck Jonathan was the abduction of about 276 school girls from Chibok in Borno State by Boko Haram. The reaction and attitude of our president and his household was non-belief, to the extent that 18 days passed before he grudgingly concede to accept the reality of the abduction. If serious action had been taken within 48 hours, the story could have been different. I was not surprised that the president went dancing twenty-four hours after the Nyanya explosion that took seventy-five lives. I also found believable the statement allegedly credited to the president after both the Nyanya explosion and the Chibok school girls abduction to the effect that since some people in the North had said that they would make Nigerian ungovernable, they could keep on killing and abducting each other. If these girls are not released, it will be a big dent on the presidency of Goodluck Jonathan, and a dark blot on Nigeria’s reputation and history; and, for years and indeed decades, Nigeria will continue to live with the agony and memory of the action and inaction of leadership regarding the Chibok school girls. But what is more, a bad precedent would have been created; Boko Haram has tasted blood and will always want more… Who knows, another group of terrorists might have learned from Boko Haram. This time it is Chibok; next time it could be Ibogun or Otueke. Vice-President Biden had categorically told Jonathan during the African Summit in Washington in August 2014 that with the state of his governance and the level of the destruction of the military, they would not be able to help Nigeria. Obj books
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 00:12:50 +0000
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