THE EARLY STAINS OF MAY Chapter three Dangers are not liabilities There have never been a government political approach in Nigeria that can truly be identified as ‘the war against terrorism’, the term is only but a phrase that is too much of a political chastisement on familiar minds with the secret wishes of Nigeria’s disintegration, an approach that became a necessity for peace ever since the period of chaotic situation in the Niger- Delta began to demand for the exigency of a clarion call from the nation’s security agencies when the prospect of the amnesty option was becoming difficult to taking form. The phrase have come to lack the moral imperative necessary for the compulsive political configuration of the many compound fault of the ruling party, the PDP; and it has suddenly become the inappropriate term for sovereignty that is more likely to be applicable to the feasible moment of adherents in the hands of die hard politicians who naturally will exaggerates its prerequisite over patriotism; and it appears that only the federal government of Nigeria and its security agencies have cultivated the habit of self delusion in the matter because as far as the opposition parties are concerned, especially those found in the level of state government who still think of themselves as an ‘amalgam’ of progressives the so called ‘war against terrorism’ in Nigeria is a slow passing phase of political indulgence that is unleashed on the nation by leaders of the ruling party at the centre of government with a narrow psychology of bipartisan politics, because the insurgents at best are but ‘gullible politicians’ with a poor sense of political fatigue and at worst a disenchanted minority with a strong sense of disagreement on the best approach to the structural deficit in the inevitable path of statism and that Nigeria is Africa’s most populous black nation only makes it worse for the crisis to abate because it makes it difficult for the civilian population to be protected by the military from this faceless minority that permanently live in their midst; so that on the long run the symbiotic relationship between the political class and the security agencies is nothing more than the direct result of an over lapping political objective of what the role of government should be in the heat of the crisis and the outcome is always the recurrent stigma of the security agencies being seen as a relic of the military era in a civilian regime without having a new form of shock absorber to the possible news of its own infiltration in the face of growing insurgency; however the tragedy of the Nigeria security architecture is that it was demystified by the denigration of the Nigeria political class and not the military elite that often takes the blame for its not so intransigent stance, so that the contradictions that followed only left the citizenry confused as to whether to believe that the appropriate security agencies that accommodate these credible options of her national security at any time of crisis are themselves credible enough to be called a legitimate benefactor and not a disgruntled beneficiary of ad infinitum with another three letter acronym from the poor national commentary of its past, but this is not to say that the security agencies by their acquiescent nature do not render to themselves a form of purposeful leadership that emphasizes on the salient point of their legitimate protest to the workings of government; rather it simply means that though they are privy to the pre-conditions of despotism from time to time as a profane behavior of elitist impulse, they do not however question the ‘laundry business’ of the government domestic affairs, because by the simple rules of their professional orientation to be made less obvious by default is not the same as obliteration; and because nothing is more embarrassing to a security agency than to suffer from the lapses in its own security architecture when the government of the day becomes fully aware of its own inner devolution of power that is not amenable to reason on the side of its own inner disagreement, the potential powers given to it by the executive arm of government in such moment of its inner crisis naturally allows them to perpetuate their perfectionist tendencies in contempt of some provision of the constitution as they themselves move closer to the ‘sound’ of the political class cry of ululation that naturally will allow them to interpret the state house as a sturdy institution of government functioning on behalf of the lesser part of society but all in the name of the rich and powerful elite that they protect, because they cannot pretend that they are not un aware that the nation’s security agencies will always experience a secret power struggle among its ranks; and it all begins with an exceptional mindset that never publicly trade in the sentiment of politicization so that it is not surprising that the frequent use of the words ‘the Somalisation of Nigeria’ in recent times have been long quietly rejected by the top hierarchy of the nation’s security architecture even before it began to suffer the disapproval of the Nigeria public because to them it lacked in itself the necessary force to make it carry the appearance of a national redemption project that they represent. What this means is that the believers of this ‘national condolence’ statesmen who are already too deep in this intrepid venture have only ended their private conversations on the suspicious side of condominium by choosing to make more public their personal reservations, it is on this ‘chaos theory’ that the accountability of General Theophilus Yakubu. Danjuma’s silence only became the near possibility of a statesman’s pessimism that came with a much awaited political correlation of abhorrence because the failure to secure more convictions on the matter only made the tempo of his statement to follow the abiding promises of his post civil war convictions and forfeit the legitimacy of his adamant claim on behalf of a more understandable national view. If there is anything that the General did not made public in his statement but which can be said to be the final analysis of his comment by the implication of the use of the phrase ‘the Somalization of Nigeria’ is that sooner or later Nigerians will have to choose between inviting the military to take over from the civilian government of President Jonathan or call for a confederation system of government to stop the bloodshed from an already escalating war within her borders, in other words the country must find a way to go back to Chief Ojukwu’s ‘Aburi Accord’ of the 1960’s so it can save lives because dangers are not liabilities but self fulfilling prophecies to the elite class who are not un aware of their limited but open ended options to solving a crisis of this magnitude and until recent times the intricate pattern of Nigeria politics never seem to have found interest in questioning the commensurate achievement of the military and her intelligence network on its mandate of defending the territorial integrity of the country but with the coming of the Boko Haram insurgency the level of unpredictable situation that have over clouded the nation have only made happenings in the north more complicated than the intrigues of the Niger-Delta oil politics as can be best remembered by political observers in the twentieth century Nigeria, this is because the crisis have only made the military more venerable to infiltration, no doubt Nigeria democracy have been in danger since 2001 when the insurgency began to grow stronger in all of the nation’s geo-political zones and because the military conveniently stands between the nation’s survival and the insurgency threat, a very important strategic position in the normalization process to the country’s political sanity, the possible temptation of military assertiveness on the minds of over ambitious military officers who see in the ripple effect of the crisis the holy grail of despots have for too long lingered with us as a people, and that the political class cannot be more careful in their political utterances than in this moment of the nations lamentations, at least to help avoid a repeat of the unfortunate event leading to the 1966 coup that ended the first republic without warning can never be over emphasized. Ever since the Nigeria military in their best element handed over power to the weak temperament of the political class in late spring of 1999 the act of understanding the coincidence of ‘the imaginations of the military’ have simply disappeared in to the busy schedule of the nation’s technocrats with less presumptive insinuations. Under past military regimes the ‘khaki boys’ were closely monitored with a sense of ‘administration’ but under civilian regime it is done with a lesser understanding of the indebt of their moral laxity because there is always the option of the civilian price tag of ‘consolation by appeasement’, so that the unanswered questions of why the military executed a bloody coup d’état in 1966 and not even a single practical attempt since 1999 remains not only a lost opportunity for the preservation of the nation’s democracy in terms of a health political research model but also the creation of a false assumption that exist on a continuous basis and that a significant reduction in the leadership of the military under the excuse of separating political soldiers from the professionals soldiers will help in many ways to minimize the negative impact of its brutal mentorship, especially in helping to understand why it is no more interested in the state house in recent times is only but the fallacy of their own imaginations that rest on the poor argument that the feasibility of the defunct previous three republics were only lacking in the factualism of strong institutional political leverage, the truth is that there are simply no credible institutions in Nigeria today except the ones that exist outside of government. Nothing makes this danger more obvious than the fact that the leadership of the Boko Haram sect now attempts to speak on behalf of the northern political elite and by extension the military elite it once feared, so it appears to be from media headlines but it is only but a false assumption of the sect’s intransigence that appears to become less revealing by the day, even though nothing seems to be strange about this development of misrepresentation since there is nothing that the sect demands of the country today that the political leaders of the north have not already demanded of the country in the past, the only difference being in their use of semantics and the inappropriate moment of their auspicious timing , because to be fluent in the exclusive language of religious extremist without being a master in its translation only makes one as good as becoming a slave to its interpretations; and in this case the military elite from the north are the victims of this propaganda war only because of their refusal to speak out more openly against the activities of the sect. The simple truth is that the controversies of the destructions that the sect creates in the north have its own conflicting emotions among the military elite of northern extraction because of the lingering issue of zoning which however do not allow an outsider to enjoy the luxury of its symmetry in relative terms to its political control over the psychology of citizens in the south that do not seem to trust the leaders of the north more than they fear the activities of the sect, this by extension means that the sect’s psychological defiance of all that is intrinsic to civilization and modernity in the true sense of nation building have in turn added the dimension of religion to the nation’s already growing dangers of tribal sentiment, and the end result of this perceived ideological similarity between the sect and the leaders of the north is a regional acclamation for Sharia law to replace secularism in the south any time soon like it was successfully achieved in the north in the past, and that the only saving grace for the citizens in the south is base on the fact that the non members of the sect who believe in the practice of Sharia to be an acceptable choice seem to do so with a condition and that is that only if it will create room for individualism that will help sustain the greed necessary for materialism to succeed over patriotism because in the eyes of politicians everywhere in the world both are needed advantage to help sustain the complementary angles of leadership which for now seems to be fully in the hands of President Goodluck Jonathan who many from the north especially the ‘bigwig’ of his administration are still watching to see if indeed he carries on his political template the recrudesce of ‘the Ijaw agenda’ which is the unexpected danger they fear most that will likely make them yet a political liability to the ‘interest’ of the north and this they cannot know; not until the end of 2014, the year of ‘Nigeria’s two constitutions’.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 14:03:54 +0000
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