By Steve Osuji
THE MOST INCOMPETENT SINCE BEGINNING OF TIME: It couldn’t be worse than this. There couldn’t possibly be a less capable leader than this. Nigeria never suffered and tottered so much in her history. Nigerians are all but boiling their old leather shoes for meat.
It is not Boko Haram that troubles Nigeria. It is not the rampaging bandits, nor inflation, nor killer cholera. It is Buhari’s incompetence that is killing Nigeria. Everything that ails Nigeria is a symptom of a president’s prostrate incapacity.
DENY, DENY, DENY EVERYTHING: It’s bad enough the president and his cabinet of incompetents can’t get anything done, but what makes us mad is denying the fact of their ineptitude in our face. Searing our souls with the hot rods of their stupidity.
This intervention is triggered by the last National Security Council meeting in Abuja last week. Chaired by the president with the VP, the service chiefs and security chiefs in attendance, it was a back-patting session. Nigerians were told that the president was satisfied with the various efforts by the military to curb insecurity in Nigeria.
Goodness gracious! Who are these people? In which planet do they live? They must be soulless men from outer space? How could a president and his team live in denial of the pains and perils they have inflicted on the citizenry?
THE GORONYO BLOODBATH: Sunday, the 17th of October, 2021 has been described as Black Sunday in Sokoto State. The National Security Council meeting referred to above was three days after the Goronyo massacre.
According to reports, bandits numbering about 200 riding on motorbikes, had invaded the weekly Goronyo market in full session that Sunday evening. They reportedly encircled the market and started mowing down the people, pressing in as they gunned down anyone in sight. In total, no fewer than 60 buyers and sellers were slaughtered like mere beasts and scores injured.
The daredevils were said to have rode straight back to the Gundumi forest from whence they had emerged. Not army, not police, not airforce, not vigilante challenged them. Not a shot was cracked at them.
Yet the men charged with securing us told us three days later that they were satisfied with their work. Not a mention of the Goronyo gorefest! They were satisfied because, according to them, they had finally killed Shekau who had 9 lives and who had previously been killed about 9 times by the same military.
They had also vanquished a certain El Barnawi who led the dreaded ISWAP. All these ‘great conquests’ sound like fairytale to we the citizenry; but we are supposed to just take their words for it…
But if our president and his security lords forgot Goronyo so soon, how come they didn’t hear about the Abuja-Kaduna train attack. Explosives had been rigged to the rail tracks and it was sheer grace that spirited a trainload of passengers away from harm on Thursday morning, October 21.
Two things are significant in this attack: first it was reported that there was ample security tip-off before the attack. And second, it is said that the attack was the handiwork of ISWAP.
DENIAL AND EVEN MORE DENIAL: The theatre of the absurd which our country has become continues to stream relentlessly last week. It was the week that was that reputable US newspaper, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that the Nigerian Air Force (NAF), paid bandits the sum of N20m in a brokered deal to retrieve a 12.7 calibre anti aircraft gun they had seized from the Nigerian military.
The lethal gun had to be retrieved for fear that the bandits may use it to drown the Presidential jet which plies that route to the president’s hometown in Katsina. Though NAF has vehemently denied the report, but who do we believe? Why should Nigerians believe their Airforce when last July, before their eye, bandits in that axis downed NAF Alpha jet and a gallant Flt. Lieutenant Abayomi Dairo escaped miraculously. It is the same bandits that had enough calibre guns to shutdown an Alpha jet that we speak about here. WSJ is a reputable and independent newspaper of record, why would it concoct this kind of story?
CRIME SCENE AT THE HEART OF AFRICA: And if WSJ traded in mischief, would The Economist of London also seek to denigrate Nigeria and her military just for the fun of it?
In a blistering editorial in its current edition which had Nigeria’s tattered flag on the cover of its international edition, the newspaper was unequivocal in accusing the Nigerian military of selling equipment to insurgents terrorising Nigeria.
Do you see a connection here in the WSJ story about NAF paying N20m ransom to retrieve an anti aircraft gun? Is there a possibility that some unscrupulous officers compromised the anti aircraft gun only to force a ransom?
The Economist’ editorial titled: Crime Scene at the Heart of Africa has a pot pourri of slurs and indignation for Nigeria which prides itself as the giant of Africa.
But the paper surmised Nigeria’s woes thus: “Two factors help explain Nigeria’s increasing instability; a sick economy and a bumbling government.” This sums the Nigerian situation except that the sick economy is a mere symptom of a sick, inept president, as has been noted here already.
The Nigerian Army has also denied The Economists’ editorial, branding it “an attempt to destabilise the Nigerian government.”
MASARI MARINATED: But the circumstances are heaped high in support of the two reports by foremost American and British journals. Nigh every Nigerian in every part of Nigeria would tell you the Nigerian woe tale and the debacle that is his president for six and half years.
Even as the military and security chiefs beat their chest over their achievement, the Katsina State Governor, Aminu Masari is in distress, appealing for the FG to declare a state of emergency on security. Poor Masari has been marinated in the vortex of the worst terror by bandits in the northwest. He fought them, he cajoled them, he offered amnesty… nothing worked. Last August, he asked his subjects to take to arms and defend themselves. Still he suffers a daily barrage of mass abduction, mass murders, closure of schools and huge ransom payouts.
Most of the landmass of Katsina is occupied by bandits. One wants to wager that Governor Masari is not sure if the Government House, the seat of power, would not be overrun tomorrow. And do you care for a little secret? This embattled Katsina is President Buhari’s home state!
FINALLY, DON’T BET ON ANYTHING IN NIGERIA: The story of the Buhari tragedy is very long. The other day gunmen struck at a Correctional Centre in Oyo town, Oyo State and freed about 1000 inmates. Breaching jails has almost become routine in Nigeria today. Indeed, everything has become commonplace here: deaths, massacres, abductions, etc.
How about this little story: Last Sunday I jokingly told my Facebook government apologist friend from Niger State, Muhammed Mohammed Adamu.
He was making excuses for the military chiefs and I bet with him that before the week ran out, there would be at least one case of abduction in his state, Niger. But in less than 24 hours, during the early morning Muslim prayers, gunmen stormed the mosque at Mazakuka in Mashegu Local Government Council of Niger State. They opened fire on the worshippers killing about 18 and abducting 19. The terrorists were said to have escaped into the Kainji Lake forest, the fortress of the bandits in the State.
This wager with Adamu was to buttress the fact that our military chiefs are not on top of the game as they claim. In all the attacks mentioned here, none was preempted, none was interdicted and none was responded to. The bandits simply take their pick at us when they desire and walk away coolly into the forests.
PRESIDENT’S BANDITS, NIGERIA’S TERRORISTS: Finally, the most numbing act of all is President Buhari’s refusal to declare the bandits of the northwest as terrorists. He remains adamant in spite resolutions by the National Assembly, State Houses of Assembly and nigh all Nigerians. Why would you insist a band of people who have raised arms against the state for over six years, shut down NAF jet, caused the shutting down of schools and killed hundreds of thousands of fellow citizens are not terrorists?
In which other country of the world does a president protect a murderous group terrorising the state?!
▪︎ Osuji is a newspaper columnist and senior editor.