By Bola Bolawole
I suspect Minister of Information, Lai Mohamed, will not be happy with what I am going to say here today because he is likely to accuse me of mocking the All Progressives Congress and President Muhammadu Buhari. Truth, they say, is bitter but have we any choice other than speak truth to power, especially when they make themselves comfortable but leave us smart and reeling from their cluelessness and naked incompetence? When they were wooing Nigerians to vote for them so they could torpedo the Peoples Democratic Party and upstage then President Goodluck Jonathan, APC and Buhari boasted they would make a mince-meat of Boko Haram within six months of assuming office. They derided Jonathan as being clueless and incompetent – and we believed them because Jonathan had really not impressed not only on the Boko Haram but on some other fronts as well. Buhari being a military man, an Army general for that matter, we had thought he knew his onions. He had been portrayed before as a no-nonsense military Head of State – even dictator – and we reasoned he would bring same to bear on the war against insurgency. The last straw for Jonathan was the orchestrated abduction of about 300 Chibok girls, ostensibly by Boko Haram – and we concluded the cup was full to the brim and running over for Jonathan. But two-and-half years down the road, there appears to have been little or no difference in our Boko Haram status as per when a “bloody civilian” was Commander-in-Chief and now that a retired two-star General is in charge. Our circumstances are as perilous and the prognoses for the future still as dim.
They have not acted straight or come out clean but have given one excuse after another. We had expected, when they gave assurances they would quickly end the insurgency, that they had done their home work; but it turned out, as it has been also with the economy and other sectors, that APC and Buhari opened their mouth first before putting on their thinking cap. As the saying goes, they leaped before they looked. They ran their mouth over issues they knew were critical and touchy only to use them as campaign gimmicks and not that they already had a blueprint to implement or magic wand to wave. So now that we see them wobble and fumble, somersaulting many times, going forth and back, confused about the efficacy of proffered solutions and unsure of their every next step, an alarmed citizenry cannot but throw tantrums and question their holier-than-thou attitude. Six months and Buhari/APC did not defeat Boko Haram as promised. We were told they did not imagine things were as bad as they came to meet them. Fine, but they have had two more years to brace up; still, no dice.
To cover up, they have enlarged and magnified the little successes recorded again Boko Haram. We heard that they have cleared Sambisa forest of insurgents. We heard, as we did severally under Jonathan, that the Boko Haram leader, Shekau, has been killed/mortally injured. Another vocabulary entered our lexicon when we were told that Boko Haram has been “degraded” Webster’s Universal Dictionary and Thesaurus defined “degrade” as “to reduce in rank or status; to disgrace; to decompose; to be lowered by erosion” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defined it as “to show or treat somebody in a way that makes them seem not worth any respect or not worth taking seriously; to make something become worse, especially in quality” The Dictionary of Military says of “degrade”: “Operational effects include: hinder, slow, reduce, influence, enhance, disrupt, and protect. Tactical effects include: deny, degrade, disrupt, deceive, destroy, reduce, influence, protect, and maintain” Smart alec Gen. Tukur Buratai! If you assumed but did not check it up, you might think when they said they have “degraded” Boko Haram; that they meant they have completely annihilated it. They meant nothing of such, going by the vocabulary they carefully chose to confuse and deceive the unwary. The message they carefully and tactfully conceived, concealed, and purveyed is that they have only managed to reduce the potency of Boko Haram.
Boko Haram is still alive and doing well; this government has failed in its promise to defeat the insurgency in six months. In two-and-half years even, it has failed to do so. We find the evidence everywhere: Boko Haram runs riots throwing bombs and killing people everywhere; including those Buhari referred to as “soft targets”. Boko Haram ambushes and kills soldiers at will. They invade and sack villages like in times past. They take hostages and, if we count, must have taken many more “Chibok girls” than the number that cost Jonathan the presidency. The decision by the government to illegally confiscate one billion dollars from the Escrow account to fight the same Boko Haram is final confirmation that they have failed on the insurgency front, which is one of the critical planks on which their success as a government depends. Good as it is to fight and defeat Boko Haram, legal means must be employed. Seizing the money that belongs to the three tiers of government and trying to short-circuit constitutional provisions (e.g. appropriations by the National Assembly) is impunity and illegality carried too far. Other tiers of government who own that money also have need of it; they must not be blackmailed into submission. There are life-threatening problems that have security implications like the insurgency that need to be tackled in other parts of the country. A bad precedence will be set if this hijack of a whopping one billion dollars is allowed to materialize. Governors that cannot pay salaries and pensions will allude to it. Another government is coming that will build a skyscraper on the foundation being laid by this impunity.
By the way, how much has Boko Haram gulped since APC/Buhari came into office? We have heard charges from soldiers on the field and from international agencies and organizations that funds have been massively looted by military goons, thereby turning the Boko Haram insurgency into their own “amnesty” free money. That way, the war will never end; those feeding fat on it will not let it end since it has become their pot of soup. Like the billions of dollars spent by successive governments on power supply that only produced more darkness, the funds being sunk into the fight against Boko Haram may have become another bottomless pit that will bleed this country dry with nothing meaningful to show for it in the end. Buratai recently said the military’s job on Boko Haram was done and that the remaining job was that of the political class, the intelligence community, etc. That being so, why a whopping one billion dollars; for who; and what? The latest hefty amount being siphoned from the nation’s coffers is, therefore, suspicious. Little wonder, then, that Gov. Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State has alleged that it is meant for APC/Buhari’s election in 2019. Outlandish as this allegation may seem; I have learnt never to put anything beyond our leaders.
–turnpot@gmail.com 0807 552 5533