The
President had in a national broadcast made the announcement after his
hurried return to the country in what looks like a panicky attempt to
cover the sore of insecurity he had allowed to fester for so long. For
to speak the truth, the situation in the North-East last week was not in
anyway different from what it had been like in the last many months.
There was therefore no apparent justification for the declaration of emergency.
But
PDP chairman, Bamanga Tukur, has volunteered information which seems a
secret known only to members of his party. The terrorists, Alhaji Tukur
said, have perfected plans to secede from Nigeria with parts of the
North under their control.
One wouldn’t know if the apparent lack
of any significant increase in the state of insecurity in the states in
question is the reason the opposition ACN is not sold on the idea of
emergency rule right now.
For them, the President is only playing
politics ahead of the declaration of campaign for the 2015 elections
with his decision to suspend normal constitutional rule in Borno, Yobe
and Adamawa. Indeed there are doubts in certain quarters as to why
Adamawa should suffer the same fate as Borno and Yobe.
Whatever is
the real reason behind the President’s decision, the bottom line now is
that he seems to be travelling down the road he had until last week
refused to walk through.
The operative word here is that the
President SEEMS to have decided to take on the terrorists and had
ordered the movement of troops. We might wake up next week and find that
the entire talk of declaration of emergency was another blast of hot
air.
We, therefore, need to be sure the administration is sure
about this declaration before we conclude it is ready to take on the
terrorists. For quite a long time now, time during which the terrorists
ravaging the peace of the country have been allowed to consolidate their
stranglehold in different parts, dictating the pace of events by their
campaigns of terror to which Abuja only manages to react every now and
again- for such long time has the President vacillated on what step to
take to counter the surge of terrorism in the country.
One morning
he decides he wants to talk to faceless groups of murderers, one
faction of which vowed to sheath their swords if he could but proclaim
himself an Islamist.
The next night he vows to take on the
terrorists ‘fire for fire’. After two years of lingering too long around
the pit-latrine of indecision, strange flies now buzz in the ears of
Abuja, forcing it to take panicky measures to cover the stench of its
own stool in a sudden access of brave actions.
This column has for
long maintained that the glaring lack of will to take on the terrorists
whose name this column has blacked out for long, a name that
legitimises its existence and confers respectability on it- this column
has repeated again and again that had the President summoned courage and
invoked the powers of his office as the Commander-in-Chief and taken
the fight to the cowards who hide under the guise of religion to commit
abominable acts of violence against longsuffering citizens of this
country, his government would have since scattered them to the four
winds.
But he dithered, wasted precious time because he lacked
both the wisdom and, even more, courage to act when the situation called
for it. The President has never fully recovered from the dizzying
effect of his meteoric rise up the political and social ladder of the
country.
He lacks the confidence that should enable him exercise
the powers attached to his office as president. He appears to be
constantly looking across his shoulders, afraid of both real and
imaginary enemies, leaving Chief Edwin Clarke to do most of the
sabre-rattling on his behalf when the likes of Asari Dokubo are not
threatening fire and brimstone on anyone who does as much as question
the President’s right to a second term in office. The President is the
weakling, the proverbial Dada, the Yoruba says has a courageous younger
brother.
It is, thus, the President’s weakness, his lack of moral
courage, that the terrorists saw and have since taken advantage of,
proliferating into many copycat groups that now call into question the
basis of the Jonathan administration.
For a government that can no
longer guarantee the security of life of its citizens, where the very
structures of state power- the security forces and state establishments
have come under incessant attacks, such government cannot claim to be in
control.
That the terrorists have taken the initiative from the
government is the reason Abuja continually falls into avoidable blunders
and takes panicky reactive measures that have earned it the charge of
human rights abuse. When it confronted the terrorists in Baga and
hundreds of people died, it got the blame.
When the terrorists
returned fire in Bama weeks later, nearly 60 security personnel went
down in the attack, to say nothing of the Nasarawa case where three more
security personnel became mere canon fodders. For all of these, the
administration gets blamed. It’s increasingly clear that the Jonathan
administration’s only skill is in fighting fire. Which now leaves it
with the unenviable irony of sending troops to combat the very groups
for which it recently established a presidential committee that would
engage their members in dialogue.
The fear of the terrorists going
after them was clearly a major consideration for a couple of the
nominated members of the committee that declined their nomination. The
terrorists have shown themselves more reliable in sustaining their
terror campaign than this government has shown in protecting citizens of
the country. Who do you blame for this but the fire fighters in Aso
Rock Villa?
Dear All, 
