By Paul Onomuakpokpo
It is a robust measure of how much the President Muhammadu Buhari
government has lost credibility that the abduction of 110 pupils of Government
Girls Science and Technical College , Dapchi, Yobe State
To be sure, we should
not dismiss the purveyors of these conspiracy theories as sadists who
inscrutably derive fulfillment from the suffering of others. As fellow citizens,
they share the pain of the families of the abductees and the nation. They are
not unaware of the agony parents are subjected to when a child they have sent
to school to learn is abducted. They understand the gnawing anxiety of parents
over the current condition of the abductees, whether they are alive or dead and
whether they would see them again. Their worry is not unfounded. Still fresh in
their memories are the ordeals of the Chibok abductees and those of their
parents. For a long time, nothing was heard about them. Even after the rescue
of some of them, others cannot be accounted for as they have died or the Boko
Haram leaders have made good their threat to sell them off as sex slaves.
Thus, we would not
dismiss the cynics among us as denuded of patriotism that should have made them
to share the grief of their fellow citizens. Secure in the conviction that
their perspective may not be far-fetched after all, they do not cringe before
the prospect of the baleful consequences of culpability for hate speech that
could be deployed by the government against them. They remind us of the
fogginess in the government’s handling of the campaign against terrorism that
has paved the way for the proliferation of conspiracy theories. We are reminded
that the government declared triumphantly that it had defeated Boko Haram. It
pointed out how no local government council was under the control of Boko
Haram. But when the suicide bombings by Boko Haram persisted, the government
was forced to change the narrative by saying that Boko Haram was technically
defeated. Again, the same government declared repeatedly that the military was
closing in on Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau. It even said later that Shekau
had been killed.
But the narrative has
since changed to that of Shekau escaping arrest. And beyond just countering the
government and saying that he is alive, Shekau now appears in videos where he
threatens to wreak more havoc. Worse, after announcing that Boko Haram had been
defeated, the government has been asking for $1 billion to prosecute the
anti-terror war. Yet, the same government does not want the citizens to ask
about the fate of the remaining Chibok girls either still in Sambisa forest or
any part of the world where they are in captivity. In this regard, the members
of the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) movement have suffered at the hands of the
government’s security personnel. They have been arrested, detained, tear-gassed
and beaten simply because they have drawn the attention of the government to
the fact that there is no security in the north-east yet. They have asked the
government not to stop the search for the remaining Chibok girls .Thus, the
Dapchi tragedy is a vindication of groups like BBOG and other citizens who have
equally taken the government to task on security in the north-east.
But in the same
northern part of the country where the government says Boko Haram has not been
completely defeated, it is engaged in a manic rush to rebuild it from the
terrorists-inflicted ruins . Both local and international resources are being
massively deployed into the transformation of the region. And this is when the
government has ignored the need to equally develop the Niger Delta and
specifically to begin the cleanup of Ogoniland that has been ravaged by oil
exploitation and exploration.
It is this atmosphere
of ethical fluidity that has made the cynics to believe that the Dapchi tragedy
did not just happen. They have not ruled out the possibility that what is
considered as an accidental tragedy could be a chorographed abduction through
which the government wants to shore up its dwindling image. This was why the
military withdrew from Dapchi so that the abductors could have an unhindered
access to the school. It is probably because the police were excluded from this
conspiracy that they have been squabbling with the military over which security
agency was supposed to be in charge of Dapchi when the tragedy occurred.
Again, was Dapchi not
inevitable? The Buhari government has been deploying troops in different parts
of the country to fight those it considers as threats to its continued
existence. The government sees these enemies in the south-south, south-east and
south-west. Consequently, it has sent troops to kill agitators under the
rubrics of Operation Python Dance and
Operation Crocodile Smile. The same
government has also possibly made available security personnel to protect
Fulani herdsmen from being punished for their lawlessness.
There was the case of
the herdsmen who were arrested in Edo
State Benue with
soldiers and other security agents. They are not there to arrest the herdsmen
who have killed over 73 people and are bent on violating a law to protect all.
They are there so that herdsmen can keep on raping and killing. And when the
victims dare try to shake off their yoke of oppression by the herdsmen, then
the soldiers and other security agents would swoop on those they consider as
armed militias .It is no wonder then that after they have been thinly spread
like this, there are no military personnel to fight Boko Haram and protect
school pupils in the north.
The security apparatus
of the nation is controlled by northerners. At their security meetings, it is
not likely that they would be objective in such a way that they would consider
the interests of other parts of the country like those of the north. This bias
was demonstrated during the Benue crisis. The
heads of the security agencies might have advised Buhari against the necessity
of visiting Benue if only to commiserate with
the bereaved citizens. If the Buhari government were altruistic in its
leadership of the nation’s security apparatus why has it blithely refused to
restructure it despite the unrelenting criticism of its obvious ethno-religious
lopsidedness?
If the security
apparatus as it is today were so effective, it should have demonstrated this
through some measures as regards Boko Haram by now. It should have identified
the source of its funding and stopped it. It should have been effective in
providing security for the north-east that lives under the spectre of Boko
Haram attacks. And why was it so easy for 110 girls to be abducted without
being intercepted by security agents? How did they get trucks to abduct the
girls? Granted that it was after the military was withdrawn that the Boko Haram
kidnappers struck . But it is not unlikely that Boko Haram members did their
surveillance under the nose of the military personnel before they were
withdrawn. Why did they escape the attention of the military personnel?
The grand conspiracy
theory is that the government has deliberately kept the girls somewhere. It
would rescue them and later use this victory as a campaign stunt ahead of the
2019 election. Whether this conspiracy theory and others are far-fetched or
not, the government has itself to blame. It has so much to do to prove the
cynics wrong.
*Dr. Onomuakpokpo is
on the Editorial Board of The Guardian
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