On a Monday in
September 2015, former finance minister, Chief Olu Falae was on his farm in
Ilado near Akure when some armed men came looking for him. At gunpoint, they
abducted him and held him until the following Thursday. At the age of 77,
he was made to walk several kilometres. He was made to sleep in the rain.
According to his own account published in some national dailies, every half an
hour, his armed abductors threatened: “Baba, we are going to kill you. If
you don’t give us money we are going to kill you.”
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| *Cardinal Okogie |
By 2018, herdsmen were wreaking havoc in the
states of the middle belt of Nigeria. Then, a retired Chief of Army Staff, a
veteran of military intervention in Nigerian politics, General Theophilus
Danjuma, warned that there was ethnic cleansing in the middle belt. Having lost
confidence in the government’s willingness or ability to deal with the
situation, General Danjuma called on the people of the middle belt to take
responsibility for their own security. The reaction of aides to the President
of the Federal Republic was to insult him and call him names he did not deserve
to bear.
Recently, former President Obasanjo added his
voice to those of Chief Falae, Gen. Danjuma and many others, voices warning us
of heightened insecurity in our country. President Obasanjo spoke of
“Fulanisation and Islamisation”. But in what has become a typical reaction from
aides to President Buhari, President Obasanjo’s concerns were not addressed.
What he received were gratuitous insults from President Buhari’s aides.
Nonetheless, it is highly significant that one of President Obasanjo’s most
virulent critiques, Professor Wole Soyinka, urged the federal government to
address the issues he raised.
The issue is neither the character nor the
political affiliation of those who are speaking. The issue is insecurity
and the government’s inability or unwillingness to address the issue.
Nigeria in her vastness is within the firm grips of kidnappers, armed robbers,
herdsmen, bandits and insurgents.
Government officials tell us that Boko
Haram has been “technically defeated”. But there is a wide abyss between
government propaganda and the experience of the citizen. Despite
government propaganda, Boko Haram, with frequent and convincing
repetition, demonstrates that it has more firepower than the Nigerian
military. Our highways are unsafe. A major highway like the Abuja-Kaduna Road
has become a theatre of operation for kidnappers. The northwestern states of
Zamfara and Katsina have become utterly unsafe. They have been taken over
by armed bandits. Yet, all that presidential aides have to offer concerned
Nigerians is insolence.
Shortly after Chief Falae’s abduction,
Nigerians woke up to hear of clandestine and illegal importation of arms into
Nigeria. There were reports that arrests were made. But Nigerians no
longer hear of any judicial process to which these importers are being
subjected. The matter appears to have died. Little wonder we now
live in a Nigeria saturated with ammunition.
How on earth can we claim to be living in a
democratic polity when presidential aides forget or ignore the fact that the
President was put in office by the votes of the people? For if they knew
the principles of democracy, they would not be disrespectful to Nigerians who
happen to hold views divergent from those of government on how affairs of state
are to be handled. One would have thought that, by now, four years since 2015,
presidential aides would have grasped the difference between insolence and
competence.
One does not need to hold any brief for former
President Obasanjo to know that his concerns on this matter are
genuine. One only needs to read carefully the text of his
intervention. One need not be his friend or political ally to observe that
there are one-sided actions on the part of the government in matters of
security. Well-meaning Nigerians express concerns that herdsmen are
treated with kid gloves and allowed to get away with murder while some other
agitators are called terrorists, proscribed and gunned down. A
“technically defeated” Boko Haram continue to hold Leah Sharibu in captivity
while the federal government secured the release of her Muslim schoolmates and
the release of Zainab Aliyu and Ibrahim Abubakar from death row in Saudi
Arabia.
Obasanjo is pointing to an open secret, and
that is: there is a synergy between Boko Haram, herdsmen and ISIS. This
synergy, leading to a gradual implementation of the Islamisation agenda of
ISIS, is what is being referred to as “Fulanisation and Islamisation”. It
is about the imposition by ISIS of its own version of Islam. Whoever
opposes it, be that person Christian or Muslim or Fulani, is eliminated.
The security situation in Nigeria has become
worse than deplorable. Nigeria is being attacked. Is this how we all
will be watching while our country becomes more inhabitable than it has ever
been in her history? Is there leadership in this country? If so, what type of
leadership do we have?
It is the responsibility of the president and
his aides to address the situation in ways that are manifestly even-handed.
There are fears that some people have taken over this country. We are
held hostage on our land. This country is in the hands of invaders,
bandits, herdsmen and kidnappers. Nigeria is under attack. Will the President
and Commander in Chief show leadership?
*Anthony Cardinal Okogie, Archbishop Emeritus
of Lagos
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