By Chris Gyang
Governor Hope Uzodimma of Imo State is the typical Nigerian politician. With utmost dexterity, he has mastered the intrigues of survival in this most brutal and unconscionable trade. For instance, in 2018, Mr. Hope promptly dumped the PDP, his party since 1999 on which platform he served two Senate terms, and joined the ruling APC.
He had
realised that his prospects of becoming governor as an APC candidate were
brighter than as that of the PDP. And, true to his reckoning, he later emerged
as governor – even though it took a Supreme Court ruling to confirm his
victory. Self-preservation and political survival is the name of the game.
Apparently, Governor Hope had mastered it so well.
The day before the Nigerian government announced the arrest of Nnamdi Kanu, Governor Hope had advised his fellow Igbo people to support the Buhari-led Federal Government because, “After God in Nigeria, the next person is Buhari. He has the power to dictate where there should be light or not, and it happens.” The governor was widely condemned by Nigerians, some of whom dubbed his utterance as blasphemy for almost comparing Buhari to God.
But most
politicians like Governor Hope, and there are many of them, see in President
Buhari a god-like figure who possesses absolute power over and above all of us
ordinary Nigerians. This perception is fed by the narrative that Mr. President
is the epitome of incorruptibility – a commodity that is very scarce on
Nigeria’s political turf. This has been debunked by the consistent ranking of
his administration by Transparency International as one of the most
sleaze-infested in the annals of the country. Nevertheless, Buhari’s power is
even more awesome in the eyes of those self-serving politicians who believe
that he will be the ultimate giver and dispenser of political power, come 2023.
Which
is why a venomous personality cult has been woven around him and an unctuous
brood of subservient men and women have slavishly put themselves at his beck
and call. Which is why Governor Lalong has vowed to die for him. Which is why
Bola Ahmed Tinubu would sacrifice his hard-earned reputation and the yearnings
of the people of the South West simply to ingratiate himself with Buhari and
all the eggregious values he represents. Which is why state governors, parliamentarians
and sundry politicians are daily flocking into an APC that has been reduced a
pliable puppet in the grips of Buhari and his minions.
No wonder, Governor Hope believes that his people in the South East have been justifiably marginalised by the central government because they deliberately placed themselves outside the reach of Buhari’s benevolent hands. In the governor’s candid opinion, this willful intransigence of the Igbo race will neither hurt Buhari nor his kinsmen in the far North. Rather, it will only be adding to the suffering of the Igbos because “He [Buhari] will stay there until eight years’ tenure is over. He will develop his place and help his people and leave while we remain here crying.”
Therefore,
the only way out of this self-imposed predicament and its debilitating
consequences is for the Igbo nation to plunge headlong into the ‘mainstream’ of
Nigeria’s politics, where the generous Mr. Buhari holds sway. “So let’s stop
wasting our time and start talking in the same tone with others. There is
nothing like someone being with the ruling party,” Mr. Hope enthusiastically
concludes.
However,
Governor Uzodimma’s political pedigree appears to suggest that this homily of
hope may not after all lead to the general upliftment of the South East. It may
merely feather the political nests of a few individuals whose goal is perpetual
aggrandizement and continuous political rebirth. They say that this governor is
rooting for a highly suspicious ‘Hope’, a kind of Greek Gift.
Kanu’s
arrest and the duplicity of the north Although this could be a mere
coincidence, there is a feeling among a section of Nigerians that the arrest of
the IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, only a day after Mr. Hope’s counsel to his
kinsmen somehow underscored the plausibility of his political sensibilities and
beliefs. Come to think of it, has that arrest not shown that President Buhari
and his government can indeed influence the affairs of Nigeria in a most
profound way because of the unbridled power at his disposal?
Despite the
fact that the details are still sketchy, Kanu’s spectacular arrest in a foreign
country and subsequent repatriation to Nigeria in a private jet is no mean
intelligence feat. It is a testimony to the fact that President Buhari can
muster the political will and harness the state’s human and material resources
to enhance the security of the country and protect its sovereignty.
But
security experts and many ordinary Nigerians wonder why these enormous state
power and resources have not been deployed in equal and proportionate measure
to neutralise the Islamist insurgency that has now turned Nigeria into a
favorite playground of terrorists, the persistent Fulani herdsmen’s attacks
against indigenous Nigerian communities and the armed bandits that have become
a daily scourge to students, school children and law abiding citizens in
northern Nigeria.
If
the Nigeria Intelligence Agency (NIA), its sister intelligence and other
security agencies have the acumen, wherewhital and scope to carry out such a
daring clandestine operation (which has been described as “a breakthrough for
our intelligence agencies,” according to thenationonline.com) outside the
shores of our country, why have they not been able to muster same in the fight
against these myriad security challenges at home for more than a decade now?
This is the critical question that has been on the minds of Nigerians since the
Justice Minister, Abubakar Malami, announced Kanu’s arrest.
In fact, this success shows that the security agencies have made tremendous
progress from their 1984 fiasco when the attempt to smuggle the then Minister
of Transport, Umaru Dikko, back to Nigeria in a crate woefully failed. That
incident, which caused a lot of international embarrassment to the country, was
recorded when Buhari was military head of state.
Nigerians
further argue that if the country’s security agencies can synergize so efficiently
with sister international bodies such as INTERPOL, then they should have been
able to make some reasonable headway in exposing and prosecuting those
Nigerians said to be funding Boko Haram from the United Arab Emirates.
Unfortunately, this highly sensitive and strategic security matter has gone
completely cold, more than one year after it first came to public knowledge.
On February
11, the untouchable Shiekh Ahmad Gumi claimed that Nigeria’s military was
lackadaisical in prosecuting the war against terrorism for selfish reasons.
During an Arise News television programme, the Islamic scholar alleged: “The
military is not encouraging matters at all because they are the beneficiaries
of this insecurity… the military don’t want this conflict to end because of the
billions of Naira they claim for the fighting insurgency.”
While
we may not entirely support the sheikh’s modus operandi, it must be pointed out
that he has only stepped into a small part of the huge gap the failure of
government has created in the security system of the country.
That
being said, that was not the first time Nigerians were hearing such allegations
against the military. But what gave this one a measure of credibility was that
Gumi had gained national notoriety for freely gaining access to and talking
with the sundry militia groups that operate all over northern Nigeria as
Islamist terrorists and armed bandits. Therefore, it could be assumed that he
was speaking based on the first-hand information extracted from them. Yet, the
Buhari government, which has proved so adept at arresting Nnamdi Kanu,
deliberately allowed this hot lead to go cold, again.
The same
could be said about Nigeria’s Fulani herdsmen who have been rated by
international organisations as one of the deadliest terrorist groups in the
world. This same security and intelligence agencies that worked together to
arrest Kanu have not been able to bring even one of them to justice in the
close to ten years they have been unleashing bloody terror on indigenous
communities in other parts of the country.
It
is instructive to note that while briefing the press, the justice minister
disclosed that Kanu was being accused of “engaging in subversive activities
that include inciting violence through television, radio and online broadcasts
against Nigeria and Nigerian State institutions.”
Malami
added: “Kanu is also accused of instigating violence especially in Southeastern
Nigeria that resulted in the loss of lives and property of civilians, military,
paramilitary, police forces and destruction of civil institutions and symbols
of authorities.”
Any Nigerian
who is reasonable, perceptive, enlightened and abreast with Nigeria’s current
history knows that these crimes being attributed to Nnamdi Kanu are the very
ones (and many more) that have been, are continuously being, perpetrated by one
segment of the country, with the open and tacit support of the Buhari
government, against a majority of Nigerians who happen to be outside the sphere
of influence of the Caliphate.
The
North West has now become the hot-bed of armed banditry, kidnapping for ransom,
even jihadi terrorism because the northern political and religious elite never
thought that the unhindered bloody orgies perpetrated by Islamist jihadists and
Fulani herdsmen against mainly Christian populations in the North East, Middle
Belt and other parts of the country would someday boomerang and return to the
core north tenfold. The powers that be would not dare check the allegations
against the security forces because they are being predominantly headed by
their kith and kin, strategically placed to protect vested
interest.
The
same goes for the sponsors of Boko Haram and the nascent Islamic State in West
Africa Province and some of their well favoured operatives captured in the
theatre of war. These same security outfits that are now receiving accolades
for capturing Nnamdi Kanu dare not go after armed Fulani herdsmen that are known to
have killed indigenous peoples and forcibly dispossessed hundreds of thousands
of them of their ancestral lands all over Nigeria. This is because they
(herdsmen) have a special status conferred on them by virtue of their race and
religion.
Ironically,
it is this double standard, outright duplicity, in the way the Buhari
government has been grappling with the rising state of insecurity in Nigeria
that is further fueling the problem. It is this hypocrisy and lack of
transparency that has forced major Western nations to stop offering Nigeria any
significant support in the fight against terrorism.
Certainly,
the Buhari government has not arrested Nnamdi Kanu because of the gravity of
his alleged crimes or out of any patriotic verve to protect the territorial
integrity of Nigeria. They arrested Kanu chiefly to make an example out of him;
to deter ‘other’ Nigerians who may also be pushed by the compulsion to rise up
against the injustices the Buhari administration is hoisting upon us, the
‘other’ citizens.
Kanu’s
arrest is a show of force, a display of the raw power of the core North aimed
at brutally crushing the will of anyone who may have the temerity to antagonize
their hegemonic and tight grip on power. It’s a means to a long term goal that
is well crafted and seemingly error-proof.
They feel that they have
perfected their ominous agenda because they allowed the force of desperation
blind them to the indomitability of the human spirit.
We close with this short
news story carried by Daily Trust online (June 29, 2021) about a tweet by
Governor El-Rufai’s son, Bashir, on Nnamdi Kanu’s arrest. With the headline,
‘He Should Be Locked Up With A Cow’, it captures the sheer contempt and
revulsion with which not only the El-Rufais but the entire Northern
Establishment view us, the ‘other’ Nigerians:
Bashir El-Rufai, one of
the sons of Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State, has mocked Nnamdi Kanu,
leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), over his arrest.
The
Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, had announced the
arrest of Kanu at a press briefing in Abuja on Tuesday.
He
said the fugitive leader of the outlawed sect was arrested on Sunday.
There
have been different reactions to the arrest of the IPOB leader.
Commenting on the development, the governor’s son said it is a victory for the
country. He had tweeted a photo of the IPOB leader and followed with another
tweet calling him a toothless bulldog.
There
are those that will be upset this hooligan was arrested but will be too
cowardly to express it. Victory for the country. May we all continue to
progress in unison. He should be locked in a cell with a cow, please, President
Buhari.
*Gyang is
the Chairman of the N.G.O, Journalists Coalition for Citizens Rights
Initiative, JCCRI, (Email info@jccri-online.org)
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