By Bisi Olawunmi
Flash back to May 29, 2015 when General Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in as president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. A nation, anticipating a redemptive government, waited with baited breath for the inaugural speech of the former military dictator, now a rebranded, born-again democrat. And President Buhari spoke.
It was neither a flowery nor a fire-spitting speech but what rang out and got stamped in the consciousness of the people was his declaration that he belongs to everybody and belongs to nobody, implying that he is for everybody and will not be held hostage by anybody. The general interpretation then was that he was declaring his independence of the political sorcerer at Bourdillon Street, Ikoyi, Lagos who willed the genie of his presidency to life. He was going to be his own man. Malevolent haters had gleefully greeted Buhari’s declaration of his independence as putting the sorcerer ‘in his place, clipping his wings’.
However,
six years down the road, we are all witnesses to the intendment of our
president, General Buhari (apology to The Punch) as a born again democrat –
with his equity dispensation of democratic ‘dividend’ of insecurity to
everybody!! That is the paradox of his being for everybody. How wrong were
those who had mocked the sorcerer. Before the dispensation of insecurity to
all, people had stridently leveled all kinds of charges against our fair minded
President – they accused him of being a religious bigot –an Islamic
irredentist; an ethnic jingoist in the service of his Fulani supremacists,
indulgent of the killing spree of Fulani herdsmen and a regional champion of
The North.
It would seem that Mr. President, taking these charges with stoic forbearance, apparently lapsed into default mode, to allow the so-called largess he is dispensing to his region, the North, to spread nationwide. You see, southern and middle belt leaders pillory President Buhari for partisanship in favour of the North – in goodies of appointments and infrastructure – while conveniently ignoring the other side of the coin – the bloodletting ravaging the North, with extreme poverty and illiteracy as toppings!
The North is
accused of selfishly holding all the levers of power, including military power,
to its advantage. But, really, what advantage? So the ‘ advantage ‘ of
horrendous killings and kidnappings ravaging the North got spread to the south
and the middle belt and leaders of these regions started screaming blue murder.
In all of these, President Buhari assumed what amounts to a disposition of
fatalistic equanimity, except for that plea for accommodation of the south
bound terror harbingers by host communities as a measure of brotherhood!
On
the dispensation of the ‘ largess ‘ southwards, you have to give it to
President Buhari for adhering to the saying: charity begins at home. His home
state of Katsina has become the new epicentre of murderous rage of bandits,
kidnappers and cattle rustlers!!! The renegades even captured a District head
in President Buhari’s native Daura emirate and the hapless man was only
liberated in a sting operation in Kano after weeks in kidnappers’ captivity.
Imagine if what is happening in Katsina State were to be in any of the southern
states, the Wailers (apology to Femi Adesina) would have petitioned the United
Nations, alleging a Fulani Genocide Agenda! I sympathise with Katsina State
Governor, Aminu Masari. How can you have the President and Commander-in-Chief
of the armed forces of Nigeria from your state and this frightening level of
bloodletting goes on, unabated. And people still accuse Buhari of partisanship
in favour of his people. Some favour, indeed.
At a point, overwhelmed by the level of insecurity in Katsina
state, Governor Masari gambled with appeasement strategy and even hosted a
gun-slinging bandit leader at Government House to beg for peace, only for the
mayhem to intensify, thereafter! And that in the President’s home state. So,
what confronts the nation is State Security Collapse (SSC). The response of Mr.
President has been rather mechanistic – providing the armed forces with
military hardware without demanding commensurate operational mission
accomplishments – and laissez faire given his tentative, tepid response to the
escalating security nightmares, and even that limited effort was forced by
public opinion pressure.
Fortunately, President Buhari is waking up to the reality that his
presidency is on the home run, and now seems anxious not to allow insecurity to
define his legacy. State governors are also getting roused to action on
insecurity with the rising brazen challenge to their authority by criminals and
violent non state renegades as shown by inauguration of Amotekun security
outfit in the southwest and Ebube Agu in the southeast. The mandarin governors
in the north are also stirring awake. The National Assembly is raising hell
about widespread insecurity.
There
is, therefore, a window of opportunity for President Buhari to end his tenure
in a blaze of glory, if he can muster the will to mobilize state governors and
the National Assembly to reach an elite consensus on tackling insecurity.
The consensus should be that Criminality is Criminality, to be churned
of ethnic, religious, political or geographical labels and tackled with the
urgency it demands. Going forward, apart from the military option, there would
be need for a Security Mass Mobilisation Council to incorporate the people as
foot soldiers in the battle against insecurity. That security is everybody’s
responsibility should no longer be an empty slogan. President Buhari inherited
serious insecurity in the Northeast, manifested in the Boko haram insurgency
and routed the insurgents, a triumph that is now regarded as an initial 'Gra-Gra' or transient military bravura, as the insurgents are now in
resurgence, while insecurity – particularly kidnapping and violent criminality
– has spread nationwide under his watch, creating a situation where fear stalks
the land.
So, if truly President Buhari desires that insecurity will not
define his legacy, the time to act, and act decisively, is now. Surely,
insecurity for everybody cannot be a laudable dividend of democracy or an
edifying legacy.
*Dr. Olawunmi, a mass communication scholar, is former Washington Correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria and Fellow, Nigerian Guild of Editors. olawunmibisi@yahoo.com
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