By Ikechukwu Amaechi
President Bola Tinubu is over the moon right now, for whatever it is worth. Last week was horrible for his administration and the man-in-charge image he is trying desperately to project. In less than seven days, terrorists deflated his elephantine ego by ambushing, penultimate Friday, a military team led by Musa Uba, a Brigadier General and commander of the 25 Task Force Brigade, in Borno State, killing four operatives — two soldiers and two CJTF officials – and later executing the gallant officer.
On Monday, November 17, they invaded Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School, Maga, Kebbi State, and abducted 24 schoolgirls after killing the vice-principal. On Wednesday, November 19, they stormed Christ Apostolic Church, in Eruku, Kwara State during a midweek prayer session, killing three persons and abducting 38 other congregants, mostly women and children, drawing nationwide outrage. To worsen matters, they placed a N100 million ransom on each of the 38 abductees.
Then, on Friday, November 21, they stormed St Mary’s Catholic Primary and Secondary School, Papiri, in Agwara Local Government Area of Niger State, abducting 315 persons – 303 students and 12 teachers – according to the Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria,CAN, Niger State chapter, Most Rev. Bulus Dauwa Yohanna, making it the biggest abduction of school children in Nigeria, and, indeed, globally.
Coming on the heels of U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat of unilateral military strikes in Nigeria, and the pressure from within, an embattled Tinubu, for once, squelched his global junketing appetite, to stay home and fashion out means of mitigating the disaster.
And it would seem that, on the face value, his decision paid off. On Sunday, November 23, the ‘Eruku 38’ regained their freedom. An elated Tinubu, who claimed he had been “closely monitoring the security situation nationwide” and receiving updates on rescue operations, ululated: “Let me be clear. I will not relent. Every Nigerian, in every state, has the right to safety. Under my watch, we will secure this nation and protect our people.”
Then, as if carefully choreographed for maximum impact, on Tuesday, November 25, the ‘Maga 24’ also regained their freedom. Again, a boisterous Tinubu took a victory lap: “I am relieved that all the 24 girls have been accounted for. Now, we must urgently deploy more boots on the ground in vulnerable areas to prevent further kidnappings. My government will provide all necessary support to achieve this.”
But here is the snag. This feat was not a result of sustained and coordinated military, police and intelligence operations ordered by Tinubu as Kwara State Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq claimed. Instead, it was as a result of the munificence, in a manner of speaking, of the terrorists who decided this time to abide by the agreement between them and the government. There is a world of difference between rescuing abductees and negotiating their freedom with ransom. This, definitely, is not a trophy moment for the government.
And this much was disclosed by the presidency. Speaking on Prime Time, an Arise Television programme, on Monday, Bayo Onanuga, special adviser on information and strategy to President Tinubu, said: “After the incident, the DSS and the military were involved in the rescue effort. They got in contact with the bandits to release the captives unharmed… On Sunday, they were able to get them out unharmed. They do have a way of tracking these people. The security agencies have a way of contacting these people.”
Asked why terrorists would take such risks only to let their quarries go just like that, his response was as unconvincing as it was implausible. “They (bandits) know the consequences of not acquiescing to government demands. They know they could be pummeled.”
Really?
Such a laughable rationalisation of an administration that promised so much and is delivering so little. Rather than the terrorists, it is the Tinubu government that acquiesced to their demand – hefty ransom. They let their victims go and walked straight back into the forests to prepare for their next attack which took place barely 24 hours after the release of the 38 Eruku Christian worshippers. They struck, once again, at Isapa community in the same Ekiti Local Government Area of Kwara State, abducting 11 people.
This is a shameless abdication of governance. If, as Onanuga claimed, the security agents not only know all the bandits, but also where they operate from, what is being flaunted as achievement is a gross advertisement of cluelessness, which in other countries will elicit a mass call for resignation. Tinubu does not know what it means to be commander-in-chief of the armed forces. No one is fooled. This is a “shameful attempt to whitewash a national tragedy and dress up government incompetence as heroism,” as former Vice President Atiku Abubakar noted on Wednesday.
But, that is even the least of the problems that the Tinubu administration’s ineptitude is creating. In the wake of the mass abductions, the Federal Government, on November 21, ordered the immediate shutdown of 47 Federal Unity Colleges across the country. The directive mandated principals of the affected schools, most of them in the North, to “suspend academic activities and release students with immediate effect.”
Since then, some states in the North, including Katsina, Kwara, Plateau, Niger, Benue, Kebbi, Yobe, Taraba and Bauchi, have also shut down their schools.
And the question is: for how long? Since there is no guarantee that the security situation is going to improve sooner, then what? Will the schools be shut down in perpetuity? Where then is the country’s sovereignty? How can a government that shares supreme powers with non-state actors as the Tinubu government is doing still claim to be sovereign?
Besides, the closure of both federal and state schools is victory for the nihilist group, Boko Haram, which means “Western education is forbidden.” This is what the group has been clamouring for since July 2009 when it launched an armed uprising against the Nigerian state. Now, Tinubu has granted them their wish on a platter of its own incomprehensible weakeness.
The shutting of schools in a country with approximately 18.3 million out-of-school children according to a 2024 UNICEF report, a number that makes Nigeria the country with the highest rate of out-of-school children globally, is a disaster. The fact that this is happening in the part of the country, particularly North-East and North-West zones, with a preponderance of these out-of-school children makes it doubly so. When the fact that approximately 60 per cent of the out-of-school children are girls is thrown into the mix, the augury becomes starker.
The economic policies of the Tinubu administration which have thrown many Nigerians into the poverty loop and exacerbated the scourge of hunger have amplified the catastrophe. Approximately 86 per cent of the out-of-school children are from rural areas, and 65 per cent come from very poor families.
On Tuesday, the United Nations World Food Programme said though the country was already facing one of the world’s biggest hunger crises, it is getting much worse under Tinubu’s watch. According to the report, nearly 35 million Nigerians could face severe hunger by the middle of next year, a crisis driven essentially by widespread violence, including banditry and terrorism — a major increase from the 27 million experiencing it today.
“Communities are under severe pressure from repeated attacks and economic stress,” David Stevenson, the World Food Programme’s representative in Nigeria, said in a statement. “If we can’t keep families fed and food insecurity at bay, growing desperation could fuel increased instability with insurgent groups exploiting hunger to expand their influence…”
This is hardly surprising. In the Middle Belt, which is regarded as the country’s food basket, nearly 200 villages have been sacked in the past two years since Tinubu became president, according to Amnesty International. The violence displaced more than half a million people, almost all of whom were farmers who no longer have access to their fields.
With hunger and poverty ravaging the land, violence is bound to spike. With increased violence and mass abduction of school children, more states in the North will shut down schools for longer periods. When and if these schools are eventually reopened, many of the students would lose the appetite for education. They will swell the ranks of out-of-school children – a gift to Boko Haram. Indeed, the nihilist group has never had it so good.
*Amaechi is the publisher of TheNiche
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