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On February 26, 2014, a day after Boko Haram insurgents fatally shot 59 pupils of the Federal Government College Buni Yadi, Yobe state, Rotimi Fashakin, a chieftain of the All Peoples Congress (APC), featured on Sunrise Daily, the Channels TV breakfast programme.
Asked to proffer a solution to such attacks, as he was reacting to the tragedy, Mr. Fashakin said President Jonathan should resign. His “solution” did not seem to have sat well with the presenters. So they proceeded to ply him with questions as to what he would have done differently about Boko Haram had he been in the President’s shoes. His response to that did not also seem to have satisfied the presenters ; and one of them hinted at that, adding that his answers did not show that he had any satisfactory solution to the insurgency.
Mr. Fashakin’s call for President Jonathan’s resignation in the wake of that unimaginable tragedy spoke volumes for someone like me who thinks Boko Haram has been turned into a political weapon, an undiscriminating murderous machine for political blackmail, and that its activities would cease if their sponsors were to succeed in using such devious tactics to prevent the President from running in or winning the 2015 presidential elections. But it also hints at something that should further agitate our conscience – the inclination of some of our politicians to profit from tragedy, which signals a descent to a deeper and darker depth in morals. It is as if the credo of such politicians is: “If people must be killed for us to achieve our political ambition, so be it.” For them – and this is perversely curious! – the attainment of their political ends could pass for a “silver lining” in the dark cloud of such murders!
Sadly, I recognise that the quest for power is not always guided by morality, and Niccolo Machiavelli makes a strong argument for that in The Prince. Yet, I deplore with every sense of responsibility the exploitation of such a tragedy for political gains, considering that it should rather unite us as citizens and human beings in grief to seek a genuine end to such killings whose victims could be any of us or our loved ones.
Ironically, such murderous tactics are being deployed against a President who once famously said that his presidential ambition is not worth the shedding of anyone’s blood and whose tenure, unlike those of some of his predecessors, has been free of bloodshed but for such killings resulting from the insurgency.
Nor did I find the reaction of Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State to a related attack any more appropriate, even as I appreciate the frustration or eagerness for result that might have prompted it. I refer specifically the Governor’s declaration to newsmen – something he said he had made “emphatically clear to Mr. President” – that “Boko Haram are better armed and are better motivated than our own troops”.
He made the declaration during a visit to the State House, Abuja, following the massacre of 106 people in the mostly Christian village of Izghe in Borno State on February 15, 2014. But that was not all that he said in reaction to the Izghe killings. He also said that “we are in a state of war” and that “the sooner we … rise up to the challenges of the day, and marshal all resources towards visualising the antics of Boko Haram, the better for all of us”, and that “the bottom line is that we need more resources…”
While I agree with these later remarks by Governor Shettima, I think his unfavourable comparison of how well armed and motivated our troops are in relation to Boko Haram was most unfortunate.
Surprisingly, some commentators on public issues have upheld his reaction without seeming to give enough thought to the implication of that declaration. For instance, Boko Haram is supposed to be a secretive, hit-and-run terror organisation. So how could he speak of what their members receive as “motivation” and the quality of their arms compared to those of “our own troops” without risking suspicion of knowing more about the organisation than should be normal? Was he speaking as the Head of Human Resources or Chief Welfare Officer/Armourer of Boko Haram? On what authority did he make that comparison?
And if he has such privileged information and is genuinely interested in ending the insurgency, shouldn’t the patriotic thing be for him to share the “intelligence” exclusively with the appropriate authorities rather than blurt it out in public and, as it were, give the insurgents a tactical advantage? I would leave out the question of what that declaration could do to the morale of “our own troops”, assuming we all agree that “motivation” for troops fighting to defend their fatherland should be judged only in material terms, as if it were purely a mercenary endeavour.
Alas, some of our leaders who claim to have the solution to the Boko Haram insurgency have preferred to hold their ideas close to their chest like some political jokers apparently for use only if the President resigns or is voted out of office due to the insurgency, and regardless of how many lives are being lost to the insurgency. Whatever happened to patriotism and statesmanship?
However, I believe Governor Shettima meant well. But he should have spoken with more guardedness considering the sensitivity of the issue and his position as a leader. One of the hallmarks of leadership is the ability to speak with discretion regardless of the circumstances. But even the best leaders, being human and therefore fallible, have sometimes faltered in this regard.
I very much doubt that the comparison by Governor Shettima was part of the politics of trying to use Boko Haram to portray the Jonathan presidency as ineffective and so deserving of being dispensed with as reflected in Mr. Fashakin’s insensitive call for the President’s resignation the day after the deadly attack on the pupils at Buni Yadi, as if desperate to profit politically from that attack.
For those who think that the persistence of the Boko Haram insurgency underscores the ineffectiveness of the Jonathan administration, I believe they have yet to give due consideration to the peculiar nature of the insurgency, which makes is unusually difficult to contain. Boko Haram, unlike most other terror organisations the world over, is home grown. So, unlike Al-Qaeda in the United States and Al-Shabaab in Kenya, for instance, we in Nigeria are faced with a unique situation in which the enemy is family and not so easy to recognise let alone isolate. As a citizen, we cannot deny him free movement within your borders. And yet he can rely on his right to exercise his freedom of movement to pick out and attack soft targets along his route. Such a threat would require the cooperation of all our well-meaning citizens to overcome, and their patience with those leading the onslaught against the menace.
Ikeogu Oke
