It is high time well-meaning Nigerians helped analyse for President Buhari the persistent antics of General Buratai’s. His continued retention in the leadership of the Army is one of Buhari’s biggest mishaps that smears his image, as the President is too insensitive to the miseries of his people.
Recall that penultimate week he (Buratai) predicted that Boko Haram terrorism may persist up to the next twenty years, but he did not elaborate on how that came to be his judgement. Being the Army Chief, it is presumed that he knows too well that such unguarded public statement carries the tendency to dampen the morale of the fighting troops. Unless he made the statement on purpose, to achieve some calculated effect, he is the last soldier Nigerians would expect to ascribe Boko Haram with such invincibility suggested by his statement.
One cannot help being curious to ask a number of questions: Is it that our troops are under equipped or they are cowardly? Are the terrorists more gallant than them? I am beginning to believe that the travails of General Olusegun Adeniyi and Lance Corporal Martins Idakpini are the bitter consequences of daring to expose the secret dirty dealings in the Army.
Buratai’s latest scaremongering scheme is that there is an impending coup, against which he warned his soldiers. Most of us, even without any military background, know that it is not the culture of soldiers to admonish real or perceived trouble makers; they lie in wait and seize them. If the coup suspicion were true, Buratai, who slammed severe punishments on General Adeniyi, Lance Corporal Idakpini, and many others for calling a spade a spade, would not appear somewhat foolish by resorting to issuing only verbal warning.
Just another dummy sold to Buhari, as a ploy to maintain the status quo in the leadership of the Army! Due to the fear factor in Buhari, which has since been causing his paralysis to act, I very much doubt his courage to act now. This is where we need parliamentary intervention to send Buratai and other Service Chiefs packing, as the first step to ending our grief and nightmares.
Nigerians keenly awaited Buhari to honour the invitation of the House of Representatives to appear before it and brief the lawmakers on the state of affairs in the country, security wise. Though the citizens have virtually lost confidence in Buhari and the Service Chiefs to tackle the growing insecurity, his address of the lawmakers would at least put things in perspective and calm nerves. Alas! Even the parliament’s call does not seem to have cut ice.
Ordinarily, Mr. President should not have kept mute until he is moved by the parliament to say something, so far as he is worried much to have lost some sleep over the plight of the very people he swore to protect. But in total disregard for what the national mood is, Buhari has allowed himself to be misguided by the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, who argued that the National Assembly lacks the constitutional power to invite the President regarding the security of the country (sic).
The Minister does not seem to appreciate that reminding the derelict Buhari to rise up to his responsibility as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to secure the country is in the best interest of all. Does it not ring in the Minister’s mind that halting the President from briefing the lawmakers at this trying time is a gross disservice to the nation? I, personally, would feel less disappointed if this misleading reference to the Constitution came from someone other than the chief law officer in the land. Has the Minister forgotten, or he deliberately circumvented it, that in the parlance of jurisprudence interest of the people is the supreme law?
It is regrettable that our President has substituted national interest with political interest. What an antithesis! Late Professor Chinua Achebe was right when he said that the problem with Nigeria is squarely failure of leadership.
The President should know, that horror of the recent beheading of more than one hundred innocent farmers in Zabarmari, Borno State, is such that should have called for declaration of national mourning, were it in saner climes where human life is considered sacred. But Buhari has not even paid any condolence visit to the troubled state, which is the least act of empathy a people would expect from their leader. Today no state is hit by kidnapping and banditry as badly as Katsina State, the President’s home state. It is even more embarrassing that the kidnappers that abducted more than 300 boarding school students of Kankara Local Government chose to do so during the President’s presence in the state.
They have done this to reaffirm their tight grip on the state and to drag the President in the mud. Unfortunately, the President does nothing but constant lamentation and condemnation of the poignant situation. Mere verbal condemnation of the incessant abductions and killings of innocent people is not enough. Such rhetoric does not deter our killers, and it does not pacify us either.
Reshuffling the Army and changing the tactics in the fight against terrorism and insurgency would be more gratifying to us, otherwise the locals cannot help thinking that the government has a hand in all the mayhem. We need no consolations from our own government after we are helplessly maimed and killed; what we need is proactiveness of the authorities in protecting us, lest we be touched by the forces of terror.
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