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History can be unforgiven. Sometimes, it adds a substantial dose of mischief, too. If Bola Tinubu had any inkling, even if a fleeting dream, that he will, someday, find himself on the seat of Nigeria’s president, he surely, would have been more sparing while savaging President Goodluck Jonathan, over insecurity in Nigeria under his watch.
Slightly less than ten years ago, on April 14 2014, a band of Boko Haram terrorists stormed Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno state and abducted 276 innocent female students. The lorry or lorries that ferried the 276 terrified, screaming children, managed, somehow, strangely, to disappear into the thin, dusty air. There was no meaningful security around the precincts of the school, as at the time of the abduction.
Although, Kashim Shettima, now vice president, was governor of Borno State, at the time of the incident, Jonathan, as president, was held squarely responsible for that calamity. The traumatic, unprecedented abduction was relentlessly promoted by the vociferous, unsparing opposition All Progressives Congress [APC], as further evidence of their charge that Jonathan was incompetent and lacked the capacity to secure the country. The sad fate of the Chibok girls soon gained international attention, becoming as it were, a definitive exhibit of sorts, that Jonathan and his party were at best, not up to task of securing Nigeria.
Playing a leading role in trolling Jonathan for the calamity at Chibok, was Senator Bola Tinubu, leader of the then opposition APC. Tinubu excoriated Jonathan to no end, for incidents of insecurity in the country. In the wake of the Chibok abduction, he twitted; “Nigeria’s security situation is precarious. Nigerians are tired of excuses and explanations. They want protection for their lives and property”.
In another instance, after another terrorist attack, the APC leader lamented publicly thus; “My heart bleeds for our people and the country over the deaths in Yanyan [Nyanya]. A government unable to protect its citizens deserves to be queried”.
Earlier in 2014 also, following the bombing of a Catholic Church in Suleja, Niger State, Tinubu weighed in, sharply, passing the verdict that “The slaughtering of Christian worshippers is strongly condemnable. It calls to question the competence of Jonathan to protect Nigerians”.
It has been ten months since Tinubu became president of Nigeria. Before him came Muhammadu Buhari, who succeeded Jonathan. The peril Nigerians face from of terrorist activities, for which Tinubu and Buhari pilloried Jonathan, has not abated one bit. As a matter of fact, the graph of terrorist activities in the country inclined sharply upward for most of Buhari’s tenure. That, which Jonathan was accused of being incompetent to do, Buhari proved woeful in tackling.
Now it is Tinubu’s turn. Barely ten months after his coronation, kidnapping and abduction in Nigeria have reached a distressing height, turning into a morbid extravaganza. The Market is not only booming for the bloody criminals, mostly from across the borders, the Tinubu government appears incapacitated. The word clueless, may yet be applicable. Kidnappers, now pick and choose when and where to strike. Schools are at their mercy. Roads and passengers are at their mercy. Farmers are fair game to them, etcetera, etcetera. In virtually all cases, the criminals walk away, including when they had a whole village in tow.
The rash explosion of abductions and kidnapping across states last week, seemed designed, consciously or otherwise, to make a point – that the terrorists are in charge.
On Thursday March 7 2024, at mid-morning, daring terrorist stormed LGEA Primary School, Kuriga (1),Chikun Local Government Area, Kaduna and kidnapped 285 pupils and teachers. The victims were just coming out of their morning assembly.
Actually, the initial total number of victims grabbed by the terrorists were 312 young people. Mr. Sani Abdullahi, who gave a first-hand account of the invasion according to reports, explained that 187 secondary school students and 125 pupils of the primary school were initially taken. Somehow, however,25 of the primary school pupils escaped and returned home. Unfortunately, one member of the Kaduna State Vigilante Service [KADVS] who answered distress call from the school, paid with his life. The terrorists killed him. At the end of the day, 287 students remain abducted.
The abduction of 287 students from Kuriga, Chikun LGA of Kaduna state, followed on the heels of dastardly terrorist attack two days earlier, at the Internally Displaced Persons Camps [IDPs] in Gamboru, Ngala Local Government Area of Borno State. The IDP attack had over 200 hapless victims abducted, most of them women and children.
Last weekend too, on Saturday March 9,2024, reports came in that terrorists struck at Tsangaya School at Gidan Bukaso, Gada LGA of Sokoto State, abducting 15 children and one woman.
Over at Wandor, Mbaiyor community in the Mbalom area pf Gwer East LGA of Benue State, also on March 7 2024, a band of terrorists reportedly numbering over 40, upped their viciousness, invaded the community, killing a retired military officer and 15 other citizens. They razed over 50 houses, farmlands and food barns, stretched across 11 settlements. Exactly six years ago, a similar invasion had led to the devastation of the community. In that instance, the terrorists descended on St. Ignatius Catholic Church, Ukpor Parish, Mbalom, killed two priests and 17 parishioners.
It takes only a country with a death wish, or one that is virtually finished, to live with this steady, determined extermination expedition by bands of foreign murderers and vagabonds, without declaring an all-out war. No meaningful country, with purposeful leadership does to itself what Nigeria has been doing to itself and its citizens.
Under President Buhari’s administration, great effort was made by the government through its information managers, to euphemistically rename the terrorists bandits and herdsmen. Why that nomenclatorial change was considered important to the Buhari government, remains open to conjecture.
President Tinubu was reported last week, to have directed the leadership of the security agencies to ensure the rescue of the abducted hundreds of citizens in Kaduna and Borno states. The president, according to his publicist, said he was “confident that the victims will be rescued. Nothing else is acceptable to me and the waiting family members of these abducted citizens. Justice will be decisively administered”. The worth of his confidence and directive will be known in the days ahead.
Early this week, a 2014 photograph of Senator Bola Tinubu holding a “Bring Back Our Girls” placard emerged online. Then, he was directing the call to President, Jonathan. The message on that placard has come back full circle. Alas it is now the duty of Tinubu to bring back the girls, the women and the children.
Terrorists whether they are called bandits, Fulani herdsmen or what they truly are, have been distributing affliction and sorrow across the country. They kill, main and raze houses and farms. They have left no one in doubt about their determination to ruin Nigeria. The response has been curiously tepid, at best. In parts of the northern flank of the country, poor farmers reportedly pay levies to terrorists now, to gain access to their farms. Such is the temerity of the murderous invaders.
Encouragingly, however,the security forces are squaring up, so bravely to the challenge of expanding terrorist invasion of the country. Only last weekend for one, the Army reportedly neutralized some IPOB members in Imo State and burnt down their operational location inside the bush. That, indeed, is some progress.
