Blood In The Land, President Buhari And The IGP’s Weight By Alex Enemanna

So many Nigerians would have by now developed thick skins to President Muhammadu Buhari’s pillage of buffonery as probably the only president in human race whose record of incompetence will not be dwarfed by the worst president anytime soon.

Every keen observer must have noticed by now that nobody criticizes the president again. Not that he has done anything spectacular to make Nigeria any better than he met it or the evidence on ground suggests there is a new roadmap to tackle head on the avalanche of protracted octopus problem of wanton killings, ravaging hunger, economic depravity, general insecurity, ethnic jingoism, palpable hatred and widening divisiveness in our country. The decision to give up among Nigerians was conceived and birthed out of sheer frustration, despondency and lack of confidence.

Expectedly, the president in his usual sense of open advert for lack of concern, pity, proactiveness, that is often packaged to the feeble minds as humour by Lai, Femi and Garba in a brazen display of sheer insensitivity and stone-heartedness went overboard when he chose to equate the sea of blood in the land to the weight of his Inspector General of Police upon his return from UK last week.

To say that President Buhari is probably the only Nigerian that has not lost anything, including a second of his sleep since his catastrophic ascension to the throne commenced is to put it mildly. His decision to jet out of the country for self pleasure on the bills of our common patrimony at a time his countrymen were being slaughtered like sheep without shepherd is a bazaar of insensitivity of a chief security officer taken too far.

If there was one sector the expectations of Nigerians were high from president Muhammadu Buhari, it was in the area of enhancing the security and safety of Nigerians both home and abroad, coming from the security background where his achievements was said to have set a world record, a claim that has continued to exist not in record but on the figment of the imagination of the progenitors. Unfortunately, the crystal manifestation of the president’s lack of capacity to move our dear country out of the deep neck doldrums it has been mired into is even more visible in the area of porosity of the lives of our compatriots in the hands of criminal harbingers of death.

The number of Nigerians whose lives were cut in prime by the sword of seeds of Lucifer, wielding death anywhere they set their foot on is enough to startle the coldest of hearts. In a June 2018 report, The United States Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) said it has documented at least 19,890 deaths in Nigeria since June 2015, just after President Muhammadu Buhari assumed office on May 29, 2015. Another body, United Kingdom-based Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) also disclosed that Fulani militias killed 1,061 people in about 106 attacks on communities in North central Nigeria in the first quarter of 2018. CSW said 11 other attacks on communities in the southern parts of the country by the militia claimed a further 21 lives.

Sadly, beyond the empty rhetoric which often characterise such carnage, not much is done by the already overpowered security forces to surmount the challenges. Usually, the number one man will through his media aides exhume a worn-out text of the condemnation of the “dastardly act” with a jesty assurance of “bringing the perpetrators to book”, a figure of speech that is often as valueless as one’s imagination can extend.

Paradoxically, all those who asked for former president Goodluck Jonathan’s head when he took a drastic step to curtail insecurity in our land are now at the peak of their wailing career having been given a bloody nose by the army of toxic reptiles they unwittingly breastfed yesterday.

That the garrulous governor from Kaduna has suddenly realized that there is an orchestrated plan by criminal elements to wipe out some ethnic groups in his state is indicative of the fact that he just woke up from his deep slumber. The governor at a point had to physically join the security agencies in a stop and search operation. Good morning His Excellency!

El-Rufa’i is not alone in this desperate search for solution. Borno governor is crying, Katsina governor is wailing, Zamfara governor is weeping, resigning and unresigning, Kano governor is sweating, emotionally baptized by the blood of their citizens whose lives are now pawns in the chessboard of the merchants of death.

The conspiracy of silence of the Northern leaders on this visible incompetence and lack of capacity of president Muhammadu Buhari to look at insecurity beyond the weight of IGP is not only criminal, but unpatriotic and wicked. It encapsulates everything wrong with us as a nation. It is a patrical misbehaviour ridden on the crest of “na our kinsman”. Engr. Buba Galadima couldn’t have been any less right when he said the Northern leaders have looked the other way to Buhari’s Guinness world book of record incompetence because of mundane ethic considerations.

That this is happening in a nation where all those that call the shot in the security apparatchik are from the North leaves much to be desired. From the National Security Adviser to Chief of Defence Staff, to the Chief of Army Staff, IGP, to the Chief of Air Staff to the Minister of Interior, to the minister of Defence, fully Northern bloods. Some have even raised questions as to which language is used during security meetings in a multi ethnic and religious nation like ours.

Yet with all these, our people live in palpable fear, hopelessness and uncertainty. In Zamfara where the Minister of Defence, Mansur Muhammad Dan is from, the Shinkafi local government chairman Alhaji Sani Galadima openly announced to the world that the the people renew their “security” every day by paying ransoms to the hoodlums who have held the people by the jugular as a way of buying their mercy.

No right thinking person will thumb his chest in pride for being a Nigerian. With criminal gangs reigning supreme in many parts of the country, especially in the North, what we have today cannot be said to be something anyone will be proud of.

Your imagination must not be tempted to race to the point of assuming what we would have had in our hands today if we had this legion of service chiefs from the South, yet the mindless killings in the North continues unabated. We would have had a very chaotic experience if not a total turmoil. The interpretation given to harvest of deaths in Nasarawa, Plateau, Zamfara, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina et al would have been one the security chiefs will battle to extricate themselves from.

Just like the eloquent Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the man whose kingdom is being balkanised like a Christmas chicken recently noted, competence and ethnicity are miles apart each other. Unfortunately, we have a president who believes that the people he should trust must be from one region of the country, a hyper-jingoism that has not only bred bad blood, antagonism and hate, but has watered all the hydra headed challenges president Muhammadu Buhari had come to fight.

Whatever the president had in mind before mundanising the protracted insecurity staring us at the face with the weight of IGP Adamu Mohammed, as indicative of how hard he has worked, it passes as the public relations gaffe of the year. It shows that the president we elected to guarantee our safety and security has abdicated his responsibility to a second fiddle. It shows the president is not in charge. It shows the president is totally out of touch with what our people have been subjected to.

Whatever the president had in mind, he must add to it that the insecurity across the country really calls for a drastic action by any concerned chief security officer. Whatever the president had in mind, he must add to it that those who have been slaughtered by arm bandits in the past couple of years are people’s fathers, mothers, uncles, aunties, breadwinners, friends and lovers. Whatever the president had in mind, he must add to it that no amount of his dry condemnation of the “dastardly act” will bring back the lives of those who are already gone. Whatever the president had in mind, he must add to it that the confidence of investors in terms of security of their lives and property is at its lowest ebb, whatever the president had in mind, he must add to it that the sky high insecurity in our land has bred food insecurity.

These may as well make the list of catalogue of things the president is not aware of. Maybe, those in his family in Katsina will tell him that the district head of Daura, his hometown Alhaji Musa Umar, was kidnapped, an indication that just like my Ebeyi Nvosi in Abia State hometown is not immuned from insecurity, the president’s hometown is prone to attack too. This may have prompted his recent outcry that youth restiveness is assuming an alarming proportion. I thought the president should have known that like a century ago.

That the president recently expressed shock at the level of poverty in the land is a clear indication that he may not have been listening or deliberately chose to feign ignorance to the voices of religious, traditional and women leaders, including opinion moulders whose voices have echoed this, challenge that assumed a new high since he came on board. This may have prompted the Emire of Katsina, the president’s state to send a message through the president’s aides thus, “tell the president the people are hungry”.

Since we have been made to believe that the majority of Nigerians want president Buhari to drive us from CHANGE to NEXT LEVEL, we will allow the court to take a decision on that in the coming days.

Whatever the issues are, we must lay aside our garments of ethnicity, religion and politics and give the president the needed support to lead our dear country. It is yet to be known why the president is still keeping his service chiefs who have failed to bring respite to the orgy of killings that has ravaged our land. Whatever his permutations are, he must chart a new course through a potent foreign partnership to confront the myriads of security challenges facing us.

Enemanna is an Abuja based journalist, political editor ABN TV