By Sam Nda-Isaiah @sam4nigeria
Last week was one of the saddest weeks in the life of our nation. Fifty-nine students, mostly young teenagers, were killed by terrorists at the Federal Government College, Buni Yadi in Yobe State. These killings have been happening for quite some time now, but the event of last week was spectacularly different as many of these students were burnt alive.
Several Nigerians cried last week. But as they were crying, many out of both hopelessness and helplessness, President Jonathan was dancing himself away in some funny centenary celebration. One would have thought that the more proper thing to do would have been to step down the scale of the centenary celebration or, at the very least, cancel the part that had to do with dancing disco. Our president really doesn’t give a damn. His conduct worsened the pains of Nigerians last week.
But why are we so helpless? Why is it that the government could not anticipate that this kind of madness was possible after the similar killing of students in another institution in Adamawa State a year or two earlier? I fail to understand why a secondary school could be located in that area of Yobe State, the epicentre of the Boko Haram war, and nothing was done to secure it. Somebody must be prosecuted for the murder of these children, at least for criminal negligence. I even hear that the small checkpoint around the school’s gate was dismantled just before the incident. We cannot continue to live as a country this way. Something has to give.
The next question any averagely intelligent person would naturally ask is: when will the next mass school murder by the Boko Haram take place, since President Jonathan and his people are totally bereft of any idea on how to confront this Boko Haram challenge? Is this how we are going to continue? And talking straight: since Jonathan wants to continue beyond 2015, does he really think that this is how things will continue?
The other question to ask is: if Boko Haram operatives can just stroll into a secondary school in Yobe State in the dead of the night to kill and maim as many boarding school students as they could get, what stops them from carrying out the same madness in any other secondary school and or university in Kano, Uyo, Port Harcourt or Lagos? Do we really think this is not possible? Who will stop them? Jonathan’s government? In any case, this has happened before at the Bayero University, Kano, BUK, in broad daylight.
The truth about this whole confusion is that as long as Jonathan remains president, and as long as his people can steal $20billion (N3.3trillion), N2trillion fuel subsidy money, N100billion pension funds, with no consequences whatsoever, things will only get worse. This should worry all Nigerians. The very fact that Jonathan will remain in charge of our lives up until 2015 is, in the very least, quite chilling. And he is determined to continue to under-develop this country far beyond 2015. But we will handle that when we get there.
Even more disturbing is the fact that the president is not making efforts to improve the situation. When Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State rightly raised the alarm that the situation was this bad because our soldiers were not well equipped and that the insurgents were in fact better armed than our soldiers, the president reacted very un-presidentially during the “Presidential Media Chat” last week. Apparently, the president did not read what the governor said in full. Well, something has to explain why our military, which used to be classified among the world’s best, is now running away from Boko Haram. For the record, this is happening on President Jonathan’s watch. Our military men still remain among the best-trained in the world, so if they are losing this war, it must be for lack of equipment.
If $20billion can so easily be stolen without consequences, why should anyone be surprised that our soldiers would not be properly equipped and the police would not be given their appropriated budgets and our intelligence services, which should really be the top dogs in this terrorist challenge, do not have the most elementary tools to do their jobs? It is corruption, pure and simple. It is corruption that has rendered the Jonathan government completely impotent and incompetent.
These days, unhinged insurgents raid whole villages, sometimes killing all the men and then carting away their wives and daughters as trophies, but the man who is ultimately in charge of the country is totally without any iota of clue on how to contain them. And since insurgents are always seeking attention – which is why they would do what they did at Federal Government College, Buni Yadi, in the first place – they may soon extend this killing franchise to other parts of this country. That is scary.
EARSHOT
$20bn: The President Should At Least Pretend To Be Outraged
Those who watched President Jonathan’s “Media Chat” last week wanted to hear something about the missing $20 billion; instead, the president regaled us with his “absolute power” to suspend the CBN governor. Somebody has actually informed me that the president will soon be suspending the chairman of LEADERSHIP from his duties as chairman for talking too much about the stolen $20 billion! During the “Media Chat”, the president went on and on talking about the CBN audited accounts as the basis on which he suspended the CBN governor. The president, who was so decisive to show his powers over the CBN’s audited accounts, did not as much as notice that the NNPC – which Asiwaju Bola Tinubu calls the Jonathan government’s ATM – has not been audited in the last eight years. But, as I have always said, this president is a wonderful man. People close to him should please advise him to at least pretend to be angry at those who stole or “lost” the $20billion and not at those reporting the theft. And the president should not think that Nigerians are fools. You can say what you like about the “financial recklessness” of Sanusi, but we must know where the $20 billion has gone. At least we now know why President Jonathan has not been paying the police their appropriated funds and why the president has been unable to pay state governments their federal allocations in full every month. The president also needs to know that all these are “suspendable” offences.
