Opinion: Finally, Jonathan goes to Maiduguri

Posted by admin Borno, Goodluck Jonathan (2010-present), Headlines, Presidency, State News Thursday, March 7th, 2013

By Rasheed Olokode – Barring any unforeseen contingencies, President Goodluck Jonathan would have, by today, paid his first ever post-inauguration visit to Maiduguri, Borno State or Damaturu, Yobe State, the hotbed of terrorism that has turned Northern Nigeria into a human-slaughtering abattoir and real-life theatre of horror and war since the 2009 emergence of Boko Haram in our national consciousness. What is particularly interesting is that the President’s visit appears an un-masqueraded competitive response to the recent trip of 10 governors of the newly formed All Progressives Congress to the troubled city. However, what Ahmed Gulak, Jonathan’s Special Adviser on Political Matters, and the rest of Jonathan’s team have yet to realise is that most of their efforts at laundering the image of the President usually succeed in damaging it locally and internationally.

If anything, Maiduguri, alongside its cousin, Damaturu, has only been a metaphor, a descriptive symbol of the terrorised world the Nigerian masses have always inhabited. A world of depravation, destitution and desperation distinct from the privileged and over-protected world of abundance and ostentation inhabited by our rulers. Also, the failure of Jonathan, so far, to visit and identify with these beleaguered people that have lost and are still losing thousands of relatives and friends is indicative of the long-standing disdain of the Nigerian ruling class for the generally impoverished masses.

The immediate response of the Presidency to the APC governors trip to Maiduguri that, “The governors were just trying to pre-empt the President. Jonathan is not afraid of visiting any part of the country. He is the President of all states and all parts of the country without exception”, is nothing but self-indictment.

The question that logically follows Gulak’s affirmation of Jonathan’s fearlessness and planned visit to Maiduguri on Thursday, March 7, 2013 is, why has Jonathan merely chosen to play the proverbial vegetable hawker? A dramatic story narrated by a popular Yoruba adage tells of a street trader, who hawks vegetable leaves. Whenever a potential buyer calls on this hawker, the trader replies thus – “My vegetable is not of the refuse site”.

If the refusal of President Jonathan to visit Maiduguri and other ravaged Nigerian cities and towns, before now, had been in the interest of Nigeria and Nigerians, for whose sake their elected officials, particularly the President, must necessarily act or fail to act, then why must Jonathan worry or even respond to the statement of the APC governors that “there should not be a no-go area for any Nigerian leader”.

The context of the current intrigue is politics. While I find the initiative of the APC governors faultless, however self-serving it may really be, being a smart move of filling a yawning gap created by the government of the day, I find the reaction and seemingly hurriedly packaged visit of the President a sad reminder of the tainted patriotism and insincerity that have characterised our national leadership since 1966. For long, national security has been sadly equated with the safety of government officials, institutions, buildings as well as that of their relatives, friends and associates. As long as the seat of govrnment, the Aso Villa, government ministries and the likes are barricaded against the Boko Haram bombs; as long as ordinarily publicly-held national events like the Independence Day celebration can be conveniently shifted to the impregnably secure confines of the Aso Villa, it is safer for the Presidency to routinely sing the shock and regret anthem over and over again, as the Maiduguris and Damaturus boil incessantly rather than visit such volatile points.

However sincere the President’s visit may really be, owing to the possibility that it might have long been scheduled but kept secret for “security reasons”, a gaping public relations problem has been unwittingly created by the President and his handlers. I draw my inference, once more, from a Yoruba adage which says, should there be zero opening in a wall, a lizard, therefore, gets no chance of intrusive entry therein. If our President, in his capacity as the father of all Nigerians, many of whom have been and are still being killed cheaply in Maiduguri, Damaturu and across the nation, had wasted no time in showing empathy (not mere sympathy) to these weeping and dying people, at least once since 2011, no one would have misinterpreted his motives let alone seizing the initiative from him. Even if Gulak were to be a political adviser to the newly-formed APC, instead of the President he currently advises, I am sure, he would have admonished his opposition employers to do exactly what those governors did. Ditto for Dr. Doyin Okupe.

And, while the nation was still afraid that the planned presidential visit may eventually turn a security disincentive, owing to its wrong timing when the anti-president angst, probably provoked in the indigenes by the recent solidarity visit of opposition leaders, was probably yet to subside; while patriots were still busy helping our President to guess what message and what words he needed to speak to a people who have long hung blame for their fatal woes on the neck of a President perceived as having deserted them in their days, months and years of sorrow, Alhaji Muhammad Abubakar, the Sultan of Sokoto, in my opinion, leaked what was most likely the hidden agenda beneath the all-important visit. The spiritual head of the Nigerian Muslim Community, on Tuesday, March 5 2013, called on President Jonathan to declare amnesty for the members of the Boko Haram sect during the visit.

Personally, I have got no qualms with the Sultan over his opinion and advice to Mr. President, but I have issues with the immediate response of the Christian Association of Nigeria over the monarch’s call. My take is that if amnesty would indeed put a final end to this prolonged mess, so be it. In fact, if amnesty can really do the magic, I feel that CAN, being the worst-hit by the merciless killings should be at the forefront of its advocacy. It matters not whether the faceless insurgents are known to anybody or not.

What I had expected the CAN leadership and other concerned patriots to do in relation to the Sultan’s call is to show due appreciation and respect to this view, and proceed to caution Mr. President and the entire nation as though hunters calling back their dog on a risky and self-destructive exploit recalling a past voyage had just left it (the dog) bruised.

What we must, however, not fail to bring to the fore before a possible presidential announcement is the immeasurable havoc that amnesty, as typified by our current Niger Delta experience, is capable of causing, being, in my opinion, the last factor that eventually opened the eyes of our erstwhile placid northern youths to the profitability of militancy in Nigeria. I am sure the Sultan would agree with me that once the government accedes to his demand, more and more insurgent groups would emerge to partake in what is already being seen as a turn-by-turn national cake. The fact that the unfortunate reproduction that has taken place in the Boko Haram, as evident in its rampaging splinter groups, a development that has further compounded our security woes, is not unlikely linked to pecuniary attraction is noteworthy.

The way forward lies not in continued expression of presidential “sympathy, deep shock and regret” from afar, mere political visits or selective bribing of rampaging youths in the name of amnesty. Rather, it lies in the announcement of a new vista of hope for the teeming Nigerian youths, a majority of whom are currently socio-economic deprived desperate for survival. Announcing a nationwide unemployment benefit, unemployment housing scheme and the likes based on certain vocational recertification or any other precondition that would effectively turn beneficiaries into socio-economically useful materials would definitely appeal to, and positively influence many (invisible) actual and potential Boko Haramites, sprawling (negative) potential not restricted to the North but ubiquitous in the present-day Nigeria where unemployment and under-employment-driven desperation walk on all four everywhere.wp_posts

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Posted by admin on Mar 7 2013. Filed under Borno, Goodluck Jonathan (2010-present), Headlines, Presidency, State News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry