Enter: A Tale of Two Nations regarding Terrorism: “Nigerians holds #BringBackOurGirls rallies against its Government; while the French hold a Unity Rally in support of its Government against Terrorism!”
I have said it severally that it is Educated Elites of a Nation [not politicians] that actually direct the future of nations – it is the direction they choose to go that really determines the flow the nation would go – our educated elites lost it with Terrorism and it would have to take us all a while longer to recover from the mess this class of people has put Nigeria into – when this entire madness started a few years ago, rather than lay aside their “personal ambitions and beef” [largely because a vast majority of them voted against the current government and simply refused to forgive the man that won the election – leading to them seeking the opportunity to deal with him – the first of which presented itself during the Janaury 2012 fuel hikes debacle] in support of the nation, most of them began to bring present all manners of rationalizations like “this is caused by Poverty; Corruption; Marginalization of some people; Lack of Education; the ruling Peoples’ Democractic Party [PDP] internal wrangling, etc” – there was no excuse in the world that they would not fabricate all in a determined bid not to blame the REAL CULPRITS – the terrorists!
So the terrorists who were testing our resolve as a nation [as they have just done with France] quickly found the moral courage to get bigger and better and having also found an enabling habitat in the core northern states that had historically accepted a legion of Radical Islamic Scholars as a normal part of daily existence, who had preached some form of extremism or the other to a vast number of the younger generations there making it possible for sects like Boko Haram and Ansaru to find the right recruits to supply them with an ending channel of manpower to – the rest as they say is History – even with the leadership of Northern Nigeria threatening to make the nation ungovernable if it didn’t win the 2011 elections, the right elixir had been concocted – all things working together to get these terrorists to move more heavily against Nigeria.
Then it gets worse – the Nigerian Army [perhaps by extension, the rest of the Armed Forces] are possibly more largely blessed with Human Resources strength seemingly tilting more in favor of the Northern Muslims [in fact, growing up, there were times, I assumed only Hausa People were allowed to join the Military, my apologies – but if you grew up in the South-West as I did, then chances are, you did find yourself in my shoes as well at one time or the other] so it seems some of these Soldiers feel they have “a moral duty” aside from the one they have to the nation “not to fight against Islam” albeit forgetting that this brand of Islam cannot be the same “Islam of Peace” that many moderate muslims profess – and that these extremists are further giving their faith a bad image.
You see, I am now touching on some truths that would make many of these educated elites to quickly call me names – chief of which would be “Jonathanian” and “Bigot” – but I am tired of being nice – these demonstrations in Paris was the very last straw for me – the things I am writing about are the very things that these same educated elites discuss at bars; during SuperSport Football matches; at malls; on the plane; during private chats; in Diaspora; all over the world – they are things that are open secrets but for which they would rather choose to be politically correct about when they come to the public space – rest assured, they know I am writing the very truth!
And if you doubt me, then I have one case study for you – a lot of those within this same class I focusing on happen to be Christians – some from the North but many more from the South and in fact, the South-West, have now signed up to this style of pretending as though they were not aware that “in the very beginning of this Boko Haram attacks, there seemed to have been a systematic approach by these terrorists against Christians and the Church” – they quickly began to sell the narrative of “actually more Muslims have been killed by Boko Haram than Christians” even though they could never be able to give you comparative numbers to those already available in the public domain to back up such claims even we all know that “350 churches were burnt within 4 days during the post 2011 elections pogrom.“
This singular event seemed to have become the “the Official GO” that Boko Haram needed as they went on thereafter to focus on bombing churches especially on Sunday mornings – and I dare postulate that many of the culprits involved in this pogrom also became ready-made recruits for Boko Haram after the elections – and we also know that majority of the Chibok girs are Christians with the area being a Christian-dominated community even as we know that the Governor of Borno chose to heed the calls of the Examinations body, West African Examinations Council [WAEC] in relocating the girls in the other Muslim-dominated environs but refused to do that with Chibok!
It is also public knowledge that someone as eminent as Pastor Tunde Bakare, who was the then Vice Presidential candidate Congress for Progressive Change [CPC] running alonside the current All Peoples Congress [APC] Presidential candidate, Gen. Muhammadu Bihari, could only respond to the 2011 post election killings with rhetorics like “It is the job of the Federal Government to provide Security not that of Buhari“- the same thing the other supporters of the General, that fall within the same educated elites base said at the time, practically challenging the government to “dare arrest Buhari and see what happens!” Funny though, only a few days ago, the same man that practially absolved his candidate of any role in that crisis [even though it was widely reported he was instigating his followers during his campaign rallies to reject his possible loss] now prophesies “that there would be crisis if the 2015 polls go ahead – irrespective of who the winner is” - can someone please ask the Man of God, what exactly he knows of 2011 that he is refusing to tell Nigerians?
This is where our educated elites come in – they control the media; blogging space; NGOs; many of them live abroad – in the US, UK, etc – and have contacts to foreign media houses; diplomates; politicians; and powerful leaders – they ought to be holding rallies and investing in lobbying efforts all around the world to compel the respective power blocs to act in support of Nigeria against terrorism and terrorists – getting the world to place attention on the sufferings of the North Eastern States in Nigeria in the hands of Boko Haram but rather than do thatm, they went about town with the perennnial, escapist and quintessential complaints of “Corruption is the very cause of Boko Haram; our Military is Corrupt; our government officials are lining up their private pockets with defense budgets; there are government officials in partnership with Boko Haram to fester this crisis to make sure they continue to benefit from same” – all of these allegations with no proof – as expected, playing cheap politics with such a serious issue as the loss of thousands of Nigerian lives in cold blood in the hands of these marauding murderers.
Then it gets worse – these same educated elites – mostly tucked away in their fancy abodes in Lagos, Abuja, New York, Atlanta, Texas, London, etc began to run another round of stories of “systematic genocide and human rights abuses by the Nigerian military against a section of Northern Nigeria with wild theories of the President from the South has a plan to wipe out the North to futher his political ambitions” in places like Bama/Baga – leading to many of them serving as consultants to human rights bodies and media around the world, providing such organizations with unsubstantiated figures suggesting that “half of the Nigerian population had been wiped out in one night“ [intentionally exaggerated fo the very purpose of communicating where I am getting to] – so if you were an American, and you met the publisher of SaharaReporters on the streets of New York and he narrated this story [that he did not witness] to you, why would you not believe him knowing that he is a Nigerian and you have never been to Nigeria?
Why won’t that become “the official US State Department Story” after you narrate same to the lawmakers representing your district on Capitol Hill leading to such people presenting such phoney facts to Obama’s administration as the official position on the ground in Nigeria!
And the next thing, the Chief of Army Staff who had made the most advances agaisnt Boko Haram begins to be placed under heavy pressure and scrutiny; all the leading media houses in the West are quoting the same “unknown sources with ridiculously high number of casualties” created by these same Nigerian educated elites – and Gen. Ihejirika is getting calls from all over the place to face Senate and House of Representatives hearings; he is being chased about for interviews by the Amanpours and Zakarias of this world, and others to defend his actions – and pressure gets to Aso Rock even as the Northern Elders Forum [NEF], the same group, that only in 2011 had “threatened to make the nation ungovernable if they the zone didn’t produce the President”, threatened to take “Ihejirika to the International Crimes Court [ICC] for acts of genocide” – all of these going on as the leading opposition parties were merging into the APC – mostly supported by the same educated elites, almost to the level of having a cult-following with them.
Game on – the party had all the political capital it needed to become a major contender overnight – they began to reverberate rherotic presented to them by the subject class of “the ruling PDP government is insensitive to the plight of the people of Northern Nigeria” – and that became the official story at home and abroad – even US Diplomats and Politicians went on to repeat this same logic – nothing like the President building universities in these zones; the zone being the largest benefactor of agriculture revolution; constructing Almajari schools to get kids out of school to be learned mattered anymore – not even his numerous overtures to assuage the hurt done the zone [remember their leaders believes he stole their spot] by placing many of the of the citizens in key political positions could change this perception.
The plot gets thicker – Ihejirika is sacked – too much presssure on Aso Rock – and Boko Haram [at least for a while] begins to gain the upper hand again – then these educated elites move on from the genocide narrative to#BringBackOurGirls – the movement practically becomes a subsidiary of the APC [as inadvertently acknowledged by Audu Ogbeh, a leading member of the party] – with members of the party becoming the vocal marketers of this franchise and it becomes the next most powerful medium [after the 2011 fuel hikes, mentioned earlier] to shame and possibly bring down the Goodluck Jonathan administration – so in essence, a movement that should have been used to blackmail and lobby the UN, US, EU, NATO, etc to act against Boko Haram as they are currently doing with ISIS, becomes ‘a slogan’ against the Jonathan-led government – via which from time to time, other absolutely unnconnected subjects like ‘Corruption’ and ‘Fuel Subisdies’ and ‘Human Right Abuses’ and ‘Unemployment’ are routinely discussed and projected – all against the PDP-led government!
All these creates the perfect excuse for the US “to refuse to either share intelligence with Nigeria or sell ammunitions to Nigeria” – accusing the government of corruption -selectively chosing to ignore the very obvious fact that “Nations like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria” that they are assisting in the fight against Terrorists and Terrorism all rank far worse on all those indexes than Nigeria in the global comity of nations around the world.
The perfect trap had been set for the Nigerian government – it pulled out of such a seemingly unproductive bilateral security relationship with the U.S. in search of ‘greener pastures’ elsewhere – and the same educated elites said “it was never the responsibility of the US to defend Nigeria but that of the Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces” – even though these same set of people berated the US for not acting early against ISIS in Iraq and Syria!
So I am guessing if you were hearing the name “Nigeria” for the very first time – or this was a thriller novel you were reading, you would have been asking yourself “So what exactly have Nigerians done or are doing against these very Terrorists wrecking havoc on the nation?“
Well, that was the very question I asked myself when I saw the unity rally in France – Well, the sad truth is “Nigerians led by the educated elites have done nothing against the terrorists!” They have rather encouraged the terrorists even the more – there were no UNITY RALLIES against Boko Haram; the leaders of the North who want Power in the center by all means did not tell their followers “to expose anyone connected to the sect” neither did they tell their parents to account for their wards and make sure none of them has ran away to join these terrorists; our Nigerian community leaders in the diaspora never lobbied western powers to act against Boko Heram rather all they did “was to practically weep any time they heard that Abubakar Shekau had been killed” and begin to argue that “Shekau must still be alive” – and truly, in a number of days, once their HERO, the Chief Murderer Of Nigeria appears again in another one of his best-selling Youtube TV Series – to be heavily shared in record number of thousands in a few days, they begin to jubilate again saying “I told you this Nigerian government are liars; they can never kill Shekau!”
In Nigeria, Terrorists are super-stars while the authorities trying to eliminate them with are villains – there is no amount of ridicule that our military men have not received in the last couple of months from these educated elites – taunting them consistently as they lose their lives on the battlefields!
So you see, while the French seem to have displayed within the last couple of days that it has “Zero tolerance for Terrorists and Terrorism”, Nigerians on the other hand seem to be saying “Dear Terrorists, we love you because for everytime you kill Nigerians, you help us expose the weakness in our current government and we pray you do more so that we can have our own candidate Buhari [who has actually not told us how he would eliminate Boko Haram] gain more support from the massses to win the next elections.”
Enter: Kayode Ogundamisi, the prominent blogger [he represents many others like him for the pupose of this article] who has been a social media consultant to Buhari even before the 2011 elections – the same guy that was allegedly paid by Buhari to mobilize other bloggers in his favor in 2011 [leaked emails were well circulated at the time] – he also doubles as media sources to global media houses and would quickly supply fake information to such organizations like that of “2,000 people were lost in Baga to Boko Haram” rather than the less than 150 figure reported by the Nigerian Army!
He leads an ever growing Army of pro-APC bloggers [a lucrative vocation in these parts] who are always claiming and pretending to be politcally neutrals – all who then begin to retweet such LIES; and overnight, the local TV stations, radio outlets, newspapers, human right bodies [many of them not bold enough to visit these troubled spots] also continue to quote the same figures and, voila, a fake number becomes “the official number” – nothing the government or Army says thereafter matters anymore – this lie must be continually reverberated to become the truth because this is how our educated elites have chosen to have this story rememebered – so in essence, they have all become “Politicians” rather than “Patriots” simply because the vast majority of them do not live in these hotspots, they find it convenient to play “the number game” in helping their candidate Buhari stand a better chance of winning the next elections!
Well, this is beginning to sound like a horror movie, even to me, how can a people be intentionally working against the greater good of their nation for selfish reasons? I might just be considered for a Golden Globe for “Scriptwriter of the Year in a Drama Series” if I can get a David Oyelowo to star as “the cool and calm President Goodluck Jonathan” working under acute pressure as the people of the same nation he is supposed to be protecting seem to be more in love with Abubakar Shekau, the lead villain; one problem though: who should I cast to play this role – how do you cast a character with no real face? Well, your suggestions are welcome.
So I have a closing question for you “If you were a TERRORIST, which nation would you like to strike NEXT? The Nation in which 3.7 million of its citizens came out to support the President even though his popularity rating was quite low or the nation in which its citizens are carrying #BringBackOurGirls placards all over the place against the government even though they know you are the one that kidnapped the girls in question?”
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