Granting amnesty to ghosts

By Aso Rock Terrorism Manual, the first blow to an insurgency is to deny its existence. If that fails to nail it, describe it a gang-up by sectional political losers to frustrate your government. When that tale becomes stale, you move to the next step, which is to claim that the insurgents are actually members […]

By Aso Rock Terrorism Manual, the first blow to an insurgency is to deny its existence. If that fails to nail it, describe it a gang-up by sectional political losers to frustrate your government. When that tale becomes stale, you move to the next step, which is to claim that the insurgents are actually members of your cabinet.
Idiots might then suggest that ending it is simple – just invite the cabinet members to a Wednesday tea and contract sharing meeting, lock them in and announce their sack on NTA. Next, frog march them to Yellow House and lock them up until they have proved their innocence. If you are following this like a Nollywood movie script, you are O-Y-O.
In Naija, people are not sacked for little misdemeanours like starting insurgencies, nor for being on the wrong side of the court of public opinion. If you want a cabinet member to be glued to their seat, accuse them of silly things like corruption. Next step is to go metaphysical on the issue. If witches and wizards could swallow $16 billion and still prevent electricity generation, wouldn’t it follow that those who shoot, bomb and maim others without provocation are ghosts?
If the Americans had asked President Jones, they could have defeated Al Qaeda without increasing defence budgets or using conventional weapons. Naija has preachers whose jets fly closer to heaven to drop prayer requests. The Naija insurgency manual recommends setting up an amnesty committee and politicizing it by asking the opponent you robbed of electoral victory to head it. With that political mileage, empanel the committee and make it take the heat while you settle down to the regular business of ruining the nation and polluting the polity.
Meanwhile, the committee has excuses, for no flesh and blood can expect to successfully take on ghosts? Manufacture a second-in-command to the insurgency and the media would sing your praises. Assure all that things are fine, even when bombs are going off and flesh and bullets are flying all over the place. Marshal the media on a nationwide tour of incarcerated insurgents. What better way to tackle an insurgency than talking to those behind bars in stocks and manacles? Fools may not know that you cannot lock up ghosts and that helps the job.
Your prison rounds help the insurgents know where their militants are kept and to blow them up once you have left. Setting them free is amnesty. These things might be shocking to those who do not know that Naija jails are the best on the planet, far more secured than Colombian jails or Guantanamo Bay. Inmates here have access to phones and e-mail and, as true ghosts, can take out-of-body nocturnal flights to lobby their flesh and blood colleagues for sustained ceasefire. Naija jails are so good the British have signed an agreement to make Naija citizens running foul of British law to return home and serve their sentences in opulence as long as they are not James Onanefe Ibori or Diepreye Alamieyeseigha.
Next, tell the world that finally, the days of running and hiding are over since the phantom second-in-command has assured you that a recent shoot-out in hell has shot Satan in the foot and deposed him. You shout –Eureka, evil can now be exorcised. These fibs are plausible because earthly phone contacts have been severed around the centre of insurgency.
While you are celeb-rating – boom, the devil reappears on YouTube reassuring his supporters that evil is alive and well. Nollywood scriptwriters are right – ghosts are technology savvy and they dodge army onslaughts. How did 42 school children get slaughtered while writing their university entrance examinations except these things are true? Such matters are beyond the comprehension of President Jones who packed a few presidential jets and flew to Beijing for prayers in a Peace Pagoda. No dice, it would appear that stubborn Naija ghosts do not bow to Chinese witchcraft or exorcism. Mr President, people are still dying and there is no predicting where next your ghosts would strike.
In fact, two weeks ago, ghost insurgents found their way to the sleepy town of Konduga where they slaughtered 44 human beings. Your amnesty committee is still on the road, somehow immune from attack. What Naija citizens trying to survive a messed up nation and a mismanaged economy want is to continue to live like zombies, to pray in their mosques and churches without fear and to live till the next day. They can’t stop the grand looting, or prevent the amnesty committee members from cashing their fat allowances. Is there a roadmap to sub-sistence?