My heart is with Sen. Ndume

What happened to him could happen to any other person; it could simply be one of those very dirty political chess games that the nation is about to be treated to at this crucial threshold when social explosion is running across the length and breadth of Nigeria. At a time when the peace in North […]

What happened to him could happen to any other person; it could simply be one of those very dirty political chess games that the nation is about to be treated to at this crucial threshold when social explosion is running across the length and breadth of Nigeria. At a time when the peace in North East region is fragile and the agitation and criminalities there are becoming increasingly fierce, coupled with a very strong position that some powerful cabals in government are holding to the effect that the BokO Haram agitation is merely a ploy by politicians from a certain section of the country to obstruct the government of Goodluck Jonathan, it is difficult to give anyone so implicated the opportunity of fair hearing especially at the court of public opinion.

 

The Boko Haram movement like their counterpart in the Niger Delta area were believed to be creations of political groups and actors in the desperate search for power. While the Niger Delta groups were treated as national heroes, those in the North East are seen as mere criminals. But the fact still remains that addressing these agitations with kids gloves is only likely to expose Nigeria and Nigerians to more gargantuan social crisis in the future.

If the government continues to see the Boko Haram episode as purely a Northern phenomena, and continues to deploy crude military force as a solution, it may succeed in ending the lives of several citizens who are innocent and also have the problem probably temporarily arrested, but the long time implication is better imagined.

My view about the issue is that we must all begin to see the Boko Haram issue as a manifestation of the failures of responsibility on the part of those who allocate resources. Those who have allowed the nation’s educational system to crumble. Those who failed to build necessary infrastructure that will support life and instead did away with huge national resources into private hands and for personal uses and aggrandizement.

Those who have broken down the nation’s health system and refused to align the rural areas with the urban centers. Those who have made even our urban centers look more like slums than cities. Those who don’t care about tomorrow. If Nigeria is ranked number 157 out of the 186 countries that were examined in this year’s human development index, then, it should be clear that there are a lot of issues on ground that are unresolved and that are potentials for greater national violence now and in the future.

When those who take decisions on our behalf still live in the limbo of anarchy and believe sincerely that one of the most potent antidotes to social crisis is the reinforcement of the armed forces with sophisticated weapons to fight the citizenry, then we must know that we are indeed in more serious problems than we think and see. Our public schools where over 90% of the children are attending have broken down, the tertiary institution is even in greater trouble because more functional illiterates are annually graduated from our universities and polytechnics. The meaning of all these is that the nation is doomed.

As long as national resources are not deployed to service the critical social infrastructure that will improve the quality of life, we will be wasting our time with fiction and tales and the armed forces will not be able to address the growing national agitation that poverty, want, ignorance and degradation will engender.

A problem with most of us Nigerians is that we hardly give people that are accused any chance especially when we are aggrieved about the particular situation. I hope that Senator Ndume will be able to exculpate himself of the accusations against him and since the matter is before a competent court of law, the substance of the issue will not be discussed in this piece.

However, it is very important to call on the nation’s security service to re-professionalize itself in the manner it relates to the citizenry on very critical national issue such as the one involving the Boko Haram movement. I don’t know if in other climes security operatives are as overt as they are in our country.  I know that it is only in Nigeria of late that you hear intelligence and other security officers publicly proclaiming that they are members of such groups.

In fact some of them are known in their places of positing with their names and their offices as their surnames such as Olu SSS; Garba SSS or Emeka SSS. The reasons for these are really not farfetched. It may just be for the sake of rent seeking or prestige or any other reason, but that is not our concern in this piece today. The lesson however is that there is the need for more professionalism on the part of those who we pay salaries to do this onerous national duty.

My sincere wish is that Senator Ali Ndume would come out of this storm a free man despite the seeming outrage of those who are arraigning him. I do hope that he will not just be a victim of the failure of the very class that he belongs to at a time when the desperation to find a lasting solution to the carnage is everywhere.

My view is that the phenomenon of Boko Haram and any other such agitation of Nigerians will best be uncovered and solved without so much physical stress of either internal military deployment or the current state craze of the invitation of any foreign forces or intelligence to deal with what several Nigerians like me believe is a purely social issue and can be attacked squarely with proactive efficient social policies.

I know Muhammmad Ndume fairly well at the political level and like several others in the field of politics in this country, he is likely to fraternize with all segments of the youth in his constituency. The good, the bad and the ugly. The concept of youth vanguards is a national phenomenon in Nigerian politics. In the last many years we have written about the apparent transmutation of the youth by those who seek political power and control in the prelude to elections and only to abandon them soon after victory.

It is such abandonment that has led to the creation of all other vicious national youth cartels such as the OPC and the Niger Delta militancy. The Boko Haram movement is also likely to be of similar origin. When the youth are armed to the teeth by the political class and directed to play a particular obnoxious role in the society, it is certain that they will continue to manifest such negative tendencies when elections are over and the incapacity of the state and political actors to re-channel and redirect the activities of such youth invariably results in what we see today.

In my view, that young man who was presented as the spokesman of the Boko Haram movement didn’t seem to be in the category of those who are accused or who claim to be responsible for all those fatalities either in the North East flank or in the Federal Capital of Nigeria. Anyone who could wear and detonate explosives on himself can certainly never tremble in the presence of people like Marilyn Ogar or other interrogators as Lawrence Anini once did.

Let me appeal to both Nigerians and the security agencies to be very thorough in the search for those who are responsible for this national crisis and at the same time be very careful as not to hang innocent people just because we are desperate to stop the menace or uncover those who are responsible. I share the views of the Senate on this matter; allow an uninterrupted investigation on the allegations but at the same time uphold the virtues of the Western legal system as is practiced in Nigeria that an accused person is presumed innocent until he is proven guilty.