Of election and war

A few days later, while campaigning in Bayelsa State, Niger Delta militant leader Alhaji Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, issued another, this time threatening violent action against General Muhammadu Buhari, Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi; former Bayelsa Governor Timipre Sylva and all eligible voters in the area if President Jonathan lost the February 14 election there. And General […]

A few days later, while campaigning in Bayelsa State, Niger Delta militant leader Alhaji Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, issued another, this time threatening violent action against General Muhammadu Buhari, Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi; former Bayelsa Governor Timipre Sylva and all eligible voters in the area if President Jonathan lost the February 14 election there.
And General TY Danjuma promptly called for their arrest over this declaration of war on the Nigerian nation-state, announced in stately precincts and in the presence, and with the blessings, of a representative of the chief of the state-the president. Then they gave the General a week within which to apologise to them  or face the consequences. Clearly, that’s as far as it can go. This infantile nonsense has been tolerated by this nation long enough. It is time it is stopped.
The threat they issued the nation over the election result is an eloquent commentary on their sick state of mind; and the ultimatum they issues to General TY Danjuma is the confirmatory test proving why they must be indeed be arrested without further delay, as he said.
It is a painful enough waste of time having to respond to the threat of these people to the nation; but it will be a great disservice to the nation and to the cause of public commentary to even seek to pay regard to the content of what they said. The ultimatum they issued is an insult not only to the nation but to their own contemporary history, and there is nothing special to it.
All zones are capable of throwing up comparable characters adept at such pathetic, intolerable acts of malicious hooliganism, and none of the zones is without its own share of adult delinquents capable of constituting such irritating national nuisance. The only difference here is that the others can be-and are-kept on a cultural leash. And while they can be even more supercilious in tribal tantrum, and direct its venom at any Northern leader of their choice, not even in their worst gesture of communal ingratitude can they direct this at General TY Danjuma, the man who liberated them from an actual, not imagined, conquest and slavery. If General Danjuma had not broken the backbone of the rebellion at its most fortified sectors in the northern parts of the theatre of war, these people would have remained shoeless slaves in their creeks in the southern reaches of the front.
Under normal circumstances, what the militants said about General Danjuma should not be worthy of anybody’s attention and no one will have bothered about tasteless, disrespectful cheek. That’s why this is not a reprimand to them for what they have done; it is just a reminder to a nation that has taken irresponsible miscreants serious.
And it is not so much the purpose of this write up to help edify silliness with a response as it is an attempt to expose and discredit the warped view with which these creatures now see this nation. They have not even tried to hide the fact that what they do has nothing to do with democracy, because their goal is the preservation of the incompetent Jonathan presidency, which has thrown open for them the coffers of the nation; and they have taken the parable of the national cake literally and not only must they have their physical share of it, they must have what they imagine is their pound of flesh.
But it will still be tragic if, based on the activities of the militants, the rest of the nation concludes that people of the Niger Delta are uncouth, unrefined, uncivilised, foul-mouthed, querulous savages. They are not. These insults to the nation issue forth from the mouths of these Ijaw militant delinquents who can by no means be said to represent the entirety, or even the generality, of the people of the Niger Delta. And just as the rest of the Niger Delta must assert their right not to be misrepresented by a group that has already short changed them not once, most recently by cornering all the amnesty largesse, but several times, they must condemn, and dissociate themselves from, these irresponsible youths of Ijaw extraction.
After seven years of an amnesty programme launched under President Umaru Yar’adua and continued for six years under the Jonathan administration, only the Ijaws are getting its juices, even though they are not the only people in the Niger Delta, nor the only ones in whose land oil is produced, or whose environment has been despoiled.
The Ijaws, who have over the years become the nation’s quintessential marginalisation-cry babies, are now lording it over all of them, as hapless victim becomes heartless villain. In the name of repentant militants, hundreds of Ijaw youths have been sent to undergo training in a variety of technical and scientific fields all over the world. And so far, they are the only ones getting all the really big-time appointments, all the juicy projects, all the choice overseas training and placement, all the illegal oil bunkering opportunities-as well as outright theft of national resources.
Where have they left the Isokos, the Itsekiris, the Urhobos, the Igbos of the Delta or Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Ogonis; and where are the Ikwerres, the Ukwuanis, the Kalabaris, the Orons and the Annangs and all the other 40-odd descendants of Ujo all of whom have oil in their backyard? And who is dragging them into a needless conflict with the rest of Nigeria over an enterprise in which they have now been rendered almost without stake and certainly without a voice?
It came to power in the wake of sectional bickering that accentuated and almost validated a long-held and widely-shared belief in the thesis of born-to-rule for some; and, with un-remedied feelings of victimhood, it unfortunately settled down to the business of settling scores. Its pursuit after its ill-defined agenda reminded one of the coups d’états of 1966, and its prosecution of that very agenda seemed to have overlooked the fact it would sooner or later come to need the votes of the very people it was dealing with and whom it had effectively put on the defensive.
The Federal Government didn’t say-and didn’t seem to want to say-anything about an act that was treasonable and committed in its name. And by their silence and inaction, both the Inspector-General of Police and the Director-General of the Department of State Services have only proved their own complicity in the act and their lack of independence to act, lending greater credence to suspicions of government complicity, sponsorship or endorsement of what the militants are doing.
Indeed, what is more irritating is that they imagine that this laughable threat of theirs can cower a people on the fringe of which Boko Haram can emerge. Or that what they are doing can buy for Jonathan anything other than further aspersion. Obviously, it is not on account of incompetence alone that the Jonathan administration is loathed by all reasonable Nigerians; a substantial part of its odiousness and the national antipathy against it are the direct result of this ridiculous campaign of insults and calumny and other related primitive misbehaviour by these so-called militants.
There are two main reasons for the unpopularity of President Goodluck Jonathan. The first one lies squarely in the failure of his administration to manage the nation’s pluralism and achieve a measure of workable inclusiveness; and the second is his painful incompetence. His unpopularity had nothing to do with religion though much effort had been put in the attempt to promote this and secure for him a religious constituency; and neither had it anything to do with sectionalism, though a lot of effort had been expended to situate it on sectionalism and secure support for him on that platform. In the end it all failed.
And when it became clear that the opposition presidential candidate was unstoppable, the regime began to explore extra-electoral means of stopping him. First, hired writers were made to create a scene about his age; another case was made about his school certificate. Next, they turned attention to the so-called Islamisation threat that he supposedly posed to the nation. Then they went to court over these and similar issues-and they are still there.
And when in a question-and-answer session, the National Security Adviser revealed at a Chatham House lecture in London that he had advised the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to consider delaying the elections, because of a lack of preparedness, people thought a kite was being flown. The regime then turned to traditional rulers, to former heads of state, to elders and to whoever could help find a way of postponing, pushing, cancelling or otherwise forgetting about the February 14 date. Later, they organised demonstrations by youths who said they were protesting the prospect of being disenfranchised. When that also failed, it came time to come clean.
Finally, as this is written a meeting of the National Council of State is considering whether to postpone the election. But it is not likely that Jonathan can win this election even if it is postponed a hundred times or shelved for the next ten years. And neither will an interim government procure for those opposed to a Buhari presidency the popularity to defeat him. In any case, they know that people are going to resist this.