Still on Apo 8

The last thing I heard about the issue was when the Chief of Army Staff General Azubuike Ihejerika boldly and shamelessly came hard insisting that indeed the fallen lumpens had weapons and soldiers only responded after they came under attack. Shamelessly because as a General and head of the Nigerian Army, he should know better […]

The last thing I heard about the issue was when the Chief of Army Staff General Azubuike Ihejerika boldly and shamelessly came hard insisting that indeed the fallen lumpens had weapons and soldiers only responded after they came under attack.
Shamelessly because as a General and head of the Nigerian Army, he should know better what possession of arms is like, what the scenario looks like after gun duel between two tendencies and the attendants evidences that would manifest after such a duel.
In this case, the army claimed that they came under attack from those squatters because they are members of the Boko Haram movement. Up till this time I’m putting pen on paper neither the army headquarters nor the state security department was able to present any weapon to the public as retrieved from the lumpens in response to our agitations.
We are also yet to see any soldier who was injured or harmed as a result of gun shots fired by the squatters that warranted such brutality and inhumanity to the extent that the army chief would face the nation with that affirmative untruth.
I am beginning to believe the theory in the air that General Ihejirika is on duty with an agenda. I want to think that the theory which suggests that there is a deliberate plan by the Jonathan administration to keep annihilation as a political tool and strategy up till 2015 may after all not be out of place otherwise, despite the acclaimed successes and huge resources that the soldiers receive from our collective national purse, why is it that the insurgency and insecurity seem unabated?
The army has not changed its tactics and there is hardly any day that passes without the soldiers killing scores of people in the name of Boko Haram. In civilized societies, the leadership of the army would have been changed because of the evident failures to address the calamity.
What is becoming apparent in Nigeria today is that the army high command seems to either be happy with the insurgency or is deliberately keeping the flames burning in order to continue collecting our money from the government in the name of fighting insurgency.
My take on this is that President Jonathan must with immediate effect relieve the Chief of Army Staff of his appointment and appoint a new one who will be capable of ending this arbitrariness and reign of terror which Nigerians are subjected to in the last several years since Ihejirika became the chief.
One of the reasons why conferences such as the one President Jonathan is set to organize as a fall out of the crisis rocking his party, and not the country will not succeed is the blatant selfishness of the elite class. Nigerians have been mercifully emasculated by those who ordinarily should provide leadership and direction.
That is why a few weeks ago I wrote in this column after Senate President David Mark had sanctioned the call for a conference that he did so having seen the dangers that befell him as a person and possibly the inordinate ambition that he might be nursing. Every Nigerian has the right to aspire to greatness, but our ruling class has for nothing exhibited stag insensibilities and selfishness in the way the run the affairs of this country.
We are waiting to see the outcome of the probes that are on-going on the execution of innocent victims of the Nigerian failed state system. If we had a functional educational system, they wouldn’t be touting water and driving keke NAPEP and sleeping in uncompleted buildings all over the federal capital. They would have gone to school and become better educated and possibly chiefs of army staff.
I am ashamed of the seeming silence of the press from the other end of Nigeria. When 6 traders were executed by the police around Gimbiya Street some years back, the whole press was agog but in this case, very few media houses are talking about the murder of eight innocent citizens.
Again, this explains why Nigeria may not know peace in the nearest future because we still do not see injustice to others as injustice done to us. We are so cruel, rural and pedestrian in our thoughts and this has cut across the various strata of the nation’s national realities.
You see professors in our universities that are basically professing ignorance. You see leaders at the highest level of political authority evoking cheap sentiments to cover their failures and incapacity. That is why the office of a president or a governor would be reduced to cheap sectional or sectarian sentiments when in reality the issues are purely political, social or economic.
How can any sensible citizen rise and claim for instance that President Jonathan is being persecuted because he is Ijaw, a southerner, a minority or a Christian? Is it not foolish to rely on these Precambrian antics at this critical moment of our national life? Does this claim mean that such a president as minority as he may be was not elected by the majority of Nigerians?
I wish to suggest that it is time that we reappraise our priorities and change for the better. The Nigerian Army under its current leadership has failed woefully and there is no way history can be recorded otherwise. The need for change in the name of national stability is necessary if the government truly wants to address the biting insecurity in the nation and restore the glory of the army as the last hope for national survival and integration.
The death of those young people killed in cold blood must not be allowed to go in vein. Reasons for their murder must be brought to the knowledge of all. The matter mustn’t be swept under the carpet just because they are some unknown quantities. Their blood and those of all killed under similar circumstances will continue to haunt all those responsible for this and those who see these injustices happening and have the capacity to act but failed to.
Those responsible for the murder must prove that truly they came under fire and show sufficient evidences otherwise Nigerians will lose hope on our soldiers and their leadership. Such wickedness must not be allowed to go unchallenged.