Time to revisit the court-martial

But there is light at the end of the tunnel and victory is gleaming across the northeast like laser rays pointed at a flying jet. The picture of our C-in-C decked in his camouflage, swagger stick in hand is etched in our electoral memories. It took 15,000 deaths to achieve that feat and admit that […]

But there is light at the end of the tunnel and victory is gleaming across the northeast like laser rays pointed at a flying jet. The picture of our C-in-C decked in his camouflage, swagger stick in hand is etched in our electoral memories. It took 15,000 deaths to achieve that feat and admit that terrorism was eating into his victory cake. Apparently he was no reader of Dele Giwa’s Parallax Snaps or he would remember “one life taken in cold blood is as gruesome as thousands that may go down in a pogrom, so let’s forget about numbers and talk about life.”
We know that our president would find the balls to make the trip to Chibok. Or else how does he confront that intemperate Aisha Seesay, who flew in from CNN’s America and went without military backup? How could the presidential Rottweilers bark at Tinubu’s TVC crew who made the trip before Al-Jazeera’s disrespectful Yvonne Ndege. And to know that the two are girls – anatomically without balls! So join our resuscitated C-in-C in shouting ‘Never Again’ in Chibok. Keep applauding our president until he rallies the thousands of displaced people who have as much electoral relevance as the emirs, Obas, Obis, pastors, imams and youths whose thumbprints can help Jega or anyone mimicking his role do their math. Afterwards a tête-à-tête with widows and orphans in the barracks won’t be out of place. Their breadwinners paid the supreme sacrifice for presidential insouciance.
We have watched the latest concessionary video from Shekau and we have seen on his wretched face palpable fear and the consciousness which comes with days of reckoning. We re-echo the call for his capture – alive and hope that he won’t be coached like the driver who took the sins of James Onanefe Ibori that it was he who was sentenced in a Bwari and not the ogidigbodigbo now counting geckoes on the walls of a London jail. Let’s hope that the thrice killed and thrice resurrected Shekau would not be like one Fryo who confessed to knowing about Bola Ige’s death only to recant. For we are Naija and we know that abracadabra is a ruling party’s magic word.
All said and done, we must return to the court martial and death sentences passed on soldiers whose mortal crime was crying out that they were sent to battle without weapons. Yes, we are not soldiers and dabbling into military matters could be termed seditious, but it’s not that long ago when we crudely flew $15million to South Africa to purchase arms and failed. It wasn’t that long when we realized that the military was starved of arms 30 years ago and became worse than boy scouts making tactical manoeuvres, laughable as the excuses were.
 We finally subscribed to a regional force against Boko, we have bought, exhibited and commissioned arms shipped in from China and Russia – two countries recently cloned into existence after our noses were rubbed in the mud in Jo’burg. Somebody must have updated the maps in As’hol Rock, so thanks to them, we now have the tools to do the job. Before now, a compassionate President Jones did not want to kill his brothers, the Boko Haram.
These stubborn facts keep gnawing at my bloody civilian mind crying for a revisit of the infamous courts-martial and asking for pardon. To borrow a Buhari line, maybe we should draw a line in the sand before elections, not saying we made a mistake, because making such a humongous admittance may force Lai Mohammed to ask for pardon which we do not owe him or any citizen. But how about just giving those patriotic soldiers their uniforms back, ration them their new arms and sending them back to do the job we recruited them to do in the first place?
If we do this, then maybe we can forget that Buhari did not buy rifles and he, in turn can forget that we accused him. Perhaps too we can get Bola Tinubu, the man who can hamstring candidates to sign their resignation letters before they are elected to pave way for his inordinate ambition, to do something unique. We could get him to prevail on those old boned Council of Northern Elders who recently endorsed President Jones’ tazarce to force Buhari into an agreement not to sniff out the $6 billion security votes. That is, if he beats all the hurdles by which Bastard Okugbe believes he is not eligible.