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Arise, O Compatriots! By Babayola M. Toungo
There are two issues that are topical in this harmattanseason that has dominated the commentary and opinion pages of our newspapers and airwaves. These are the twin issues of insecurity and the unwarranted in the pump price of petrol (PMS). These two issues that ushered in the year 2012 brought the country to the edge of the precipice and nearly sent us over just in the first week of the first month of the year. So much has been said and written on the two issues, particularly the increment on the price of petrol, that whatever one may say will just be gratuitous. This one issue has succeeded in uniting and bringing out Nigerians on the streets for the first time despite the contrived religious crisis that is tearing the country and personal relationships apart. For the first time, the political class in Nigeria failed to gauge the mood of the masses correctly by imposing such crass hardship on a citizenry already overburdened by poverty, insecurity and uncertainty. A citizenry getting to grips with the fact that the leadership is not ready to provide basic necessaries of live like schools for their kids, hospitals, potable water, etc. because the political class take their kids abroad for schooling and travel abroad for such ailments like headaches and stomach discomfort.
With Jonathan’s ill-advised increase in the pump price of petrol, he has unwittingly introduced another dimension to the sufferings of the people and has further compounded everything by projecting a “to hell with you attitude” to the same people he claimed voted for him 99% just seven months back. He refused to even glorify their protest by keeping aloof from the melee of strikes organised by labour and civil society to remonstrate his high-handedness. Apart from a colourless and uninspiring speech he delivered through the Goebbels era look-alike NTA, the only other time he deemed fit to come down from his Olympian height to talk to us was in a church, where he told a partisan congregation that Boko Haram has now taken over his government. With these two evils bedevilling the land, Jonathan has missed a chance to be ‘president’. Rather he chose to be an Ijaw Christian leader in the mould of Tompolo. Asari Dokubo and Ateke. Though the increase in the pump price of petrol affected all Nigerians that are not political appointees, the man has resorted to making it an ethnic issue, inviting ethnic thugs like Asari Dokubo to threaten nationalists. I was of the mistaken opinion that Jonathan is the president of Nigeria and not that of the Ijaw ‘nation’.
This leads us to the heightened level of insecurity. Jonathan’s conduct andstyle of governance, in my view, is directly responsible for the impunity by the murderers now marauding the northern part of the country. In the past two years since he took over as acting president through the campaigns and the subsequent massively rigged 2011 elections his conduct has been that of deception camouflaged as timidity and dovishness. But beneath this veneer of timidity lies a calculating mind that is proving to be very dangerous for the corporate existence of the country. Sadly enough, there are no elders around Jonathan to tell him to change course.
A pattern is emerging from the madness of Boko Haram that is fast becoming a part of our existence where, in one breath Jonathan asked Nigerians to learn to live with and in another told us that the movement has taken over his government. What are we to believe and act accordingly? The emerging pattern is that some people, apart from the followers of Mohammed Yusuf, have taken over the brand name and patented it for their motives. A Christian woman, Lydia Joseph, was arrested in Bauchi in the process of burning the biggest CatholicChurch in the town. Four months on, the only explanation we got to hear is that she had a problem with one of the congregants and therefore decided to burn the church. How plausible is that? Then in December last year another Christian, disguised as a nation muslim complete with a turban, was arrested in the process of burning another church in Yenagoa, the capital of Bayelsa State, Jonathan’s home state. Must he be disguised to settle his score with the Church’s leadership? Again Nigerians were told that the man had a problem with the church, this time the pastor. Much earlier, about two years ago, when a Christian in Calabar attempted to ram his car at an aeroplane at the Calabar airport, Nigerians were told the guy was a loony. In July last year, Yakubu Bitiyong, a member of the Kaduna State House of Assembly and a former commissioner in the state was arrested for terrorists related activities and the case just fizzled out without any explanation. But when a person of indeterminate pedigree accused a sitting Senator of the federal republic, the lawmaker was picked up pronto with a compliment of photojournalists and branded the masquerade behind the terror campaign in the land. What message is the government and its backers sending to the populace? That some people can commit murder and go scot free while others cannot?
We have just seen Nuhu Mohammed, an alleged boko haram sponsor and his son paraded before media men by the military authorities, in handcuffs and a display of things recovered in his house, in the same Kaduna where Bitiyong was arrested and many cannot even tell you how he looks. What message are we sending to the citizens of this blighted nation? That justice is Janus faced?
In the heat of the petrol pump price increase imbroglio, Jonathan commissioned some old men, claiming to be elders, from his south-south geo-political zone to meet and issue threats to the rest of the country on a matter that affects the whole nation. Jonathan has taken the nation to its lowest point by playing this divisive card on Nigerians who rigged him into office. While campaigning across the country, he didn’t mention anything like being a president for the Ijaws or the south-south zone. He craved for trust by Nigerians with his “I was not born rish” slogan. Some people genuinely bonded with him, but even then I had my reservations for a man who repudiated an agreement he signed simply because he want to contest the presidency. Again I was not comfortable with the way he manipulated the issue of zoning at his party level to make it look as if northerners are against him simply because he comes from the south and not because as a ‘gentleman’ he should make his word his bond. Anyway, Nigerians irrespective of whether they voted for Jonathan or not really went through hell the past week.
The most dangerous game played by Jonathan is the issue of insecurity in the land. I am not sure, but my reading of the situation is that insecurity in northern Nigeria is rising directly proportional to the rise in peace in the Niger Delta. Is there is a correlation? I don’t know. Recently in Adamawa State, one of the most peaceful states in the country, a spate of killings racked the state from Mubi in the northern part of the state to Yola the state capital. While the killings in Mubi was discovered to be among rival Igbo businessmen, the one in Yola had to do with a pastor transferred from his church for financial recklessness. But since it was convenient to lay the blame on our current bogeyman– Boko Haram – mum is the word on the true position of things. Is that how we are going to progress. To heap insults on the collective psyche of Nigerians, some people from Jonathan’s region are threatening to secede simply because the rest of the country had the sense to oppose a senseless economic policy by their “son”. Is secession the agenda? Why wasn’t we told before the election?
My advise to the rest of the country is to prepare for such an eventuality which may come before 2015, the year the Americans predicted we will disintegrate. With the way things are going, I am sure we won’t disappoint the Americans. My Christian brothers and sisters from the north should be well advised to disregard anyone telling them that they don’t belong with Muslims in the north. For those who do not know, there is no state in the north that has no substantial number of adherents of both Islam and Christianity. The script is unfolding a page at a time. Let us all give it the desired attention verse by verse not to miss the next instalment. |