PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

Between the President and The Opposition

ndajika@yahoo.com

The first casualty in any war, they say, is truth. The second, one might add, is logic, or reason, if you will. So it seems with our politics especially as we approach next year’s election.

This much is pretty obvious from the controversy triggered by the gruesome bombing in Abuja which marked and marred the October 1 celebration of 50 years of Nigeria’s independence from British colonial rule.

If you depended on the local press you will be forgiven the conclusion than the principal, if not the only, villain in the controversy is none other than the Northern Leadership Forum (NLF) led by Malam Adamu Ciroma, Madakin Fika and prominent politician since the Second Republic. The NFL has been in opposition to President Goodluck Jonathan’s bid for power in next year’s elections on ground that it breaches his party’s zoning arrangement.

In response to the president’s knee-jerk exoneration of the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND) of responsibility for the bombing even in the face of MEND’s statement that it carried out the act, the NLF issued a statement calling on the president to resign or be impeached because, coming from the region, he has, by his reaction, the NLF said, shown himself totally incapable of non-partisanship. It also said his reaction exposed his incompetence.

Almost to the last, members of the nation’s commentariat seized upon NLF’s call for the president’s resignation or impeachment to accuse the forum of politicising the bombing. Yes, they said, the president made a mistake in trying to exonerate MEND of responsibility for the bombing so early in the day, but the NLF over-reacted and politicized it by calling on him to resign or be impeached.

Arguably the NLF has over-reacted to the president’s position by calling on him to resign or be impeached. Even then it is standing both truth and logic on their heads to accuse the Forum of politicising the bombing. The responsibility for that rests squarely on the broad shoulders of the president.

This much is obvious from the fact that not only did the president say it was not MEND that bombed Abuja. More importantly he said he knew who did it. The culprits, he said, were “terrorists” from abroad sponsored by his political opponents at home.

Shortly after that Chief Raymond Dokpesi, former chairman of African Independent Television (AIT) and now campaign co-ordinator of former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida - President Jonathan’s most formidable opponent in the contest for the presidential ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) - was invited by the State Security Service and told he and his principal were suspected of having a hand in the bombing.

Remember at that point not only was the jury still out; it had not even sat. So if Dokpesi’s invitation by the SSS rather so early in the day was not the politicization of the bombing by the president the word politics must surely need redefining.

Anyone with even half an eye could see that Dokpesi’s invitation was a prelude to getting Babangida himself. Indeed speculations were rife shortly before Dokpesi’s invitation that the then Acting National Security Adviser, Colonel Kayode Are, lost his job to Jonathan’s kinsman, General Patrick Azazi, because he said he could not carry out orders from on-high to rope in not only Babangida but several other Northern leaders opposed to Jonathan’s bid for PDP’s presidential ticket.

This speculation may have been idle but when the president of your country starts pointing fingers over a serious crime even before he has been briefed by his security agencies it is difficult not to conclude that there was fire where this smoke rose from.

If further evidence was needed that the responsibility for the politicization of the Abuja bombing rested squarely with the president, it was provided by the man himself, no less. He did so last Monday when the Northern Political Summit (NPS) led by Chief Solomon Lar and which seems to be fronting for him in opposition to the NLF in very much the same way the now moribund Yoruba Elders Forum fronted for former President Olusegun Obasanjo in opposition to Afenifere in Yorubaland, paid him a visit.

Predictably the NPS seized the opportunity to condemn the NLF for politicizing the Abuja bombings in very strong language. “Given the serious nature of the tragic event,” Senator Ibrahim Ida said speaking on behalf of the Summit, “we denounce, in the strongest term, attempts by some political leaders to politicize the matter. This is outrageous in the extreme. Matters of national security should not be politicized, for whatever reason.”

Apparently the fact was completely lost on NPS that it was the president who started it all by the way he tried to clear MEND of all blame and shift it elsewhere even as it told him in effect that he should not have hurried to judgement in the first place.

Then when it went on to caution him against reacting to any further “provocative statements” from political opponents, he tried to rationalize his initial reaction that started the controversy.

The president should have saved his breath; his rationalization can only raise more questions about his competence to rule this country. And considering the fact that the man obviously had the luxury of preparing his response to NPS’s wise counsel against talking off the cuff, his response can only raise further questions about the quality of his handlers. His words need to be quoted at length to appreciate the damage he has done to himself in trying to rationalize his unwise initial reaction to the bombing.

“I did not,” he said, “want to comment just as you advised because if you comment, people tend to play politics with it. So I have allowed the security agencies to continue with their work. At the end of the day we will surely unearth those who are behind this.

“After the incident, I spoke the following day when the ECOWAS parliament had a programme and when I visited the hospital where I said it was not MEND that committed the crime. That is the sin I have committed.

“And I always explain to people that these car bombs first of all happened in Benin, Edo State, somebody even died and another in Bayelsa State, NO BODY MADE AN INVESTIGATION but they said it was Niger Delta crisis. It was buried under MEND, under Niger Delta crisis. Again another one in Port Harcourt, luckily no one died and it was buried. Not too long ago, Vanguard Newspaper was organizing a programme in Warri, another one happened when governors and senior citizens of this country were meeting, no body ordered an investigation and it was also buried, nobody was arrested. Then now in Abuja on October 1, they said MEND again and I said no, we cannot continue to bury this under Niger Delta crisis or MEND. That is the sin I have committed.” (Thisday, October 12.)

The obvious question is whose responsibility was it to have investigated all these bombings? Why were they never investigated? What does such wilful, perhaps criminal, negligence say of a government which blames the opposition for crimes that are not that hard to stop?