Who is Senator Ibrahim Geidam? Many do not recall that he holds the record as having the longest term as governor since 1999. He governed Yobe State for more than 10 years. Geidam was sworn in as deputy governor of Yobe State on May 29, 2007. He was deputy to Mamman Bello Ali, who died in January 2009. Following that, Geidam was sworn in as governor on January 27, 2009. The late governor’s brother was brought in as his deputy. That effectively means that Geidam was governor of Yobe state from January 2009 to May 2019 when he relocated to the Senate to represent a part of the state. During these years, he was a member of All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), now defunct and, later, All Progressives Congress (APC).
Implication of this is that Geidam was in office as of 2009 when Yusuf Mohammed, founder of Boko Haram, was killed in neighbouring Borno State. It also means that Geidam was in office during most of the dastardly attacks by Boko Haram in Yobe. As governor, Geidam had security reports on the activities of Boko Haram in Yobe State. If he did not get daily briefings, he got them weekly. So, he is fully seized of a lot of information on Boko Haram and its operations. He obviously knows a lot.
As governor, Geidam superintended Yobe and saw the state sit comfortably on the lower rungs of the education ladder in Nigeria. He watched as Yobe enjoyed its status as an ‘educationally disadvantaged state’ and as such got preferential treatment in national college entrance examinations, where the standards were lowered to accommodate the state he reigned over. Within his 10 years plus as governor, Geidam did not institutionalise landmarks that would put Yobe on the map of fastest developing state economies in Nigeria. He left Yobe for Abuja thinking of what the Federal Government would do to end insurgency in the North-East. And his solutions came by the way of a bill to the Senate seeking to create a commission for repentant, or detained, Boko Haramites.
He titled it “A bill for the establishment of agency for education, rehabilitation, de-radicalisation and integration of repentant insurgents.” He wants the agency to have two major functions, which are recreational and vocational. On the recreational platform, Geidam wants the agency “to organise sports and fine arts programmes with purpose of maintaining open lines of communication, which would be used to gain a greater understanding of both immediate needs for combating Boko Haram as well as serve as a tool for counter-radicalisation.”
On the vocational front, Geidam wants the agency, or whatever it would be called, to focus on rehabilitating repentant and detained Boko Haramites and make them learn such skills as “carpentry, clay shaping, pottery and the likes and also they will make use of art through drawings guided by professional art therapists in their art rehabilitation.”
Geidam’s aim was to “provide avenue for rehabilitation, de-radicalisation, educating and reintegrating the defectors, repentant and detained members of Boko Haram to make them useful members of the society; provide avenue for reconciliation and promotion of national security as well as provide an open door and encouragement for other members of the group who are still engaged in the insurgency to abandon the group, especially in the face of military pressure.”
Geidam also suggested that the agency would “give the government opportunity to derive insider information about the insurgent group for greater understanding of the group and its inner workings.” He believes that such would enable government to “gain greater understanding of the insurgents (and) will enable government to address the immediate concerns of violence and study the needs of de-radicalisation efforts to improve the process of de-radicalisation.”
But most interesting of the aims of Geidam’s bill is the thinking that it will “help disintegrate the violent and poisonous ideology the group spreads, as the programme will enable some convicted or suspected terrorists to express remorse, repent and recant their violent ideology and re-enter mainstream politics, religion and society.”
Well, all the above may be very well-thought-out as ways to end the Boko Haram insurgency, but could Sen. Geidam please tell Nigerians what he did, as governor of Yobe for 10 years, to help de-radicalise repentant or detained insurgents or discourage youths in Yobe State from joining the group? How many of such persons did he effectively make to “re-enter mainstream politics, religion and society” after he had gotten them to “repent and recant their violent ideology” in his years as governor? By talking of re-entering mainstream politics, is Geidam suggesting that the insurgents are politicians waiting to have a slice of the mainstream? If so, isn’t this an argument contextually in line with pre-2015 logic that Boko Haram was fighting injustice and poverty in the North-East? Have they achieved that aim and now need reintegration into mainstream politics? Isn’t Geidam subtly suggesting that Boko Haramites were on a mission for northern emancipation, which is also, contextually, in line with the warning that “any attack on Boko Haram is an attack on the North”.
Besides, Geidam believes that the agency he seeks to create will end insurgency. But Chief of Army Staff, Gen. Yusuf Buratai, had publicly disclosed that insurgency had been defeated. Buratai said what is left is terrorism, which is manifested in the “last kick of a dying horse” as he described recent terrorist attacks on communities. So, is it that Geidam does not believe what Gen. Buratai said or that he does not listen to military authorities? Or, is this just about creating new avenues to remain relevant? If the agency he seeks is such a relevant adage to the quest for North-East development, why did he not create any such at the state level? Did he forget that the success of such, at the state level, would be the best campaign for a recreation of same at the national level? Is Geidam also suggesting that the North East Development Commission, inaugurated in May 2019, is actually useless in the task of rehabilitating repentant Boko Haramites?
Geidam comes back as an actual Nigerian politician. He hasn’t actually disappointed. Like all the rest, they suddenly find solutions to problems as soon as they leave office. They rarely proffer such solutions while in office. That has been the bane of Nigeria’s development and it is accentuated by a failed leadership recruitment process, which suggests that the most important thing is to occupy an office, irrespective of how incapable one is, and what visions and plans he/she has for the development of the states.
To change this nasty narrative, which has become a joke on all Nigerians, Nigerians must begin to change their leadership curve by electing problem-solvers, solution-oriented leaders, who would come to office fully prepared with solutions to problems they had dissected prior; not empowering unprepared minds who spend their entire time in office trying to understand what the problems are and then, proffer solutions after they’ve left, like Geidam has just done.
Meanwhile, his ‘solutions’ are more of booby-traps, attempts to pamper and reward Boko Haramites, than end terrorism or starve the group of new recruits. It would rather cause a deluge of influx of new recruits who would repeat the cycle: get radicalized, pick up arms, kill, main, cause pain, destroy and announce repentance and then be absorbed by Geidam’s agency for a rewarding rehabilitation exercise. Such a mindset!