The reason Boko Haram invaded Dapchi school successfully and took away our 110 young girls is the failing of past government, especially that of Goodluck Jonathan. Those soldiers that trade blames today with the police on whose duty it was to safeguard the school are all working for Jonathan and the opposition.
In fact, they belong to the opposition security forces recently set up to backstab and blackmail this administration. That’s a typical known line the APC government now in power for almost three years sang to a lazy refrain over the years. I sing them the tune of Smokie — Go sing your line to someone else, someone else, maybe. When they started, the only chorus was to blame past administrations on the failings and every failing. It worked then until it lost its efficacy and stopped working and will never work again.
May last year in far away Beijing, in his address to the world, Minister Lai Mohammed made out time to sing the same tune to people who don’t give a hoot on what party is or was in power in Nigeria from the beginning of the world. In July 2016 in the same Beijing at two fora that held some three days apart, he never forgot the usual song and then it was the reason the country had not migrated to digital TV. It became a lame way to escape everything. But ineptitude and incapacity are like the pregnancy my people say is never hidden for too long.
They kept dragging in lack lustre manner and squelching through the puddle of inanity until everyone, including their followers, knew that there is nothing left of this inept government. Propaganda enthroned them but the same does not sustain people in power, only works and making the positive difference do. I knew nothing was going to change from May 2015 except for the worse, but I was wrong, because they have rapidly changed for the worst.
How many killings do we discuss everyday? Can you imagine the unfeeling country we operate where on Wednesday the killing of 23 in Taraba by herdsmen never made the big news list. Yes, that’s how base we have got that 23 persons killed in cold blood is no longer news.
What else would we expect when the army guarding the Dapchi school said they handed over the security of the area to the police and left, and after that Boko Haram invaded and took away 110 school kids without a trace? Who was it that informed Boko Haram when to attack when the guard was lowered? Police swiftly counter that they never got any mandate or met with the army because the entire state is still under high security alert with the army in charge. The rattled Governor Geidam of Yobe State has joined the fray in the blame game. While we do this, the abductors of our kids go farther away.
Now, the announcement is that few days after the incident, the Nigeria Air Force has mobilized 100 aircrafts to fish out the girls and track the abductors and had reported covering up to 600 flight hours. That is good news for treating a dead body with very efficacious medication. The act took place and the frantic efforts to salvage an already bad situation is what we celebrate. At last, do these facts and joint commissions change the reality that our girls are still lost? They won’t and can never. Between April 14 and 15, 2014, about 276 school girls were taken from a school in Chibok, Borno State. The noise of that abduction aroused even the deaf and till date, many of them have not been recovered or could ever return alive or be accounted for.
That incident became the major plank for victimizing President Jonathan, and that was correct because I individually felt without those girls returned alive, Jonathan had no reason re-contesting. But while Jonathan lost because of the propaganda and fabrications of the APC, the governor who supervised that state and a member of the APC was rewarded with re-election. Nobody ever for a day blamed Kashim Shettima the governor for his lapses that gave rise to that incident.
Today, close to three years, not only has the President Muhammadu Buhari administration failed in its promise to rescue the Chibok girls, but we have lost more kids to the same circumstances under a people that claimed and boasted being the best and smartest team of Nigerians. So what exactly has changed? Nothing, apart from changing from the bad to the worst.
We have had our fill to the brim with these people that make all their efforts to fabricate lies and never invest such effort to make things right. Otherwise, why would a country that went through the Chibok trauma be meant to travel the same tortuous road again with all the apparati of state there to counter such incidents and protect the people, especially helpless kids in school whose ages range between 11 and 19?
Today, those kids who escaped the abduction in the school vow not to return to the school, and this is a part of the country that had always suffered low school enrolment and worst of all for the girl child.
The story about Benue and Taraba is that up to 500,000 kids who were forced out of their schools to live as IDps due to incessant Fulani herdsmen attacks and killings are stranded and part of the change the APC planned to hand over to us. This same government that nags and riles us with talks of hate speech is continuously unleashing on all of us hate acts which are worse
Their hate acts escalate everyday with unspoken and unwritten mandate of allowing crises fester. There seems to be a deliberate ploy to cause bedlam in Nigeria and create a chance for what would make 2019 not a reality any longer. For real, if such plans are followed through by the planners, they would hasten a lot of things, including possibly the wrong ones. But no one prays for the wrong ones.
Such unspoken plans as I call them manifest in the deliberate silence of the people that claim to love and manage Nigeria now. They are hate acts. And unfortunately, the same people always arm themselves with the blackmail of branding every word of dissent against the government as hate speech. These days, the darling campaign IGP Ibrahim Idris happily runs is that all local armed militia must disarm, but can you ever recall hearing him say all Fulani herdsmen that bear arms in any form must also disarm? Of course they don’t need to because they are not militia. What is the reason for this order by Idris, possibly to ensure that the locals don’t offer any form of resistance or self defence when the herdsmen Defence Minister Dan Ali has given the licence to do as they like attack them.
