Killings: Now is time for action – AN EDITORIAL
“Now, Switzerland has returned what Obasanjo made the world to believe as Abacha loot even after many years they refused to release such loots to Nigeria through him and his two successors. But instead for Nigerians of the nature of those “irresponsible” politicians to appreciate the restoration of respect and honour to Nigeria – under Buhari – by world communities, the CAN in collaboration with those politicians twisted one particular Donald Trump’s speeches therefore causing a huge disaffection capable of escalating to religious conflict in the land at a time they and other Nigerians should be celebrating the honour that their President is doing them all over the world. It is incontrovertible that Nigeria is now respected by world leaders, despite the fact that there is still room for improvement.”
The killings in Nigeria have now come to public knowledge as machination of two sides: First side being the dispersal of Boko Haram insurgents from Sambisa forest and the second being the people now described as “irresponsible” politicians who want to get back to power at all cost as the Administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has made business as usual no longer possible for them.
The story of the killings being an offshoot of the dispersed Boko Haram insurgents from their base of long time is found out to be tenable as those “misguided” brothers now have not the chance to escape from Nigeria into neighbouring countries. Killing is however not the only crime they perpetrate. They are therefore here almost starving to death as a result of the untiring efforts of the Nigerian armed forces and other security agencies including the foremost security agency the Nigerian Police Force and the State Security Service (SSS) heating them with fire.
This therefore is not the best of time for them as they have been engaging in many unusual crimes like kidnapping, armed robbery, cattle rustlings, mainly, to survive. It is the reason, investigations revealed, this kind of crimes has been on the increase shortly after it became clear that the government’s efforts had paid off decimating the Boko Haram insurgences. And, unlike before when they kidnapped and moved their prey out of the country to neighbouring countries, they are now and are still hiding somewhere in Nigeria particularly in the Lake Chad area and the hard life of having no money to spend, no food to eat and no chance of relating with their relations in the normal Nigerian society is responsible for them engaging in two things: resorting to the above listed crimes and, for those whose hearts are already softening, surrendering to the military forces renouncing their association with the evil organisation.
The second of the two sides, being that of the people now described as “irresponsible” politicians who want to get back to power at all cost also, has been found out to have some elements of truth in the various claims gathered so far. But the problem has two national dimensions; the North and the South. In the North the Boko Haram and the South the militants and cultists but they all serve the same masterminds.
In the North, Boko Haram insurgents, whose hearts are still hardened not to renounce the oath of insurgency and therefore are desperate about survival, have found succour in some of the politicians who provide their needs: money and weapons. It will therefore be clear recollecting that Boko Haram would correctly have gone suffering as the military operations’ arrest of many of their food and fuel suppliers in the past could have really stifled their chances of surviving and so, realizing such hardened criminals could be of use in time of desperation, any politician, whose politics is singularly for self and not for the love of country in time when thuggery is now being unfashionable as the Muhammadu Buhari has changed the face of Nigerian politics from that direction, would readily be willing to be of help.
This is where politicians come into the problems of killings in the country and the proof cannot be farfetched from interception of many of the dangerous weapons and arrest of agents in connection with those weapons. The issue is further worrisome because, multitude as the number of intercepted of those weapons, it was gathered, they remain just a tip of an iceberg talking about the number of those weapons that have escaped the eagle eyes of the customs of officials and technologies either by error or by deliberate act of corruption by conspirators among the customs officials.
When those weapons get into the public space of the country, they are not delivered to the military, police, SSS, or civil defence. They found their way into the hands of politicians who, onwardly, give them out to their political thugs. Those, as recently proved in the number of arrest made by the police, have turned out to be responsible for the armed robbery, kidnapping and concerted effort at destabilizing a chosen community as seen in Benue, Taraba, Rivers, Zamfara, and most recently Plateau and Sokoto killings. It is so much that even Borno State is now more peaceful compared to the kind of bloodletting that is coming out as a result of evil acts being engaged by those heartless Nigerians.
If therefore there is no tenable evidence in corruption, economy and Boko Haram to give as campaign instruments to incite Nigerian electorates against President Buhari’s seeking re-election in 2019, resort to killings and in particularly parts of the North, Central geo-political zone, where the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) have easily always found it easy to whip religious or “ethnic minority” sentiment, and, they have so much believed they have succeeded in getting a campaign instrument as the Governor of Benue State is already dancing to all of those tunes ventilating Benue people saying Buhari will not get 10 percent of their votes.
Already their governor, Ortom is now a member of People’s Democratic Party (PDP). On what basis is Ortom, who gets his state security votes regularly but has also always cried foul against the Federal Government but himself failed his people securitywise, decamping to PDP, a party that Nigerians wholeheartedly sacked from power for inflicting the worst of the killings and corruption-laden economic, social and infrastructural backwardness on Nigerians?
In a way, the position of the governor of Benue has helped those religious and ethnic sentimalists achieve their aims of whipped and hyped accusations of Buhari as Fulani President supporting Fulani herdsmen. As a result, those who in the first place never wanted Buhari in power being a Northerner or Fulani man became the first set of people whose petitions on “genocide against the people of Benue”, as if only Benue has any unfortunate incident of killings occurred, and over 100 of such petitions have been received by the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague, the Netherlands.
The petitions at ICC against President Buhari also include that of supposed human rights violation which the authors put together to misrepresent to the global communities the anti-corruption fight ongoing in the country as violations of opposition’s fundament rights. This is where the Amnesty International (AI), a supposed international rights group, is receiving its information with which it has turned itself into conflict with the Nigerian Government.
They see arrest of politicians who distributed the $2.1 billion meant to buy weapons for the protection of Nigerians of North East geo-political zone against the bloodletting by Boko Haram as human rights violation. They see the invitation by security agencies of journalists who purposely report twisted or fake news with the purpose of causing breakdown of law and order thereby disturbing the peace to the favour of the politicians who sponsor them as violation of human rights. Yet, many other politicians have staged their own attempted assassinations and even faked many twitter posts without providing any evidence and yet they have journalists who promote such unNigerian criminalities and they even fail to give the government or the security agencies kudos for not having clamped the perpetrators into incarceration.
But because the world all over are also watching how desperate politicians have turned Nigeria to be simply because a President is in place who says NO more to corruption and impunity. On the heels of this, foreign media have persistently distanced themselves from even from the evil their local colleagues do to their own country Nigeria. World leaders take a cue from their media by refusing to believe the crocodile tears that those opposition politicians are shedding in video and sending to them with intend to help them remove the anti-corruption government of the Fulani man in power.
Instead, great world leaders like the United States of America President Donald Trump personally, without earlier plan, invited President Buhari to their presence in respective homes of presence. When Buhari was going to America, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) was happy that he would meet disagrace in Washington but they were disappointed when, like call of nature, the uncompromiseable Trump became a praise singer of Mr. President telling how much he loves Buhari, promising all the support of the world and has even started fulfilling those promises with the deal on Tucano warplane which America had always refused Olusegun Obasanjo, Umar Musa Yar’Adua and Goodluck Ebele Jonathan as successive Presidents of Nigeria to get. Now, Switzerland has returned what Obasanjo made the world to believe as Abacha loot even after many years they refused to release such loots to Nigeria through him and his two successors.
But instead for Nigerians of the nature of those “irresponsible” politicians to appreciate the restoration of respect and honour to Nigeria – under Buhari – by world communities, the CAN in collaboration with those politicians twisted one particular Donald Trump’s speeches therefore causing a huge discomfort capable of escalating to religious conflict in the land at a time they and other Nigerians should be celebrating the honour that their President is doing them all over the world. It is incontrovertible that Nigeria is now respected by world leaders, despite the fact that there is still room for improvement.
But all of these “irresponsible” politicians the Presidency of Muhammadu Buhari has assured us that it knows them and has vowed to expose and punish them under the law. Nigerians believe President Buhari is saying the truth. But what they are waiting for is for the President to ACT and others will follow.
And so, the state of the nation in Nigeria has got to the point where President and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, should now ACT against those politicians who are sponsoring the killings and other crimes in the land after the real identified insecurity of Boko Haram has been tackled. The embarrassment of the President and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) as 2019 general elections are fast approaching will only be in his failure to act now against those killer-happy politicians no matter their status.
