…if Buhari has done his “best” with regard to security as Nigeria’s commander-in-chief, and we still record huge and widespread death counts as a result of incessant herdsmen attacks, then he has failed as the country’s chief security officer and should quit the position of a more competent hand.
The other day, when General Theophilus Danjuma publicly charged the Taraba people to be ready to defend themselves, accusing the Nigerian military of colluding with terrorist herdsmen to wipe out his kinsmen, not many expected that Danjuma could attack the Nigerian army, an institution that made him.
Not many thought that Danjuma could publicly criticise a government headed by his longtime ally, President Muhammadu Buhari, who he has consistently supported over the years.
Danjuma’s outburst was termed lowly and uncivil in some quarters. But Buhari himself has re-echoed Danjuma’s stance by default. He has asked the citizens he swore an oath to protect to look elsewhere for the protection of their lives and property, because he has done his “best” as their commander-in-chief.
Speaking recently at the Plateau State government house, while paying a condolence visit to victims of the herdsmen’s terror, which claimed the lives of over a hundred persons, Buhari, who admitted that he was fully aware of the security challenge in the country before he came to office, said:
“Nobody can say that we haven’t done well in terms of security, we have done our best, but the way this situation is now, we can only pray… Leaders at all level must have control over there people in their respective constituencies”.
Unpacking Buhari’s statement could land one in depression in that Buhari did not only make himself a biased judge in his own case, he sounded very much like a leader whose humanity has been compromised by the famous demons inhabiting the crevices of Aso Rock.
The Buhari who invoked the lack of safety of Nigerians in 2015, pleading to be voted for to salvage Nigeria from the hands of terrorist, could not have missed the still warm mass graves and gory pictures of children, women, and men murdered by herdsmen right under his watch and still say that his government has done well in terms of the provision of security to the populace. Only a Buhari intoxicated by the pleasures of Aso Villa and the lies from the lips of toadies would do that.
Or those who shamelessly mimic the idiocy of Buhari’s predecessor and his followers by claiming that the herdsmen terror is as old as mankind and we must live with it. Sane Nigerians will not, in anyway, countenance this infantile argument. Or be persuaded to cut Buhari some slack.
Get me right. Buhari could, of course, revel in the assumption that his administration has “degraded” Boko Haram. But not while and when orphans, widows and widowers whose loved ones were butchered by terror herdsmen are still grieving.
The insecurity in the country has not ended with the supposed “degrading” of Boko Haram. Besides, if Buhari has done his “best” with regard to security as Nigeria’s commander-in-chief, and we still record huge and widespread death counts as a result of incessant herdsmen attacks, then he has failed as the country’s chief security officer and should quit the position of a more competent hand.
Buhari’s best is not good enough with regard to the security of lives and property in Nigeria!
Only his hordes of robotic foot soldiers who have traded their humanity, sanity and conscience for morsels, could ignore the flowing blood of innocent Nigerians from Adamawa to Benue, Kogi to Kaduna, Taraba to Zamfara.
Or those who shamelessly mimic the idiocy of Buhari’s predecessor and his followers by claiming that the herdsmen terror is as old as mankind and we must live with it. Sane Nigerians will not, in anyway, countenance this infantile argument. Or be persuaded to cut Buhari some slack.
A government that takes pride in fighting Boko Haram and combating corruption, issues that predated it, cannot excuse the transmutation of killer herdsmen into a deadlier terrorist group under its watch on the fact that it inherited the herders/farmer clash.
Buhari needs to understand that Nigerians are not mad at him because he is silent on the herdsmen terror or because he is a Fulani man. Nigerians are, however, outraged that herdsmen menace has taken a frightening trajectory that calls for drastic actions, and not cheap talk.
Louder than Danjuma’s earlier outburst did, Buhari has unequivocally told Nigerians that they are on their own. A government that tepidly responds to mindless killings and has not been able to prove to its citizens that no number of cows or crops is worth the life of a citizen, emboldens murderers and prods the citizens to resort to self-help.
Buhari clipped the wings of Nnamdi Kanu and his exuberance followers in the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) by swiftly ordering the military to go after them in a ruthless manner, although they had not done much damage, properly speaking. This is why many are asking why it is so difficult for Buhari to be benign with his Fulani kinsmen, and not declare a similarly ruthless blitzkrieg against the terror herdsmen amongst them?
Moreover, if Buhari’s claim that those behind the killings across the country are remnant of Muammar Gadaffi’s foot soldiers, why is he reluctant to declare war on them either? Should Nigerians be at the mercy of Gadaffi’s foot soldiers in their own country?!
And that brings us to the other question of why we need a government if our lives and property can be protected by praying to God, as suggested by Buhari? Why do we have the army and the police?! Why can’t Buhari and his aides simply pray and move around without security men?
If Nigerians needed a leader who would regale them with “prayer is the solution” to serious national problems, they would have elected one of their popular Christian or Muslim clerics, and not Buhari.
By saying that he has done his “best” and that Nigerians should pray for their safety, Buhari portrayed himself as a weak leader who outsources his primary duty to God to perform.
Louder than Danjuma’s outburst did, Buhari has unequivocally told Nigerians that they are on their own. A government that tepidly responds to mindless killings and has not been able to prove to its citizens that no number of cows or crops is worth the life of a citizen, emboldens murderers and prods the citizens to resort to self-help.
Ahmed Oluwasanjo writes from Abuja.
