One inevitable fact about today is that tomorrow, it will become yesterday and this is the more reason why everybody in this country should be seriously concerned about what our politicians do today as the present which is the key to the past is more importantly also the mother of the future.
As rightly said by President Goodluck Jonathan, it is better imagined than experienced what would have happened in this country, not just in the northern parts alone, if Gen Mohammadu Buhari and Sheik Daihiru Bauchi were killed or even badly hurt in the Kaduna bomb/gunfire incidents.
No matter how anybody wants to look at it, a situation where a former Head of State and a key opposition figure could be targeted by terrorists or hatchet killers is a dangerous development, which should not be taken lightly by any responsible Nigerian as this definitely has added a dangerous dimension to an already bad security situation in the country particularly some sections of the north.
Sure in an apparent desire to draw a political capital from the attack on Buhari, the Progressive Governors' Forum (PGF), an umbrella body comprising governors of states controlled by the All Progressive Congress (APC) immediately warned it will henceforth hold President Goodluck Jonathan responsible for any further violent attacks on Buhari or any of its leaders.
In a statement issued by the PGF in Abuja, the governors alluded that the assassination attempt on Buhari came just two days after the former Head of State issued a statement cautioning President Jonathan against supporting or sponsoring the impeachment of opposition governors and stressed that the incident had confirmed their concerns that the lives of the leadership of the APC are no longer safe.
The APC in a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Muhammed, also pointed out that “although no one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, the mere fact that it occurred at all is a lose-lose situation for the Jonathan administration. Whether it is Boko Haram or not, one thing remains: This government has failed woefully in its core constitutional duty of protecting the security and welfare of the citizenry. And we mean all the citizens, not just the leaders.”
Then Joe Igbokwe an APC chieftain in his published piece: “Who Wants Buhari Dead” also alluded that “Those who targeted Gen Buhari may be playing real politics for President Jonathan’s 2015 ambition. It may be right to push the blame to Boko Haram but nobody is a political idiot here.
“I am running away with the thinking that the crisis bedeviling the nation cannot be divorced from President Jonathan’s ambition to rule Nigeria beyond 2015. While this inordinate ambition is being pursued left and right, front and back, up and down, the nation is left bare at the mercy of insurgents, and mass murderers. If the truth must be told, Nigeria has to remain a political entity for somebody to become the President. President Jonathan should look inwards pronto.”
No doubt, it is very curious that the attacks on Buhari came barely 48 hours from the former head of states’ strongly -worded statement against President Jonathan and his government’s alleged meddling in the spate of impeachment threats against opposition governors and also the manner he has handled the state of insecurity across the country.
True as said by Igbokwe that those that targeted Buhari may be playing politics for President Jonathan’s 2015 ambition but his line of thinking seemed only one sided which could completely steer interests away from where we should actually be looking at towards deconstructing the motivation of the attack on the former military head of state.
Why would Jonathan and his PDP want to kill Buhari knowing the dire consequences of such act even against their ambition to continue in power forever? Could the President have been so naïve or rather stupid to attempt to kill Buhari just because the former military head of state voiced his opinion on what he perceived as Jonathan’s “blessing” of the spate of impeachments of APC governors and the federal government’s nonchalance towards addressing the shameful level of insecurity in the land especially with the insurgency in parts of the north? And why would Jonathan want to kill Buhari now that their relationship or more aptly his perception of the former head of state as a “born again” elderstatesman has tremendously improved and is being nourished?
Curiously also, is it possible that Gen Buhari and his handlers would chose to stage the Kaduna incident to trash the sticky toga on the former head of state as an astute supporter and sponsor of the boko haram Islamic extremists? Or could it be a ploy by Buhari and his handlers to bounce back on the popularity scale as the clear opposition leader and aspirant in the forthcoming 2015 presidential election especially now that the political clout and across- the- country recognition and acceptability of the former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar is soaring like never before in recent times?
If it was a scam to steer the former head of state back to prominence as leading opposition contender to the APC presidential ticket as alluded by some top members of the PDP especially those that re-decamped from APC back to PDP, are there no better options for such publicity stunt? And is it not odd that Gen Buhari and his handlers would want to stage such act that could by a single human error go awry?
The pathetic situation of our country today is that nobody actually does any serious thinking. Everybody interprets issues through their narrow prism of ethnic, political, religious or even mumu biases. If we are a serious –minded nation of peoples, the security agencies’ panel of investigation into the attack should actually go outside the box because this may just be one incident in a plethora of what we may be expecting as we approach the 2015 general elections. But truth be told, our security operators, especially in this our terribly poisoned political atmosphere, completely lack the capacity to think straight, the political will to do right and above all, the will- power to be honest.
Does it occur to our security managers that an errant third- party- hacker whether as boko haram, a disgruntled politician (s) or political clique could have on their own simply set out to kill Buhari to plunge the entire nation into hell fire of civil crisis to create more problems for President Jonathan?
Today it is an attempt, whether real or staged, on Buhari’s life. Who knows what else is coming up along this line tomorrow? Supposing a third party hacker actually sets out to really kill some prominent politicians or religious leaders whether of APC or PDP, Muslim or Christian; northerner or southerner even a south-southerner etc just to mess up things for the Jonathan administration, who is going to believe that the other person (side of the divide) was not actually involved?
Nigerians have been so manipulated into naivety that they simply jump into conclusion merely on bias and surface information. This is why the government should seriously get to the root of all these absurdities in our national security particularly the spate of violence always credited to the boko haram insurgents. the federal government should seriously ponder on the Russian Secret Service thinking as voiced by Alexander Nekrassov, former Senior Adviser to Kremlin in a published piece by Al Jazeera News, that “In politics, anything that happens in a year leading to a big election should always be treated as a build up to that election.”
As said by the former Kremlin Senior Adviser, “Boko Haram fighters are now taking over entire villages in the north, looting and torching them to the ground, killing dozens of people, and then disappearing without trace. The group has mastered the techniques of mobile guerrilla warfare, making it extremely difficult for the Nigerian army to track down its units. Some of the attacks bear the hallmarks of publicity stunts carried out in broad daylight. As a result, a feeling of total chaos is created, with the opposition blaming the government of President Goodluck Jonathan for outrightly sponsoring the mayhem or his inability to prevent the carnage while the ruling party says the opposition is the benefactor of this whole mess.”
The Russians strongly believe that the crisis in Nigeria is a political conflict rather than a religious one. “As the thinking in Moscow goes, if it was a classic “religious war”, then Boko Haram would not have been indiscriminate in murdering both Muslims and Christians.” So it’s clear that the Boko Haram insurgency is internal politics in Nigeria interacting with a well-articulated international agenda. Hopefully, this would help put things in perspective!
(IFEANYI IZEZE is an Abuja-based Consultant and can be reached on: [email protected]