The dancing obscenity of Shekau and his gang of
psychopaths and child abductors, taunting the
world, mocking the BRING BACK OUR GIRLS
campaign on the internet, finally met its match in
Nigeria to inaugurate the week of September 11 –
most appropriately. Shekau’s danse macabre was
surpassed by the unfurling of a political campaign
banner that defiled an entry point into Nigeria’s
capital of Abuja. That banner read: BRING BACK
JONATHAN 2015.
President Jonathan has since disowned all
knowledge or complicity in the outrage but, the
damage has been done, the rot in a nation’s
collective soul bared to the world. The very
possibility of such a desecration took the Nigerian
nation several notches down in human regard. It
confirmed the very worst of what external
observers have concluded and despaired of – a
culture of civic callousness, a coarsening of
sensibilities and, a general human disregard. It
affirmed the acceptance, even domination of lurid
practices where children are often victims of
unconscionable abuses including ritual sacrifices,
s*xual enslavement, and worse. Spurred by
electoral desperation, a bunch of self-seeking
morons and sycophants chose to plumb the abyss
of self-degradation and drag the nation down to
their level. It took us to a hitherto unprecedented
low in ethical degeneration. The bets were placed
on whose turn would it be to take the next
potshots at innocent youths in captivity whose
society and governance have failed them and
blighted their existence? Would the Chibok girls
now provide standup comic material for the latest
staple of Nigerian escapist diet? Would we now
move to a new export commodity in the
entertainment industry named perhaps “Taunt the
Victims”?
As if to confirm all the such surmises, an ex-
governor, Sheriff, notorious throughout the nation
– including within security circles as affirmed in
their formal dossiers – as prime suspect in the
sponsorship league of the scourge named Boko
Haram, was presented to the world as a
presidential traveling companion. And the
speculation became: was the culture of impunity
finally receiving endorsement as a governance
yardstick? Again, Goodluck Jonathan swung into a
plausible explanation: it was Mr. Sheriff who, as
friend of the host President Idris Deby, had
traveled ahead to Chad to receive Jonathan as
part of President Deby’s welcome entourage.
What, however does this say of any president?
How come it that a suspected affiliate of a
deadly criminal gang, publicly under such ominous
cloud, had the confidence to smuggle himself into
the welcoming committee of another nation, and
even appear in audience, to all appearance a co-
host with the president of that nation? Where
does the confidence arise in him that Jonathan
would not snub him openly or, after the initial
shock, pull his counterpart, his official host aside
and say to him, “Listen, it’s him, or me.”? So
impunity now transcends boundaries, no matter
how heinous the alleged offence?
The Nigerian president however appeared totally
at ease. What the nation witnessed in the photo-
op was an affirmation of a governance principle,
the revelation of a decided frame of mind – with
precedents galore. Goodluck Jonathan has brought
back into limelight more political reprobates – thus
attested in criminal courts of law and/or police
investigations – than any other Head of State
since the nation’s independence. It has become a
reflex. Those who stuck up the obscene banner in
Abuja had accurately read Jonathan right as a
Bring-back president. They have deduced perhaps
that he sees “bringing back” as a virtue, even an
ideology, as the corner stone of governance,
irrespective of what is being brought back. No one
quarrels about bringing back whatever the nation
once had and now sorely needs – for instance,
electricity and other elusive items like security,
the rule of law etc. etc. The list is interminable.
The nature of what is being brought back is thus
what raises the disquieting questions. It is time to
ask the question: if Ebola were to be eradicated
tomorrow, would this government attempt to bring
it back?
Well, while awaiting the Chibok girls, and in that
very connection, there is at least an individual
whom the nation needs to bring back, and
urgently. His name is Stephen Davis, the erstwhile
negotiator in the oft aborted efforts to actually
bring back the girls. Nigeria needs him back – no,
not back to the physical nation space itself, but
to a Nigerian induced forum, convoked anywhere
that will guarantee his safety and can bring
others to join him. I know Stephen Davis, I worked
in the background with him during efforts to
resolve the insurrection in the Delta region under
President Shehu Yar’Adua. I have not been
involved in his recent labours for a number of
reasons. The most basic is that my threshold for
confronting evil across a table is not as high as
his – thanks, perhaps, to his priestly calling. From
the very outset, in several lectures and other
public statements, I have advocated one response
and one response only to the earliest, still
putative depredations of Boko Haram and have
decried any proceeding that smacked of
appeasement. There was a time to act – several
times when firm, decisive action, was indicated.
There are certain steps which, when taken, place
an aggressor beyond the pale of humanity, when
we must learn to accept that not all who walk on
two legs belong to the community of humans – I
view Boko Haram in that light. It is no comfort to
watch events demonstrate again and again that
one is proved to be right.
Thus, it would be inaccurate to say that I have
been detached from the Boko Haram affliction –
very much the contrary. As I revealed in earlier
statements, I have interacted with the late
National Security Adviser, General Azazi, on
occasion – among others. I am therefore compelled
to warn that anything that Stephen Davis claims
to have uncovered cannot be dismissed out of
hand. It cannot be wished away by foul-mouthed
abuse and cheap attempts to impugn his integrity
– that is an absolute waste of time and effort. Of
the complicity of ex-Governor Sheriff in the
parturition of Boko Haram, I have no doubt
whatsoever, and I believe that the evidence is
overwhelming. Femi Falana can safely assume that
he has my full backing – and that of a number of
civic organizations – if he is compelled to go ahead
and invoke the legal recourses available to him to
force Sheriff’s prosecution. The evidence in
possession of Security Agencies – plus a number of
diplomats in Nigeria – is overwhelming, and all
that is left is to let the man face criminal
persecution. It is certain he will also take many
others down with him.
Regarding General Ihejirika, I have my own
theories regarding how he may have come under
Stephen Davis’ searchlight in the first place,
ending up on his list of the inculpated. All I shall
propose at this stage is that an international panel
be set up to examine all allegations, irrespective
of status or office of any accused.
The unleashing
of a viperous cult like Boko Haram on peaceful
citizens qualifies as a crime against humanity, and
deserves that very dimension in its resolution. If a
people must survive, the reign of impunity must
end. Truth – in all available detail – is in the
interest, not only of Nigeria, the sub-region and
the continent, but of the international community
whose aid we so belatedly moved to seek. From
very early beginnings, we warned against the
mouthing of empty pride to stem a tide that was
assuredly moving to inundate the nation but were
dismissed as alarmists. We warned that the nation
had moved into a state of war, and that its people
must be mobilized accordingly – the warnings were
disregarded, even as slaughter surmounted
slaughter, entire communities wiped out, and the
battle began to strike into the very heart of
governance, but all we obtained in return was
moaning, whining and hand-wringing up and down
the rungs of leadership and governance. But
enough of recriminations – at least for now.
Later, there must be full accounting.
Finally, Stephen Davis also mentions a Boko Haram
financier within the Nigerian Central Bank.
Independently we are able to give backing to that
claim, even to the extent of naming the individual.
In the process of our enquiries, we solicited the
help of a foreign embassy whose government, we
learnt, was actually on the same trail, thanks to
its independent investigation into some money
laundering that involved the Central Bank. That
name, we confidently learnt, has also been passed
on to President Jonathan. When he is ready to
abandon his accommodating policy towards the
implicated, even the criminalized, an attitude that
owes so much to re-election desperation, when he
moves from a passive “letting the law to take its
course” to galvanizing the law to take its course,
we shall gladly supply that name.
In the meantime however, as we twiddle our
thumbs, wondering when and how this nightmare
will end, and time rapidly runs out, I have only
one admonition for the man to whom so much has
been given, but who is now caught in the
depressing spiral of diminishing returns: “Bring
Back Our Honour.”
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