Today’s Nigeria is fast becoming a theatre of war. Government apathy and insensitivity to people’s feelings have heightened public anger. Failure to strengthen national security has emboldened criminal groups to set up their own fiefdom in which they rule as they desire; in recent times, not a day, sometimes even an hour, goes by without reports of a deadly attack, kidnapping, or killing. These ills have left Nigerians wondering if there is still a government in control of the country, the situation is now rife and the president has been barely visible, this partition has fueled the impression of a lack of leadership.
Insecurity is not Nigeria’s only problem, however, it has now taken centre stage, the reason is quite simple, nothing can work where security is not guaranteed. Then again, the insecurity in the country has affected every other sector of the country; the economy is in shambles, education is in a state of comatose, infrastructure is decaying, there’s no hope whatsoever! The poor are getting poorer and the responsibilities of the ‘President’ has now been usurped by the ‘presidency’ who have also run out of ideas on how to pull the country out of the mess. From State-sponsored jihadist insurgency in the northeast to violent attacks by criminal gangs nicknamed ‘bandits’ who have been carrying out mass kidnappings in the northwest; from Fulani herdsmen killing and maiming farmers in the middle belt down to separatists targeting security forces and government installations in the southeast. To be more succinct, nowhere is safe by any measure. It didn’t shock any critical observer when Abdulsalami Abubakar a former military dictator in the country declared that at least six million arms were now in circulation within criminal elements in Nigeria.
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Nigeria has long wobbled on the precipice of failure. Today’s happenings indicate that Africa’s most populous country has now failed; Daily reports from different parts of the country painting vivid pictures of killings, kidnappings and arson collectively collude to that notion. Many helpless and hapless Nigerians are now even asking openly to be re-colonised: ‘go get external help!’ they demand. Nigeria, as a Nation-State, hangs thinly on a balance. A slight push and it will tip over the cliff, the sad part is, no one will be able to gather her shards, or survive the consequences if that ever becomes reality. The increasing anger in the land is premised on the argument that the primary duty of government as clearly spelt out in its Constitution is the security and welfare of the citizenry. The government led by the incapacitated President Muhammadu Buhari has been an abysmal failure in this regard.
Muhammadu Buhari who was elected civilian President in 2015 and manipulated his way back in 2019 by employing incumbency powers, has failed to solve any of the pre-existing problems he promised to solve during electioneering, rather, the problems have now taken magnifying dimensions; insecurity, illiteracy, disease, poverty, corruption, name it! Simply put, the President has now become a Mannequin who has presided over the social, political, and economic affairs of the country for six years without making any noticeable difference in the lives of the people, rather than worsening their misery.
The last time President Muhammadu Buhari probably addressed Nigerians directly was on January 1, 2021, this is six months ago! This is quite absurd given the fact that things that should make a president speak happen every day in Nigeria. The depth of silence in the face of the threatening collapse of the state is horrifying, this and many more lends credence to insinuations in some quarters that the man in Aso Rock is not the same person Nigerians elected in 2015. It is now difficult to dismiss that school of thought because a sensitive president is expected to address the nation on a regular basis to douse tension and instill confidence in the citizenry. If he could go round the country during his electioneering, what is stopping him from coming out once in a while to address the same people that elected him? The vacuum is too deep. Nigeria has no President.
In his stead, a very vicious cabal has hijacked all the instruments of State, they have taken a powerful grip of the security architecture. Every head of any security structure in Nigeria is loyal to the cabal. To hoodwink Nigerians, they finally decided in January to replace the service chiefs, the appointment as usual failed to reflect the federal character principles as stipulated in the constitution and the avoidable issue of lack of trust and belief is still lurking. Even when a new police chief was needed four months later, the cabal simply went on to replace him with another loyal stooge identified as Usman Alkali Baba. The sentiment in many quarters is that the Presidency’s brazen preference of Muslim Northerners in appointments is chiefly responsible for the current general lack of faith in the unity and corporate existence of Nigeria, the hostilities in the South East best explains this; within the past six months, there has been an unprecedented killing of police and security personnel and destruction of police stations by hoodlums and agitators. In the former peaceful South East, policemen no longer wear their uniforms to work for fear of the now christened ‘unknown gunmen’.
The cabal that now runs Nigeria have a simple but complex agenda, just like Boko Haram jihadists, they dream of establishing a caliphate, a theocratic state of Islam. The pointers are there for everyone to see, recently a scandal broke out indicting Nigeria’s Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Ali Pantami, videos of his past open support and admiration for global terrorist networks surfaced on social media. In a series of videos, the man who now controls Nigeria’s data systems was seen emotionally throwing his weight behind Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Indeed, Nigerians had questioned the rationale behind Pantami’s resolve to enforce the National Identification Number, (NIN) enrolment, in other words, Nigerians were not sure what Pantami and his cohorts might be doing with this vital national asset. One may ask, what did the ‘Presidency’ do after that dirty scandal? Well, they initially remained aloof to it, however, when Nigerians intensified their outrage, they put up a rejoinder where they chronicled what they termed Pantami’s ‘achievements’, firmly ignoring the real point at issue, which was why should a global terrorism sympathiser be serving in the government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria – a secular State. Well, it was swept under the carpet and life has since continued.
Ever since President Buhari took the oath of office, criminal Fulani herdsmen have been emboldened, with tactical State support, they have been moving about, killing innocent farmers in Southern Nigeria, abducting people for ransom, raping women, grabbing land amongst other atrocities, to put a check to this malady, governors from the southern part of the country came together across party lines to declare a ban on the archaic open grazing to reduce the friction between farmers and herders. Many Nigerians, however, didn’t know that the reason why the handlers of President Muhammadu Buhari refused to allow him attend the burial of plane crash victims among which was his Chief of Army Staff, the late Ibrahim Attahiru, and 10 officers, was simply because they were busy in their coven perfecting their response to the Southern Governors’ ban on open grazing. They eventually declared the ban ‘Unconstitutional’ and even went as far as approving the rehabilitation of ‘grazing reserves in the same southern states’, starting from June 2021! To even think that the so-called grazing reserves would be revived by the cabal-loyal minister of Agriculture, Mohammed Nanono, the man who with impunity approved the sum 30 million naira for the construction of a mosque with taxpayers money under his ministry, leaves a sour taste.
What the cabal has in mind is nothing but confiscating people’s lands throughout the country to settle nomadic pastoralists. Fulanisation agenda is the name for it. Since this administration came to power six years ago, its officials have come with all sorts of subterfuges to achieve this end; from ‘Ruga’ to ‘cattle colonies’ down to ‘confiscation of water resources’ and finally the ‘National Livestock Transformation Plan, (NLTP)’ among others which have been staunchly rejected in the South and the Middle Belt. The cabal, however, has refused to give up.
The biggest worry however is; with Sheikh Ahmad Abubakar Gumi, a former Captain in the Nigerian Army and the eldest son of the late controversial Sheikh Abubakar Gumi leading the charge to financially empower terrorists nicknamed ‘Bandits’ using billions of taxpayers funds under the guise of ransom payments, with the State’s database firmly under the grip of the terror-loving Pantami, with the transport ministry under the firm control of Chibuike Amaechi who sees building a railway to Maradi in the Islamic Niger republic as an economically viable project in 2021, with a Sharia fanatical Chief Justice of the federation who understands nothing but ‘technicalities’ in Tanko Mahamood and an illiterate Attorney General of the federation and finally useful sycophantic slaves in the South, it would require a miracle to pull Nigeria away from the grip of this very determined, yet tenacious Islamic cabal. Nigerians are in for a long dirty ride.
AFRICA DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK
