Give it to those who have recently found friendliness in the word ‘’change’’, the All Progressive Congress (APC) and its media handlers: One thing they have done very well in the recent time is their ability to continue to efficaciously manipulate many naïve Nigerians and a section of the international community – to buy into their political agenda, in their desperate bid for political power in 2015.
Check it: Their strongest political weapon has been propaganda – all kinds of propaganda. They have masterly, in an organised and sustained effort, manipulated the public – using mass media, including, misinformation, half-truths and lies. And recently, these ‘clever crooks’ added images and emotions, especially fear in pushing their political agenda.
The APC and their spin-doctors know fully well that Nigerians are very mobile, they like good life; they want to live in any part of the country to do their businesses, they need adequate security, and the opposition and their allies have capitalised on the state of insecurity in our country – being fuelled by Boko Haram and their sponsors to start singing to many ears of those who care to listen to them — that President Goodluck Jonathan is ‘clueless’, ‘weak’ and incapable of tackling insecurity in the country. General Buhari is being presented as alternative to tackle insecurity challenges in Nigeria.
Hear Governor Rotimi Ameachi recently: ‘It is either we push Boko Haram away or they will drive us out. It is only General Muhammadu Buhari that can drive Boko Haram away’.
Their seemingly twisted argument has always been that if Buhari could tackle Maitasine sect over 30 years ago, when he was a military Head of State, he could do it again in the present circumstances.
In the interim, the propaganda is working very well for APC and the ‘Buharists’, particularly when we fail to reason about their messages very carefully. Can you really blame some Nigerians and some misinformed members of the international community?
Perhaps, no. In today’s world we are all assaulted with so many messages that it is tempting to take ‘mental shortcuts’ in order to process them. Some of us have refused to be reminded by the saying of some information experts that mental shortcuts that side-step critical reasoning are precisely those which allow propagandistic messages to influence their beliefs, values and attitudes without realizing it.
But, unexpectedly, it is also so common for propaganda to commit fallacies, engage in distortion, and be filled with lots of other errors, like APC’s current game. Indeed, one major error the anti-Jonathan people have continued to fall flat is their deliberate refusal to agree that the acts of terrorism in Nigeria today, like the happenings in some countries around the world, is what experts in crisis management, Rittel and Webber, have described as ‘wicked crisis’: A crisis that involves several wicked problems and global in scale; it does not have a fixed end point.
At what point do these desperate power seekers realise that Jonathan was the creator of this wicked crisis? At what point did their principal, General Buhari, realise that the deadly activities of Boko Haram was inimical to the general well-being of our country? Is it not the same Buhari who said about a year ago that Boko Haram members were fighting for justice and that any attempt to crush them would amount to violation of their fundamental human rights? Why does he want to profit from the activities of terrorists now? Politics? May be.
Buhari and his friends, the emerging social critics in the north, cannot deny the fact that their recent actions or inaction, utterances and body languages have over the years embolden the promoters of acts of terrorism in our nation. And it will be callous on their part to continue to derive pleasure in condemning President Jonathan as lacking the experience to tackle security matters anytime the deadly Islamic sect members carry out their deadly act.
Like experts in terrorism have time without number noted, terrorism challenges are complex matters that require collective and patriotic efforts to tackle.
Buhari was not one of most prominent faces at a meeting initiated by some young elements in the north late last year to find solutions to issues of insecurity in the region. Most prominent elders including former military rulers Ibrahim Babangida, Abdusalami Abubakar; former vice-president Atiku Abubakar; one-time finance minister, Alhaji Adamu Ciroma; Nigeria’s former permanent representative at the United Nation, Alhaji Maitama Sule, Sam Nda-Isaiah, traditional rulers, scholars and media experts of northern extraction had met in Abuja to critically examine the insurgency of the Boko Haram and the horrible and very pronounced poverty in the north. They had reasoned that, unless they moved very fast, Boko Haram would wipe out the entire economic, social and economic life of the region. But, in spite of the invitation the organisers extended to Buhari to attend the meeting he refused to honour the invitation then. At the end of that meeting, two committees were created to come up with solutions. Other committees that were formed included those on security, political and socio-economic problems threatening the region.
While some of those present at the meeting, in their usual self, played politics with their words and statements while contributing to the discussion, Maitama Sule, in his usual characteristic, was blunt and frank: he told northern leaders present at that meeting how their past actions and inactions had helped to aggravate the huge woes bullying the North today.
He told the meeting then that what the region needed to arrest the situation is unity. “We should learn from the lessons of our elders. But I beg you: let us try to revive the glory of the past. We are all brothers; if there is any trouble it will affect every one of us. Let no one think that he would escape,” the elder statesman advised to the resounding ovation of the truly concerned invitees at the meeting.
What have Buhari and his new friends done to help to fix the wicked crisis generated by Boko Haram since that very important meeting was held? Oh, what matters to him is his inordinate ambition to be president of Nigeria at 72?
I have repeatedly argued in my many interventions – in the spreading acts of terrorism in our nation, that beyond the feeble argument and daft reasoning by some lazy commentators over unfair share of the national wealth, which allegedly puts the north at a disadvantage, the self-serving political elite in north should do a critical review of the state of their region in order to locate the beginning of the problem and situate it properly.
The impulsive ear-splitting debate by some northerners over “underdevelopment, poverty, insecurity and bad leadership” that have troubled the northern part of Nigeria over the years will not just jell, unless the issue is properly situated. For those of us who understand the old northern region very well, it is on record that the region, like its southern counterpart, enjoyed comparative richness under good leadership and governance by incorruptible and focused leaders like Ahmadu Bello between 1940 and the late ‘70s.
The subsistence then of a diversified economic base spinning around agriculture and solid mineral sectors in that order, was pretty good. Poverty was not very pervasive unlike today — as the majority of the northerners then led an effortless survival life and nearly all basic necessities of life were within easy reach. Social services such as education and healthcare were provided by the regional government.
The native leaders were trusted by their followers because they were concerned mainly about the welfare of their subjects.
Sadly, all these encouraging attributes of contemporary statehood slowly but surely went astray.
Now that APC and their aggrieved members in the South want power by any means necessary, the current administration must be made the scapegoat. The truth is that Jonathan cannot solve the issue of insecurity and other social problems that were caused by the long period of neglect by some northern leaders overnight. He is not a miracle worker. With weak government institutions, high level of corruption in the past that depleted our treasury, broken democratic institutions aided by the likes of Buhari, it will take a long time before the problems are fixed.
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