Mr. President, as one of your most
loyal and faithful subjects who has nothing but the utmost respect for
your person and your office, I am constrained to write you this open
letter. This is because there are issues I believe are important for you
to clarify and to come clean on. I say this because some of
your assertions of late are at best contradictory.
Whichever side of the political divide we are on, I believe we can
all agree on one thing: The prosecution of the war against terror is
not something that any of us should play politics with. This is
especially so given the fact that human lives are at stake and the very
existence of our nation is under threat. Like much of the rest of the
world, our country is going through hell at the hands of jihadists and
Islamist terrorists.
There is no gainsaying that we must all come to terms with the fact
that the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Al Qaeda, the
Taliban, Al Shabab and Boko Haram are nothing but bloodthirsty
murderers. They are indeed the scum of the earth, the troublers of
humanity and the vermin of hell. It is with this in mind that I urge you
to take the war against terror far more seriously than you are doing
and plead with you to stop passing the buck.
Your penchant for blaming your failings in this regard on the
previous administration is simply nauseating and it does not serve you
well. You continuously contradict yourself when it comes to this matter.
We your subjects look up to you for consistency, strength, unequivocal
commitment, a firm resolve and the ‘’leadership from the front’’ that
you promised during your presidential campaign in this war. We do not
want and neither do we need doublespeak, lame excuses and buck-passing.
Permit me to point out a few examples of your contradictory
assertions and your buck- passing in this short intervention. Initially,
you claimed that your predecessor in office, President Goodluck
Jonathan, never bought any arms and that, instead, he squandered and
stole all the money that was appropriated for the procurement of arms.
Yet, when the British Minister of Defense visited you in the
Presidential Villa the other day, the story changed. You did a u-turn
and gleefully told him and the wider world that Jonathan bought arms
with raw cash.
One wonders which story you shall come up with next and which one you
will conjure up in the future. Kindly tell us what the position is: Is
it that Jonathan did not buy arms at all and stole all the money or is
it that he used cash to buy arms? You cannot have it both ways. It is
either one or the other.
Glaring doublespeak
Quite apart from your glaring doublespeak on this matter, there was
another issue which you ought to have raised with your highly esteemed
and respected British guest. You failed to tell him that his was one of
the countries that not only refused to sell weapons to us during the
course of this bitter conflict but that also helped to impose and
enforce the international arms embargo on our country even though we are
at war.
This resulted in the unnecessary death of thousands of our people
because we found it difficult to procure the weapons to protect them.
Your guest’s country insisted on toeing the American line and doing this
to us, even though we were fighting a war against a relentless,
well-motivated, well-funded and well-armed fighting force that Global
Terror Index has described as the ‘’deadliest terrorist organization in
the world’’. One is forced to ask: With friends like this, who needs
enemies?
Given the fact that the embargo was in place, one wonders how we were
supposed to procure arms unless we did so with raw cash in the black
market. The alternative was to buy none at all, to do nothing and to
allow Boko Haram to take Abuja, Port Harcourt, Enugu and Lagos. Perhaps
that is precisely what your Western friends and allies wanted but,
thankfully, it never came to pass.
Despite the challenges and constraints Jonathan faced, instead of
losing any more ground, he rose to the occasion and retook no less than
22 local government areas and virtually pushed Boko Haram out of
Nigeria. The only place that they occupied by the time the election took
place was Sambisa forest.
The former President achieved this with those arms that he bought
with raw cash. This is apparently what you are now complaining about.
Permit me to remind you that it is those same arms that Jonathan bought
with raw cash that your army is still using till today. Yet, sadly,
since you were sworn- in as President, seven months ago, you have lost
some of those same local government areas that were earlier recovered
and they are now back in the hands of terrorists.
‘Technical’ victory
Despite this, you keep telling the international community and the
Nigerian people that we are ‘’making progress’’ in the war against
terror. As a matter of fact, you went as far as to say that we had ‘’won
the war’’ against Boko Haram and your Minister of Information, Mr. Lai
Mohammed, echoed that grotesque mendacity and reiterated that sentiment
by adding the words ‘’technically won’’ (whatever that may mean) to the
equation.
Sadly, two days later, on Christmas day, in what can only be
described as an eloquent response from the terrorists, scores of
innocent civilians were killed by Boko Haram in Borno State and a whole
community was burnt to the ground. Again, on Sunday, December 27,
Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, came under heavy attack from the
terrorists. Yet again, on Monday, December 28, in Adamawa State, Boko
Haram launched a series of suicide bomb attacks in which at least 50
civilians were killed. So much for having ‘’won the war against Boko
Haram’’, whether ‘’technically’’ or otherwise.
Curiously, the next thing that you did was to tell Nigerians that you
would ‘’persuade Boko Haram to drop their arms’’. One is compelled to
ask: Why would you have to persuade them to drop their arms if you had
already defeated them and won the war against them?
Persuasion as a weapon
In any case, this would be the first time in the history of modern
warfare that a sitting President has sought to destroy and defeat a
vicious and relentless terrorist organization and win the war against
terror simply with the awesome and devastating weapon of persuasion.
Perhaps you should recommend that same tactic to the Americans and the
rest of the international community as an effective and credible weapon
to adopt in their war against ISIL, Al Qaeda, Al Shabab and all the
other jihadist groups that plague the world.
Whilst you are at it, perhaps you could also persuade Boko Haram to
free the Chibok girls. It is disturbing to note that despite all your
campaign promises and assurances that once you are elected President the
girls would be rescued or returned, nothing has been done or heard
about any of them ever since you were sworn- in. Worste still, the Bring
Back Our Girls group, which was essentially an appendage of your
election organization, together with its distinguished leaders and
conveners, appear to have gone very quiet. I guess they are busy trying
to persuade Boko Haram to drop their arms too.
Sadly, you appear to be detached from reality. Instead of fighting
the war against terror, you are making it worse with the killing of Shia
Muslims in Zaria on December 12, locking up their leader Sheik Ibrahim
El Zakzaky and opening yet another war front in our country. The last
thing that we need is for Hezbollah or the Iranian Republican Guard to
rise to the occasion, take up the challenge, jump into the fray and
decide to protect and avenge their Shia Muslim brothers and sisters in
northern Nigeria.
Yet, despite the reprehensible and indefensible actions of your
military commanders in Zaria, you have refused to show any remorse for
what was undoubtedly a war crime against fellow Nigerians and you have
not prosecuted the officers and military personnel that were involved in
the butchery. Instead the homes of the victims and those that share
their Shia faith have been burnt to the ground in Zaria and their graves
and burial sites have been dug up and desecrated.
Cameroonian attack
Worse still, you have refused to defend our country. I say this
because a few days ago the Cameroonian military invaded our country,
violated our territorial integrity and savagely murdered over 70
Nigerians in their village before burning it down.
Your government refused to acknowledge that this event even took
place, despite media reports. You did not console or express condolences
to the families of the victims or retaliate against the Cameroonians.
You did not even warn them or demand an apology or reparations from
them. It could not have happened under Jonathan, Obasanjo, Babangida,
Shagari, Abacha, Abubakar, Shonekan, Mohammed, Balewa or indeed any
other former Nigerian President or Head of State. If any of them had
been in power and the Cameroonians cultivated the effrontery to do such a
thing, there would have been consequences.
Yet, you did nothing to avenge this affront or to defend our honor.
What happened to the gallant and brave General Buhari that courageously
led our troops into victory in Chad in the early 1980s? What happened to
the man that we all admired and looked up to because of his military
exploits in Chad? What happened to the war hero that gave the Chadians a
‘’bloody nose’’ for daring to attack a Nigerian village and that almost
took Ndjamena, the Chadian capital? What happened to the man who proved
to the Libyans and their Chadian proxies that Nigerians knew how to
fight? It appears that you have changed and that you are no longer the
man that you used to be.
State – sponsored tyranny
You refuse to tell the world that our military is terribly
demoralized, our soldiers are suffering heavy casualties and are not
being paid their salaries regularly and, worst of all, you have failed
to procure a single bullet or weapon for them to use in the last seven
months since you came to power.
Instead of deploying all the power of the state against Boko Haram,
you have spent all your energy and resources trying to teach the former
National Security Advisor, Colonel Sambo Dasuki, and all your other
perceived enemies the lesson of their lives by misrepresenting them
before the world, subjecting them to state-sponsored tyranny and the
most insidious form of persecution, violating their human rights and
telling the world that they stole and shared money that was meant for
the purchase of arms.
You have also misinformed the Nigerian people about the rules and
conventions that are applied when it comes to the administration of
security funds and about the fact that it is the National Assembly alone
that has the right to probe the use of such funds as part of their
oversight functions. To cap it all, you have claimed you did not receive
any benefit from the NSA ‘s office whilst Jonathan was in power. This
is an assertion which we all know is, at best, questionable.
You must understand that any leader or government that is motivated
by bitterness, fear, hate, vengeance and malice will eventually hit the
rocks and crash like a pack of cards. You must appreciate the fact that
God is watching and that He sees and knows all.
