A strong leader accepts blame and gives the credit. A weak leader gives blame and accepts credit
Before anybody whether friend or enemy throws a challenge to you saying, “what can you do? or you can’t do nothing? He or she must have finished sizing you and discovered that really you can’t do nothing.
That was exactly the boast the bandits threw to General Muhammadu Buhari and indeed Nigeria as a country on Friday, December 11, 2020 when it dared the President by not only going to his home state but waiting for the day the Commander-in-Chief was arriving his country home to strike. The abduction of students of the Kankara Government Science School by bandits certainly will go down in history as the most embarrassing to the Buhari Presidency.
The same way the abduction of Chibok girls remained a huge dent on the reign of President Goodluck Jonathan.
If President Buhari had not come into our political life as a nation and the country is facing these security challenges, everything would have been pointed at him as the nonsense General that would have saved the nation because of the seeming better understanding of security issues being a General himself and a Muslim who was once nominated by the terrorists to negotiate on their behalf.
When he spoke at Chatham House, London before he became President, Buhari was arrogant about his military background being a General who knows what the soldiers want and how to flush out the terrorists. It would have been difficult for anyone to disbelieve him. Why should you, he was a General of the Nigeria Army, he had cultivated a nonsense disposition for himself relying on what he did as General Officer Commanding, GOC, of the third division of the Nigerian Army when he swiftly quelled the Maitatsine Islamic rebellion in the North East in 80s.
Just as he carried a believable credentials on security so he had on corruption. He was easily seen as the most incorruptible past leader in the land. It was therefore easy for even the doubting Thomases to change their mind and come to terms that Buhari was the right man to confront our two main diseases, insecurity and corruption.
Moreover, the then so-called clueless man at the helm of affairs, Jonathan was not inspiring and offered little resistance to an impending change.
Who would see teacher and chose him above an Army General on the handling of security issues like insurgence?
But here we are, everybody has been apologizing to Jonathan lately for their wrong judgment of him.
The credential of the General has been put into questioning in the last five years same as his incorruptible status.
But obviously the height of it all came from the bandits who entered a Secondary School in the President’s state and abducted as much as over 300 students with Okada not truck. Meaning that the operation must have taken some time. This happened as the Presidency was arriving in the same state. The paraphernalia that go with Nigeria President, the security intelligence that herald the coming of a President to a place especially where he is billed to stay for one week is usually enormous both in logistics and funding.
But yet with all these, some tattered untrained and ill-equipped criminals had the audacity to invade a secondary school to abduct hundreds of students in an operation that lasted over an hour. Where are the intelligence both in the state and around the President you may want to ask?
Why wouldn’t the bandits be brazen, they did it in Chibok Girls school six years ago and nothing happened, the government could do nothing but to negotiate out some of the girls in exchange for cash for the captors and left the others as sex tools for the terrorists.
Few years later they were again in Dapachi Girls to pick some girls in a drama that left many watchers wondering if something was not fishy.
Leah Shuaribu is still being held for insisting that Jesus is her Lord and saviour something her captors do not want to hear. And till date the then 15-year-old girl remained abandoned in the hands of her captors in the forest. Her nation and her faith could not rescue her. What a shame?
Everyone has been screaming for the change of service chiefs to bring in some new vitality. But the General who should know is saying that the service chief’s stay in their duty post is at his mercy not that of the Senate or other members of the public who are clamoring for change.
The two times in his 67 months’ tenure that Nigerians saw the President’s adrenaline rise and he talked tough like a General was when he outlawed the recalcitrant Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, IPOB, in 2017 when he rushed home from hospital in United Kingdom ostensibly to achieve that.
After the commander- in-Chief’s displayed anger, the officers and men went in to do the famous Python dance that left many dead.
The other time the President spoke like a General on threats to the Government was last week when the second wave of the #Endsars protest was scheduled to begin.
The two, IPOB and #Endsars are all non-violent and unarmed group yet the anger of the President could be felt by all and the troops mobilized accordingly.
Having seen the havoc of the first #Endsars, how it shook his government to its foundation, the President mince no words in his directive to halt their second coming. The speed and the verve with which the troops rushed out to take possession of possible protest venues across the country was swift and very unlike our troops under the current C-in-C.
Government watchers have been wondering why the troop’s response to the terrorists and bandits have not been with similar dynamism and anger.
Nigerians are asking why is it that the troops do not vent the same level of anger as they did with IPOB and the #Endsars on the terrorists.
It would be difficult to understand why the President appear unperturbed at the Kankara invasion where over 300 young children are missing. If the President is distraught as many Nigerians are, he would not have made the trip to his cattle ranch a priority.
From all indications, the level of security in that ranch housing cows and possibly Rams will be more than the security in the Government Science School of over 800 students. In this circumstance, it would be difficult disagreeing with the people holding the notion that cows have more value than Nigerian citizens in this dispensation. If the President had visited GSS, Kankara before going to see the cows it could be pardonable.
From which ever position you stand to review the situation, the President’s visit to his ranch without going to the school where over 300 children are missing is clearly inexplicable.
No matter how we would want to play it down to save the image and the value of our Presidency, what the criminals did is a huge slap.
These terrorists have found a way of humiliating our leaders, portraying them as a people lacking in initiative for arduous challenges. On April 15, 2014 six years ago, the terrorists went to Chibok girls School in Borno state and abducted hundreds of our girls exposing the ineptness of the then President in occasions like that.
Buhari then in opposition claimed such thing couldn’t have happened under his watch and many believed him because of his military background.
If Jonathan excuses for not being proactive could be understood and forgiven because of the novelty of the crime when it happened in 2014, in February 19, 2018, 110 school girls aged between 11 to 19 years at the Government Girls’ Science and Technical College, Dapichi, in Yobe state were kidnapped. This time the General was already on the throne for three years but could not avert it.
On Friday December 11, 2020, Kankara happened the same day the President arrived his home state for a seven day vacation.
The criminals faced up to the General right in his domain and he could do nothing but go visiting his cattle ranch.
The hapless Katsina state Governor, Aminu Bello Masari has to take his deputy to brief the President and acknowledge that they were already negotiating with the abductors. Like in Chibok and Dapichi incidences, the government will part with some funds in exchange for some abductees. They will hold some of them back for further negotiations, this time unlike the girls who were made sex tools, the boys will be trained for the terror war against their father land. Why not, a government that abandons its youths makes them vulnerable and available tools for the devil as clearly represented by these criminals. What a humiliation.
