“Everyone makes mistakes, even if some are worse than others. Accidents happen”– Nicholas Spark
A virtually lost Igbo son Nyesom Wike, a political comedian of this era was atop our list topics for this column. Then, the fallout from the tragic military bombing of Tudun Biri village of Kaduna State changed the narrative.
Wike vehemently denies his Igboness despite that he and his father bear Igbo names. To impress and prove his distance from Ndigbo, another comic Igbo son recently asked his people to stop giving their children Igbo names because they are not Igbo, ironically, the man’s name is Okechukwu.
When Wike, Minister of the FCT, went dancing in the office of the President’s Chief of Staff, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, ostensibly to get his files signed, I thought the comic minister was going to dominate political conversation this week but the Kaduna tragedy struck.
Two things may have induced Wike’s exaggerated excitement. Either the goodies attached to the files or some hard drinks or both. Thank God for whoever recorded the TikTok for others to see what it takes to get presidential approvals, some level of sycophantic display before the principal and his lieutenants.
When some characters get “juicy” political appointments, the fear of losing it regulates their mindset. One politician who has amply demonstrated this mindset is Barr Nyesom Wike. He is the immediate past Governor of Rivers State.
One definitive characteristic of politicians of Wike’s ilk is that they enjoy power and never hide what they do. Their desperation to remain in “employment” derives from the fear of losing it. People in this class can sacrifice anything or anybody to remain in power. They are ready and willing to play any role that can keep them relevant in the power corridor.
After watching Wike sing and dance that Jagaban song, it became clear to all and sundry that this man will lick any arse to be in power. Treachery and perfidy are their tools, whether in business or politics.
Why will Wike be afraid to stay out of power? The reason is obvious. How he used gubernatorial powers. Another could be the god-play role, which is embedded in his famous dig against opponents.
“As e dey pain them, e dey sweet us’ means he would not want to be among those ‘e dey pain’. Even though Governor Similaye Fubara is fighting hard to survive that will cause Wike some pain and to avert that he is turning politics in Rivers State upside down to retain his relevance.
Another characteristic of power-crazy people is that they do not mind even if what they do now or today contradicts their past. Their lives begin and end in the now. Whatever can be done or undone to help retain relevance in the corridor of power is a fair deal. In August 2022, this Gbajabiamila he now dances for was seriously criticised by him over a PDP minority leadership tussle in the House of Representatives where Femi was the speaker. Bola Tinubu, now president, also received Wike’s broadsides over the godfather issue that condemned the Lagos political kingpin for playing god with power, a mirror image of what is playing out now in Rivers State.
His fear of losing power became a cancerous disease. That’s understandable. Wike has been around for a long time in the corridor of power, from local government chair to gubernatorial chief of staff to minister and governor and back now as a minister. He cannot fathom staying out of power. His loyalists in the Rivers State House of Assembly decamping to APC belong to desperate measures to prevent facing the exit door of the power corridor.
But that’s by the way, today’s Political Musings is on the bombing by the Nigerian Army at Tudun Biri village in Agasa district of Igabi Local Government Area of Kaduna State. That deplorable incident is among the most painful military accidents in our clime even though it’s not the first time we have recorded such military bombing of innocent civilians.
Facts show that nearly 500 Nigerians, including international aid workers, have been bombed since the terrorists arrived in Nigeria in 2009 via the Boko Haram militants.
Perhaps the most devastating of all was the bombing of the Internally Displaced Persons camp in January 2017 where over 50 were killed in the Rann area of Borno State. In a space of nine years, Borno State recorded a half dozen accidental killings by the military that was to guard and protect them.
Similar attacks that were recorded earlier this year include January 24, 2023, attack on the Galkogo community in Shiroro LGA of Niger State; January 25, 2023, bombing of the Rukubi community in Doma LGA of Nasarawa State; the March 5, 2023, attack on Sabon Gida village in the Fatika district of Giwa LGA of Kaduna State; August 18, 2023, attack on Kwaki village in Shiroro LGA of Niger State. This year alone, Kaduna and Niger states have each suffered military bomb attacks twice through airstrikes.
In all, what you hear is that an investigation will be carried out and there it ends with another mishap before we start the shouting again. What is already established in Nigeria today is that the devaluation of human life is going at the same speed as the ₦aira.
This latest unfortunate incident would have gone just like the previous ones but some wicked souls are trying to ethnicise it. In all the previous accidental killings by the military nobody has raised the issue of who was the commander of the operation because it was needless to be an accident.
In the Kaduna incident, some haters have chosen to inject ethnicism and bigotry into it by calling out the Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Christopher Musa; the Chief of Army Staff, Lt Gen Taoreed Lagbaja, and the General Officer Commanding the first division of the Nigerian Army, Major-General Victor U. Okoro, all Christians to go. This thinking remains the most wicked way of reasoning that threatens national security and deserves to be outrightly condemned and nipped in the bud.
The military has a standard practice for this type of thing; Nigerians are waiting for it to do the needful to prevent the recurrence of this ugly incident. One expects the military to resist the attempt to politicise this incident because if it yields to political pressure on this matter, it would set a very dangerous precedent and it will touch the very essence of ésprit de corps for which they are always well respected and envied.
Those who feel that unless someone of their tribe or religion is in the driving seat before they can build confidence in the nation’s military should doff their hats for Ndigbo.
Since the last decade, hardly any Igbo or Christian commanded any positions in the South East, Army, Air Force, Navy, Police, and DSS. All the uncountable military checkpoints in the South East that extort money, rape women, and subject the locals to all kinds of manhandling are manned by northern Muslims. The people never looked at them from the point of their religion or tribe or geography but as military people on their duty posts. It’s therefore disheartening to learn that somebody would insinuate that such a horrible accident occurred because the Defence Chief [who is from Kaduna], the Army Chief and the GOC in Kaduna are not Muslims.
A journalist and friend of mine in Jos, Plateau State, was angered by the ethnic insinuations. Another told me how General Okoro, the current GOC in Kaduna, was so professional during the Fulani/indigene crisis that both Christians and Muslims were happy with him.
I prefer, therefore, not to accept that the desperation to politicise this umpteenth error bombing is to drag the Igbo question into it and grow Igbo hate in Northern Nigeria. If not, why should the commanders during this ugly incident be an issue when commanders never mattered in previous ones? Why politicise an accident, an act of God just because the driver is from the other side? The two institutions that have kept the unity of this country despite its instability are the military and football. They should be guided jealously unless we have decided to say, “To your tent O Israel.”
Whether the Kaduna bombing was sabotage, poor intelligence, internal rivalry within the military or an act of God, such an accident should not happen again. Nigeria’s military must also resist the devious act of disingenuous and beating the drum of ethnicity and religion into the unfortunate incident. The military leadership in the country should take this accident as an insult and try always to avoid a recurrence. In doing that, they will be responding to the reasoning of American writer and author, Mario Puzo: “Accidents don’t happen to people who take accidents as a personal insult.”
Let’s believe that if successive military leaders had seen the killing of innocent citizens they were set up to protect as an insult, the recurrence would not have been this much. Falling could be taken as an accident but staying down is a choice. If this accidental killing continues, Nigerians and international watchers may begin to think it is our choice. God forbid.
May the souls of all the faithful departed from that accidental bombing rest In perfect peace. Amen.