Sharibu and the broken presidential promises
NAPOLEON was famously quoted as saying that promises are meant to be broken. Millions of politicians in under- developed, developing and developed countries would gladly accept it as wise and pragmatic. Wherever politicians are gathered, there they are surrounded by jagged shards of broken promises. It is not that they are not men and women of their words, it is simply that breaking a promise is a time- honoured part of the game of politics. Because the game itself is in deficit in honesty, making and breaking promises smack of smartness.
A president is a politician but his promise is meant to be kept, not broken. A president’s promise means or should mean much more than a casual tossing of buttered words to the public. It is a sacred bond between him and the people; on it rides his integrity and his claims on leadership and statesmanship, both of which are sacred groves where history sits in judgement on the affairs of rulers. There are grave implications when a president’s promise, for a welter of reasons, is either deliberately broken or deliberately set aside. It opens itself to various interpretations, the most delicate being alleged discrimination, and thus leads to ethnic, social and religious disharmony, particularly in a country like ours with existing templates for accommodating such views.
Here is a good example of what a president’s broken or forgotten promise could do in a polity. It comes from an old story. On February 2018, Boko Haram abducted 109 female students aged between 11 and 19 years, from the Government Girls Science and Technical College, in Yobe State. Five of the girls died in the hands of their abductors. After a negotiated settlement between the federal government and Boko Haram, 103 girls were released. But they refused to release Leah Sharibu, a teenage Christian who chose to remain true to her faith and refused the orders of her captors to convert to Islam. She knew the risk she took but believed, I am sure, that the mighty name of Jesus would work the miracles, make her abductors respect her faith and let her go in peace. It did not happen.
President Muhammadu Buhari was so impressed by her principled stand that he commended her pretty highly. He promised she would re- join her parents within three days. She did not. On two other occasions, the president made a similar promise but each time the promise was made, it evaporated. Her parents became more and more desperate, naturally. They saw their hope riding on the back of smoke. Still, they seized whatever opportunity that came their way to remind the president of his promise to free their daughter. Silence set in.
Leah has since lost her bet with the miracle of her faith. Photographs of her released by her captors show her in hijab, evidence that she had been forced to do what she never thought she would: convert to Islam. On March 23, the insurgents informed the world that the teenage mother of one had given birth to her second child, still in captivity, and waiting in vain for the president to make good on his
promise. She lives in the agony of a captive mother; she lives in the forlorn hope of ever being free; she lives, knowing that the Nigerian state has disappointed and abandoned her to whatever fate befalls her.
Buhari comes from the military constituency where senior officers pride themselves on their word being their bond. Meaning, they do not walk back from a promise or munch their words. Something must have gone wrong here. The president surely knows that a promise not kept has this nasty habit of metamorphosing into the three- letter word that leaders and the led alike hate to wear as a fashion statement.
When the latest news about the fate of Leah broke last week, a spokesman for the family,
Dr Gloria Puldu, issued a statement that could not but have torn down the tear ducts of everyone with a feeling for the innocent girl and her parents. She said: “It is a very big shame on General Buhari and his entire government. He has abandoned this young child in captivity.” Shame it is and it is shame the president had to carry like sack of broken promises.
Puldu has only one interpretation for Leah and her fate under Buhari. Buhari has abandoned her to her fate because she is a Christian. She pointed out that the government negotiated “.. successfully negotiated and secured the release of most if not all 300 Muslim Kankara boys from Katsina in December 2020 just six days after their abduction. In February 2021 they also negotiated and secured the release of about 27 schoolboys from Kagara in Niger State and 317 schoolgirls from Jangebe in Zamfara who all regained their freedom within a few days of their abduction. The same administration has abandoned the remaining 112 Chibok girls for almost seven years.”
I think the religious dimension is a dangerous interpretation of acts of commission or outright failure on the part of the president. In failing to keep his promise to Leah and her parents, he laid himself and his administration open to such charges of religious discrimination. There, you have it - part of the implications of presidential promises broken.
The president seems to be building a portfolio of what he does with promises that may ultimately define him and his legacy. When the Jangebe students regained their negotiated freedom, Buhari promised it would be the last time the bandits would profit from the criminal exploitation of our young people. He said “no criminal group can be too strong to be defeated by the government.” We, indeed, thought so, particularly under Buhari’s watch because we remember he held his predecessor, President Goodluck Jonathan, in contempt in his electioneering campaigns in 2011, declaring that Jonathan