Dan Agbese
had not “.. shown that he can address any serious issue confronting the country.”
Jangebe has since turned out not to be the last time that students would be abducted and held in captivity while their abductors negotiate the fee for their freedom. More and more students have been abducted since then. The president has not made good on his promise. As we speak, more than 40 of them have been in captivity in Kaduna for more than two weeks because the state governor, Nasir El- Rufai, has refused to pay the abductors to secure their freedom. It must be painful for the governor to take and remain resolute in that decision but it is the right thing to do if we must end the circle of abductions, negotiated freedom and abductions. By the time Buhari advised the state governors not to negotiate with the abductors or pay ransom, the damage had been done; the bandits had already succeeded in making the Nigerian state pusillanimous.
The situation is getting even more desperate, forcing the governors of Sokoto, Aminu Tambuwal; Katsina, Bello Masari and Zamfara, Bello Matawalle, to reach out to the European Union, EU, on behalf of the federal government for some help in containing the insecurity in the North- West. There is nothing wrong with the step they took but it must be seen in the context of a sovereign nation in despair and desperation because in failing to keep his promises, the president failed to be strong and be seen to be strong and delivering the message that under his watch, no one can mess with the country and its citizens and get away with it.
Still, casting about in desperation would only deepen our despair and desperation. The solution to our insecurity is here, provided the government would be willing to end the luxury of doing the same thing and expecting the magic of a different result. Sometimes, I have this hollow feeling that the Nigerian state is blissfully unaware of what we are up against from Boko Haram, kidnappers, bandits and sundry criminal elements that have collectively become the lords of this manor. As Dr Hakeem Baba- Ahmed, the fearless spokesman for the Northern Elders Forum, put it in stark terms last week in a television programme: “This is a country that is facing unprecedented levels of insecurity from all angles and we don’t see any sign that they are doing anything different from what they have done in the last 3, 4 or five years. We can’t have a president that is just sitting there and then blaming everybody else for the woes of the country.”
As CPC presidential candidate in 2011, Buhari said that to tackle the problems facing the country, we needed “… a serious approach, which requires sophisticated thinking ( or) we would be heading for trouble in this country.” We are in that trouble now, in case someone has failed to tell him so.