Bursting the myth of Buhari’s Boko Haram “success”
Afalse narrative that several people cherish about the Buhari government is the notion that its singular greatest achievement is its success in containing, downgrading, or defeating Boko Haram. It’s like a consolation prize to compensate for the government’s abject failure in every index of governance.I recognize that taking away the consolation prize of Buhari’s Boko Haram success narrative would cause psychic and cognitive dislocation in many people who will ignore the substance of my argument and launchpetulantly juvenile ad hominem attacks on me, but I’m already used to that.
But the question I always ask people who talk of the Buhari administration’s “success” in “downgrading” or “technically defeating” Boko Haram (whatever in the world that means) is: what exactly has Buhari done that hasn’t been done by his predecessor to bring about his so-called success? The only intelligent answer I’ve received is that he ordered the relocation of the command center for Nigeria’s military operation against Boko Haramto Maiduguri. Well, that’s commendable, but it conceals the unchanged, sordid underbelly of military authorities.
For instance, the military is still severely underfunded and ill-equipped. Soldiers on the front lines are still owed backlogs of allowances; several of them still starve and survive on the goodwill of do-gooders. Two videos
The word ‘development’ could mean ‘a recent event that is the latest in a series of related events’. It is also defined as ‘the process in which someone or something grows or changes and becomes more advanced’. This latter definition is the sense in which the word ‘development’, within the purview of this piece, isused. Our pattern of development as a government and as a people has over the years become ridiculous of thisdistinctive definition of the word. Some instances of policy summersault and flip-flop implementation of programmes would be cited to illustrate how we have, in Nigeria, ridiculously re-defined development in the light of a checkered, irregular and retrogressivemodel.
A quick glance at our constitutional development as a nation reminds us that regional politics was the foundation upon which Nigeria’s First Republic was founded. A strong argument against this structure was that party politics in the First Republic evolved and progressed along ethnic sentiments; a critical impediment to the much desired unity of a multi-tribal country like Nigeria. This inspired the country to opt for the presidential system of government when Nigeria returned to democratic rule in 1979.
Unlike the parliamentary model of the First Republic, the presidential of the heartrending conditions of our military men fighting Haram went viral sometime ago, and military authorities were both embarrassed and caught flatfooted. I periodically speak with my relatives and friends in the military fighting Boko Haram, and they say little or nothing has changed, except that propaganda and media management have become more effective. The fat cats in the military still exploit and feed fat on the misery of the foot soldiers.
Even on the symbolic plane, which is the easiest to navigate, Buhari hasn’t been better than his predecessor. He did not visit our foot soldiers in Borno to boost their morale nor did he visit IDPs whose misery has become one of the most horrendous humanitarian disasters in the world. He only visited Borno on October 1, 2017-more than 2 years after being in power-to celebrate Independence Day with the military after so much pressure was brought to bear on him by critics. There are three major reasons why the intensity of the Boko Haram scourge has subsided, none of which has anything to do with Buhari’s policies on Boko Haram.
One, our foot soldiers, like always, have never wavered in their bravery and persistence in spite of their prevailing untoward conditions. This isn’t because of the president; it is in spite of the president.
Two, Boko Haram has been weakened by an enervatingly bitter and sanguinary internal schism. Since at least September 2016, the system provides for the whole nation as the constituency of the president because he is required to obtain 25 percent of votes cast in at least two-third of the states in the federation. About 40 years after the country’s choice for a presidential system, one finds it ridiculous that some selfish Nigerians are yet talking about restructuring; clamouring for a return to regional structure of governance. What a comical instance of a country’s long ride to nationhood!
Another re-definition of development concerns the introduction, abolition and re-introduction of toll gates on the nation’s highways. With a view to ensuring proper maintenance of roads and to also extend their lifespans, the federal government introduced the payment of tolls by motorists who ply some selected highways in the country. Unfortunately, the collection and remittance of tolls to government treasury were marred by corrupt practices; resulting into poor maintenance of the roads. Government thus leased the toll gates to private operators. In 2003, however, former President OlusegunObasanjo’s regime demolished all the toll gates on the nation’s highways. Obasanjo’s argument was that government, even withthe private operators, was earning less than what it needed annually to maintain the roads.
In November 2017, the Minister AbubakarShekau and Abu Musab al-Barnawi factions of Boko Haram have killed each other more than the military has killed them.
Three, and most important, the conspiracy theories and tacit, if unwitting, support that emboldened Boko Haram in the north because a southern Christian was president have all but disappeared, making it easy for the military to get more cooperation from the local population. Remember Buhari said, in June 2013 in a Liberty Radio interview in Kaduna, that the military’s onslaught against Boko Haram amounted to “injustice” against the “north.” Babachir David Lawal, then a CPC politician, infamously said Boko Haram was a PDP plot to “depopulate” the northeast because the region doesn’t vote PDP. As my friend from the northeast noted on my Facebook page, “Borno elder Shettima Ali Monguno used to call BH ‘our children’ and he only stopped after he was kidnapped for ransom by the group.”
The Northern Elders Forum in 2013 said Boko Haram members should be given amnesty, not killed. Even then PDP chairman BamangaTukur said in 2011 that “Boko Haram is fighting for justice. Boko Haram is another name for justice.” Several Borno elders and everyday citizens protected Boko Haram members and frustrated the military. In fact, in June 2012, Borno elders told the government of the day to withdraw soldiers fighting Boko Haram terrorists from the state. (But of Power, Works and Housing, BabatundeRajiFashola, announced that the federal government had concluded plans to re-introduce toll gates at 38 locations on highways across the country. This simply means that the toll gates should not have been demolished by Obasanjo; an action he undertook amidst protests from Nigerians. Only side structures of the toll gates were spared and later used as highway offices by the Federal Road Safety Commission. The demolition was an escapist decision taken by Obasanjo,who perhaps, feared to confront the corrupt practices that were ruining the operations of toll gates. Why did we have to demolish structures which we needed to re-build another day? This cyclic development is a huge waste of the country’s scarce resources. It would sound ludicrous if we refer to this policy disorder andritual of ‘building-bulldozing-rebuilding’ as development.
Third in this discourse pertains to the forward-and-backward position of government on Post-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (P-UTME) conducted by universities in Nigeria. P-UTME is a second screening testintroduced in 2004 and conducted for candidates who obtained the required minimum cut-off point in the UTME organized by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB). when the military dropped a bomb and killed scores of IDPs, these Borno elders didn’t even as much as say a word of condemnation.)
I published letters in 2014 from Borno readers of my column that said the people would rather live with Boko Haram than cooperate with the military because they believed the military was part of a grand plot to annihilate them. The military was so frustrated that it almost wiped out the entire village of Baga in April 2013 when residents provided cover for Boko Haram insurgents who escaped into the area. I wrote to condemn the military at the time.
All this changed because the president is no longer a Christian from the south. Buhari isn’t just a northern Muslim; his mother is half Kanuri, and that’s why most (certainly not all) people from the region intentionally exaggerate the extent of safety and security in the region even when the facts give the lie to their claims. It’s all ethnic solidarity. A Maiduguri person with a PhD actually once confided in me that he would never stop supporting Buhari and propagandizing on his behalf because of the Kanuri heritage he shares with him. Imagine what uneducated and barely educated people from the region think.
Because someone with some Kanuri blood in him is president, Boko Haram is no longer a plot to depopulate the northeast. No northern elder is pleading amnesty on the group’s behalf. The group is no longer fighting “for justice.” Killing them is no longer “injustice” to the “north.”And everything is now hunky-dory. Ethnoregional bigotry will be the death of Nigeria.
Shekau’sSambisa Escape and Boko Haram’s Kidnap of Yobe Girls
Three days after offering a 3-million-naira bounty on Boko Haram factional leader AbubakarShekau
Some of the reasons that prompted the introduction of P-UTME included the complaints by universities that JAMB’s Unified Matriculation Examination (UME) results had substantially lost credibility. The National Universities Commission (NUC)’s intervention to allow universities conduct P-UTME was designed to be a validation process to authenticate JAMB’s UME results and to also give candidates the opportunity to defend their results. Soon, the P-UTME developed into a burden that outweighed all the potential gains that informed its introduction.
In 2011, there was a heated debate in the Senate when Senator HeinekanLokpobiri moved a motion to investigate the validity or otherwise of the P-UTME. Besides subjecting candidates to psychological stress and risks associated with traveling over long distances on Nigerian roads, P-UTME further became exploitative as many universities turned the exercise into a money spinner. JAMB’s deployment of technology in the administration of UTME and the prompt release of its results significantly improved the integrity of the exam.
Thus, when the Minister of Education, MalamAdamuAdamu, eventually announced the scraping of P-UTME at a JAMB’s stakeholders’ meeting in June 2016, it was a longawaited decision hailed by UTME candidates and their parents.However, the scrapped P-UTME was again un-scrapped at the 2017 gathering of JAMB’s stakeholders’ meeting in Abuja; anillustration of Nigeria’s flip-flop pattern ofdevelopment. This was in spite of all the logistic and socio-economic arguments against the exercise. (whom Nigerian military authorities had claimed to have killed several times!), BBC Hausa reported this week that when our valiant troops came close to capturing him alive, they were told by higher-ups to back off. And soShekau escaped! This is at least the second time this has happened since Buhari has been in power. The Daily Trust reported a similar incident sometime in 2016.
Meanwhile, the group attacked Government Girls Secondary School in Dapchi, Yobe State. Thankfully, as of Wednesday, all the girls that went missing after the attack have been found, but this is a poignant reminder that prematurely proclaiming that the group has been “technically defeated” (while asking for $1 billion to fight it!) and promoting a false sense of security among citizens for propaganda purposes is at once unhelpful, immoral, and irresponsible.
Sadly, the people who live with the agony of this tragedy can’t complain publicly. If they do, they risk social ostracism. Only ethically depraved loudmouths with a twisted understanding of “taqiyya” (which they understand as telling lies in defense of people who share the same religion as them, which is a wrong understanding of the concept) come to social media to say that since “god” Buhari mounted the throne of the Nigerian presidency all problems in the northeast have magically disappeared and the region is now heaven on earth. All contrary evidence, however credible, is “fake news”- Trump-style.
But what exactly is going on? I know the insecurity that Boko Haram’s insurgency has occasioned in the northeast is big business for several merchants of death in the military and in certain political circles. Is it these military and political merchants of death who restrain our troops from capturing Shekau?
Fourth is another instance of a re-definition of development by Nigerian lawmakers as it affects the number of times voters exercise their franchise in a general election. In the general elections of 1979 and 1983, a total of five elections were held on each occasion. This arrangement,which required voters to go out for five consecutive weeks to elect leaders for elective positions at the local, state and federal levels, was considered by many asboring and cumbersome. When Nigeria returned to democratic rule in 1999, the elections were reduced to three. The number was further reduced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to just two elections as witnessed in the conduct of the 2011 and 2015 elections. The benefits of having only two sequences in a general election include cost effectiveness, ease of logistics, reduced voter fatigue and the prevention of possible outbreak of violence.
Only recently, both chambers of the national assemblyridiculed existing democratic culture when they amended the 2010 Electoral Act; reverting to the old, clumsy and hectic order of three separate elections even though conducting just two elections has, in the past, proved to be better. While development in advanced climes implies a departure from traditionalist to improved way of doing things without reverting to the outmoded practice, the same word (development) has been re-defined in Nigeria to mean a departure and subsequent return to the old and conservative way of doing things. May Allah (SWT) guide us to discard the distorted definition of development for the common good of the country, amin.