Nigeria Times

By Abu Duniya

There are several clandestine plots to frustrate and blur the legacies of President Muhammadu Buhari in battling the multifaceted insecurities to a standstill in Nigeria. Some politicians who are pulling the strings are gradually exposing themselves by unguarded public exclamations.

The immediate past Governor of Borno state, and Senator representing Borno Central senatorial district, Alhaji Kashim Shettima is suspected as one of the latest entrants into this plot. He belongs to Nigeria’s league of former Governors, who transmutes into the Senate not necessarily by merit; but by crude manipulation of the people.

What is however a common denominator with these ex-governors is the vagueness of their insistence to be in the Senate. Every one of them, without exception retires from governorship into the Senate in pursuit of higher political ambitions at the national level.

One can excuse the underperformance of some of these ex-governors; but its painful to forgive them for plunging their states into insecurities, penury, hunger, poverty and disease. One becomes angrier that these former governors are also neophytes in legislative business.

The contributions of such ex-governors to debates and motions in the parliament during plenaries infuriates, lacks depth and wisdom. The national question is often thrown overboard; while patriotism is unconscionably sent on sabbatical leave.

Sen. Shettima, the Senate Committee Chairman on interior belongs to this clan of Senators contaminating the reverence of the Red Chamber. He parrots endlessly, both within and outside the Senate Chambers. What betrays him most is his glibness and the excitement to mouth inanities.

Less than a year in the Senate, Sen. Shettima divulged his motives. As guest speaker at the 17th edition of Daily Trust Dialogue held in Abuja in January 2020, Sen. Shettima unconsciously hinted of his obsession for being in Abuja. He said; If I have my way; now that I am in Abuja, I won’t mind being part of the cabals. But I would rather prefer to call it power brokers or inner caucus.”

With such outpourings, it leaves no one in doubt that Sen. Shettima migrated into the Senate in search of his personal greener pastures on the political turf. He is not in the senate to either serve the interest of his constituents or Nigeria, but someone who fits into the description of a vagabond in power.

Shettima nurses personal political dreams that’s why he is hibernating in the Senate, which is his inalienable right. But what is repugnant in his conduct is the desperation to run down personalities and institutions to achieve his ambition.

He governed Borno state for eight years -2011 to 2019. His first tenure (2011 to 2015) was the embryonic stage of Boko Haram insurgency. He was elected Governor at a time Boko Haram terrorism was at its infantile stage. But he is directly guilty as one of the leaders in the state who handled the Boko Haram insurgency with kid gloves, romanced it to fester, built safety nests for its offspring and embalmed it with kingly regalia.

Today, Boko Haram has morphed into a major national security threat, with its variant in ISWAP terrorism, terminating thousands of precious lives; destruction of properties estimated at over eight billion dollars. If there is a state in Nigeria whose memory invokes pain in Nigerians is Borno state because of Boko Haram atrocities.

That is where it started, mushroomed and grew into a national plaque. If Sen. Shettima has reason to admit now that he exited Borno state Government House, Maiduguri and left the state in a better security condition than he met it in 2011, it is because of the astuteness of President Muhammadu Buhari and the dexterity of the current Security Chiefs in taming the monster of insurgency.

Shettima has forgotten that twice in his first tenure as Governor, Boko Haram attempted to overrun Borno Government House Maiduguri. He escaped narrowly by providence or else, he would have been captured and ferried off. He would have been one of their priciest hostages by now.

President Buhari and the current Security Chiefs brought sanity in the counter-terrorism campaigns in the Northeast and Borno state in particular. As the then sitting Governor of Borno, in 2016, Sen. Shettima confessed the exceptional successes the military recorded against Boko Haram in an interview he granted News Agency of Nigeria in Maiduguri. He said; “Maiduguri is more secured than even Lagos or Abuja. There are 2 million people living in Maiduguri; we celebrated Sallah without any incident.”

Paradoxically, the same Sen. Shettima who is part of problem has the impudence to castigate and lampoon the Nigerian Military over their recent handling of Boko Haram/ISWAP terrorism in Borno state. He has embarked on campaigns to undermine the military operations against Boko Haram/ISWAP terrorists’ in Borno to tacitly rubbish the legacies’ of President Buhari on insurgency.

Perhaps, Sen. Sertima’s desperation to be noticed and probably be fingered into his concept of a “cabal” in Abuja has compelled him to make profane utterances. Shettima has marketed himself as a confounding personality in contradictions.

While seeking to shoot himself into limelight, and diminish President Buhari’s legacies on insecurity, Sen. Shettima is using the unfortunate Boko Haram attack on Auno village, near Maiduguri which terminated the lives of some travelers as his launchpad.

At one breath, Shettima appears to eulogize President Buhari’s efforts on extinguishing the fires of Boko Haram; and at the same time, he gleefully recants himself like a demented and confused man at another instance.

Between February 12 to 14, Shettima has posted different postures of the Boko Haram attacks on Auno village. After a plenary, Sen. Shettima informed journalists when asked a question on the Boko Haram attack on Auno village that; “We cannot just demonize Buhari, Buhari did his best, and we had a respite between 2015 and 2017, before we had this recent relapse.”

In a pathetic contradictory fashion Sen. Shettima, at another instance in plenary while speaking on Order 42 and 52 of the Senate rules, claimed the military showed no resistance to the attacks despite the proximity of the scene to the military formation and called for investigation of the incident.

Dissatisfied that he has not vibrated enough Sen. Shettima in another separate public statement advised the Nigerian Defence Headquarters (DHQ) to constitute a panel of inquiry into the insurgents killings in Auno village.

He said of the insurgents attacks, “Of them all, the incident at Auno on Sunday night has been the most dehumanizing and disturbing. As Senator representing Borno Central where Auno is situated, I have the option of lobbying my colleagues and sponsoring a motion for the Senate to constitute an investigative panel on the Auno incident, which clearly begs for some answers.”

This is very disingenuous; unsure and an uncertain representative of people. It’s difficult to determine what message Sen. Shettima really intended to convey on the Auno village attack by Boko Haram. Is he advising DHQs or lobbying his colleagues in the Senate to pass a resolution compelling DHQs to investigate the incident?

Sen. Shettima has a queer sense of representation of his people at the Senate. Beside the crafty and clever manner, he has attempted to shift the blame either to President Buhari or the Nigerian military has not eliminated his complicity in the problem of insurgency in Borno.

He passionately played to sentiments by endearingly referring to his constituents in trauma of terrorism. But he was mute when the 2020 defence was deliberated in the Senate and a meagre sum allocated to security agencies in the age of multiple battles with insurgencies. At the point of debates on proper funding of the Military, to effectively counter insurgency, Sen. Shettima played the lame duck role.

Shettima was a part of the cabal in the Senate which frustrated or kicked against allocation of adequate funds for procurement of weapons to battle Boko Haram and ISWAP terrorists. Today, the same Senator is shedding crocodile tears and claiming to feel for the affliction of his people.

It is hypocritic and surely, not the path to stardom in national politics. By his latest actions, Sen. Shettima has undisguisedly exposed himself as the man behind the attempt to rubbish President Buhari’s legacies on the war against insurgency. He hates Mr. President much as he hates his traumatized people.

Someone should volunteer to hint Sen. Shettima that he is on a wrong voyage. There are insinuations that Sen. Shettima is believed to be keenly interested in deputizing the incumbent Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo when he vies for the Presidency of Nigeria in 2023.

But Sen. Shettima’s greatest albatross is that he is not ready to wait or carefully navigate his path. He has begun on a faulty foundation. His desperation for national visibility has pushed him into near insane comments on sensitive issues.

It is clear to discerning minds that Sen. Shettima is plotting to use the Northeast crisis to get a bargain in same style, former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2007 and 2011 hid under assuaging militancy in the Niger Delta region by drafting and foisting Dr. Goodluck Jonathan on Nigerians.

It’s a bad game for Sen. Shettima because Nigerians are wiser. With his present antics, he has rather courted the image of a desperate political saboteur who thinks of himself alone. He smacks of a leader who can even sacrifice or compromise the peace and security of his people for personal political ambitions. Shettima should tramp softly or else, he is bound to crash land.

Duniya is a public affairs analyst and wrote from ATBU, Bauchi..

By Kolawole Abe

A silent and resilient reminder of unforgettable events to leaders in most climes of the world is history, which has always dwarfed the power of mistiness. If men had the domineering power to stop history, and shatter the cord of leaders from lessons of history, there is no extent that the energy would be exhausted until mission is effectuated.

With history’s “nuisance,” a leader needs a superb aptitude to discern deception from falsehood, even from his volley of personal aides. None is really dependable.

Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari seems to be in a quicksand of violence and killings. Nigeria has suddenly become inflammable any other day, in violence, attacks, killings and bloodletting. The veiled internal actors and devil’s advocates have fuelled the fire further by domesticating kidnappings, assassinations and armed robbery to the subsisting national burden of Boko Haram/ISWAP terrorists.

They go further afield in staging such dastardly acts of unjustified killings right at the doorstep of Mr. President. In the aftermath, their propaganda machinery picks it over and amplify. Once it is done, President Buhari earns enough abuses from Nigerians, some of whom arrogantly asks him to resign.

Upon discovery that President Buhari is adamant about his resignation, they carelessly venture into his exclusive field, by persuading him to sack his Service and Security Chiefs (SSCs). They fault every other thing with the SSCs, except their own faulty approach to Mr. President.

It has never bothered such villains for once to think why President Buhari relies on his personal experience on Service Chiefs. He publicly said, he won’t be externally prodded to sack his Service Chiefs in an emergency situation and also, accepts unreserved responsibility for their actions. There is something clearly fishy in campaigns or agitations for sack of SSCs.

Very often, the ruled hardly know leaders have a burden which keeps them awake all night. The nightmares of such leaders are what a literary Icon, Prof. Ben Okri, rummaged in the title of one of his novels – “The Landscapes Within.” No doubt the reality that the landscapes on the rostrum of leadership have several layers and faces in Nigeria. Africans say, every lizard crawls with her belly flat on the ground and so, it’s difficult to know which one suffers from bellyache.

Generally, a leader must not please everybody. But the leader hears every voice, whether remonstrative, meek or pliant. Thereafter, he speaks to his inner conscience and proudly takes a decision. The leader’s bent may not placate everyone in his kingdom. That reality alone does not deprive him of his aura as leader or the supremacy of his decisions.

Men are found everywhere! But its not every man would wear the tag of a leader. There is natural and artificial leadership whirlwind which blows strongly against leaders. The tantalizing wind can easily displace an unstable leader.

When a leader is not independently driven by the passion of his decisions to tenaciously hold unto them, while facing persecutions, he might have unconsciously dug his deepest pit of damnation. He must not trust everyone around him. If he does, it means he is nicely doomed.

The Holy Scriptures says, Jesus Christ had just 12 disciples. And by faith and his teachings, he trusted all the 12. But at the ninth hour, Judas Iscariot first betrayed him to the Chief Priest for monetary inducement as low as a price like thirty pieces of silver. And Christ’s seeming most trusted disciple, Simon Peter, who vowed to even die with Jesus Christ, denied him three times before the cock crowed when the Chips were down.

President Buhari has numerous presidential aides, and appointees. Out of the cortege of appointees, he trusts his SSCs. Does anyone expect that the President trusts every one of them to assist him in the redemption mission of Nigeria? By body and flesh, it is not possible. Why are some Nigerians having difficulties in Buhari’s trust and confidence in his SSCs?

Some Nigerians mistakenly think, President Buhari is a weakling and cannot stand by his official decisions. But same people forget that even at the peak of his reelection electioneering campaigns in 2019, the President dismissed public clamour for the sack of SSCs, because he can vouch for the trust and performance of the incumbents. He was lucid that no one knows the mindset of their successors, especially now that there is a competitive and coordinated public push for the termination of their appointments.

Buhari was insistent that; “I don’t know them on a personal basis; I followed records and thought, I picked the best then. Of course, their performance may be disappointing, but I accept responsibility for not changing them. My reason is based on my own experience.”

The short explanation provides an official insight into Mr. President’s personal rating of the SSCs. It conveys his trust, confidence and loyalty in these appointees. It speaks defiantly loud about the Commander -In-Chief’s (C-in-C) unyielding official relationship with his SSCs, tethered on the loyalty and, an inseparable cord nourished by the much they have done to quell Boko Haram/ISWAP terrorism and allied insurgencies in Nigeria.

If Nigerians cannot appreciate the reality, but it still remains that in spite of ISWAP’s additional force on Boko Haram militants, 18 LGAs in the Northeast have been reclaimed by the current crop of SSCs under the Buhari Presidency; over 20,000 Nigerian hostages including Chibok and Dapchi schoolgirls have regained freedom and reunited with their families.

And residents of Abuja, the nation’s capital and major cities in the Northern parts of the country have not experienced any terrorists bomb blasts in nearly five years or have Boko Haram attempted to transit to Southern Nigerian. Top Boko Haram commanders and foot soldiers strangulated by the same Security Chiefs have surrendered from their hideouts in thousands to the Nigerian Army or can anyone refute that rebuilding and reconstruction in the Northeast is massively rebranding the faces of devastated and ruined villages, then it is not enough reason for the doubting Thomases to hallucinate for sack of SSCs.

Every President, anywhere in the globe would ensure, he employs the best strategies overt or covert to guarantee, the armed forces are not compromised, particularly during emergency situations as Nigeria struggles with insurgencies and insurrections now. Only a confused leader will abandon his first good squad for a trial team at this stage of the world cup.

Definitely, and only simpletons would think the C-In-C would change his winning team of Security Chiefs based on public clamour. Only a thoughtless leader would acquiesce to such blackmail and history would apportion all the blames to him. How many citizens mount such pressures on the President elsewhere in the world?

But Nigerians have a wrong version of democracy and its tenets. They neither know their limits of freedom of expression on general matters nor security issues. It is not the duty of every Nigerian, lobbyists, political parties, associations, or street urchin and organizations to mount malevolent heat on the President to change his Security Chiefs.

President Buhari must be allowed to freely and without encumbrances exercise his executive powers on maintaining, elongating, renewing the tenure or sacking his SSCs. It is a liberty averred every President of Nigeria. Boko Haram started under former President Olusegun Obasanjo, and festered. But he was never pressured to sack his Security Chiefs And even under former President Umaru Yar’Adua, when it gathered momentum, there were no such public clamour for sacking of his Security Chiefs.

Former President Goodluck Jonathan (GEJ) had a pretty nice time with his Security Chiefs as from 2011 until he began to listen and comply with public agitations on rejigging his team of Security Chiefs. The moment GEJ started pandering to public wishes for a change of Security team greater problems set in. He got the drift very belatedly and by the time he was pressured to change the then COAS. Gen. A. Ihejirika, insecurity in Nigeria nosedived into the worse ditch. Even when Boko Haram abducted 276 Chibok schoolgirls and seized several LGAS in the Northeast, no public voice vibrated for sack of his Security Chiefs.

Contrastively, today Buhari has very courageous men as Security Chiefs. They are the flagship of Nigeria’s very best senior Military officers who sleep in the trenches with the troops and their convoys have been attacked severally by Boko Haram at the warfront, but they repelled all enemy ambushes, killing scores of insurgents.

The same Security Chiefs whom some selfish Nigerians wished sacked are those who personally trudge the swamps and caves of Lake Chad Basin area with troops in clearance operations; feel their pinch and fight terrorists with them together; supply them needed warfare weapons; boost the morale of troops, pay their legitimate allowances promptly and regularly, or fend for their families.

Just last week, the convoy of a Security Chief on his usual routine visits of troops in the Northeast was evacuating stranded passengers on Maiduguri-Damboa road. While he was offering this patriotic service to his country, some people sat in their cozy rooms at Abuja and were collecting bribes in dollars to lend a voice to the removal of such an extraordinary patriot and Nigerian soldier. Nigerians, the world hail thee!

Abe is former public relations officer, National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS).