The
dancing obscenity of Shekau and his gang of psychopaths and child abductors,
taunting the world, mocking the BRING BACK OUR GIRLS campaign on internet,
finally met its match in Nigeria to inaugurate the week of September 11 – most
appropriately. Shekau’s dance macabre was surpassed by the unfurling of a
political campaign banner that defiled an entry point into Nigeria’s capital of
Abuja. That banner read: BRING BACK JONATHAN 2015.
President
Jonathan has since disowned all knowledge or complicity in the outrage but, the
damage has been done, the rot in a nation’s collective soul bared to the world.
The very possibility of such a desecration took the Nigerian nation several
notches down in human regard. It confirmed the very worst of what external observers
have concluded and despaired of - a culture of civic callousness, a
coarsening of sensibilities and, a general human disregard. It affirmed the
acceptance, even domination of lurid practices where children are often victims
of unconscionable abuses including ritual sacrifices, sexual enslavement, and
worse. Spurred by electoral desperation, a bunch of self-seeking morons
and sycophants chose to plumb the abyss of self-degradation and drag the nation
down to their level. It took us to a hitherto unprecedented low in
ethical degeneration. The bets were placed on whose turn would it be to
take the next potshots at innocent youths in captivity whose society and
governance have failed them and blighted their existence? Would the Chibok
girls now provide standup comic material for the latest staple of Nigerian
escapist diet? Would we now move to a new export commodity in the
entertainment industry named perhaps “Taunt the Victims”?
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| Prof Wole Soyinka |
As
if to confirm all the such surmises, an ex-governor, Sheriff, notorious
throughout the nation – including within security circles as affirmed in their
formal dossiers - as prime suspect in the sponsorship league of the scourge
named Boko Haram, was presented to the world as a presidential traveling
companion. And the speculation became: was the culture of impunity finally
receiving endorsement as a governance yardstick? Again, Goodluck Jonathan
swung into a plausible explanation: it was Mr. Sheriff who, as friend of the
host President Idris Deby, had traveled ahead to Chad to receive Jonathan as
part of President Deby’s welcome entourage. What, however does this say
of any president? How came it that a suspected affiliate of a deadly criminal
gang, publicly under such ominous cloud, had the confidence to smuggle himself into
the welcoming committee of another nation, and even appear in audience, to all
appearance a co-host with the president of that nation? Where does the
confidence arise in him that Jonathan would not snub him openly or, after the
initial shock, pull his counterpart, his official host aside and say to him, “Listen,
it’s him, or me.”? So impunity now transcends boundaries, no matter how heinous
the alleged offence?
The
Nigerian president however appeared totally at ease. What the nation witnessed
in the photo-op was an affirmation of a governance principle, the revelation of
a decided frame of mind – with precedents galore. Goodluck Jonathan has brought
back into limelight more political reprobates - thus attested in criminal
courts of law and/or police investigations - than any other Head of State since
the nation’s independence. It has become a reflex. Those who stuck up the
obscene banner in Abuja had accurately read Jonathan right as a Bring-back
president. They have deduced perhaps that he sees “bringing back” as a virtue,
even an ideology, as the corner stone of governance, irrespective of what is
being brought back. No one quarrels about bringing back whatever the nation
once had and now sorely needs – for instance, electricity and other elusive
items like security, the rule of law etc. etc. The list is interminable. The
nature of what is being brought back is thus what raises the disquieting
questions. It is time to ask the question: if Ebola were to be eradicated
tomorrow, would this government attempt to bring it back?
Well,
while awaiting the Chibok girls, and in that very connection, there is at least
an individual whom the nation needs to bring back, and urgently. His name is
Stephen Davis, the erstwhile negotiator in the oft aborted efforts to actually
bring back the girls. Nigeria needs him back – no, not back to the
physical nation space itself, but to a Nigerian induced forum, convoked
anywhere that will guarantee his safety and can bring others to join him. I
know Stephen Davis, I worked in the background with him during efforts to
resolve the insurrection in the Delta region under President Shehu Yar’Adua. I
have not been involved in his recent labours for a number of reasons. The most
basic is that my threshold for confronting evil across a table is not as high
as his - thanks, perhaps, to his priestly calling. From the very outset,
in several lectures and other public statements, I have advocated one response
and one response only to the earliest, still putative depredations of Boko
Haram and have decried any proceeding that smacked of appeasement. There was a
time to act – several times when firm, decisive action, was indicated. There
are certain steps which, when taken, place an aggressor beyond the pale of
humanity, when we must learn to accept that not all who walk on two legs belong
to the community of humans – I view Boko Haram in that light. It is no comfort
to watch events demonstrate again and again that one is proved to be right.
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| The controversial #BringBackJonathan2015 bill board |
Thus,
it would be inaccurate to say that I have been detached from the Boko Haram
affliction – very much the contrary. As I revealed in earlier statements, I
have interacted with the late National Security Adviser, General Azazi, on
occasion – among others. I am therefore compelled to warn that anything
that Stephen Davis claims to have uncovered cannot be dismissed out of hand. It
cannot be wished away by foul-mouthed abuse and cheap attempts to impugn his
integrity – that is an absolute waste of time and effort. Of the complicity of
ex-Governor Sheriff in the parturition of Boko Haram, I have no doubt
whatsoever, and I believe that the evidence is overwhelming. Femi Falana can
safely assume that he has my full backing – and that of a number of civic
organizations - if he is compelled to go ahead and invoke the legal recourses
available to him to force Sheriff’s prosecution. The evidence in possession of
Security Agencies - plus a number of diplomats in Nigeria - is overwhelming,
and all that is left is to let the man face criminal persecution. It is certain
he will also take many others down with him.
The unleashing of a viperous cult like
Boko Haram on peaceful citizens qualifies as a crime against humanity, and
deserves that very dimension in its resolution. If a people must survive, the
reign of impunity must end. Truth – in all available detail - is in the
interest, not only of Nigeria, the sub-region and the continent, but of the
international community whose aid we so belatedly moved to seek. From very
early beginnings, we warned against the mouthing of empty pride to stem a tide
that was assuredly moving to inundate the nation but were dismissed as
alarmists. We warned that the nation had moved into a state of war, and that its
people must be mobilized accordingly – the warnings were disregarded, even as
slaughter surmounted slaughter, entire communities wiped out, and the battle
began to strike into the very heart of governance, but all we obtained in
return was moaning, whining and hand-wringing up and down the rungs of
leadership and governance. But enough of recriminations - at least for now.
Later, there must be full accounting.
 |
| Senator Ali Modu Sheriff (left), President Jonathan and President Deby |
Finally,
Stephen Davis also mentions a Boko Haram financier within the Nigerian Central
Bank. Independently we are able to give backing to that claim, even to the
extent of naming the individual. In the process of our enquiries, we solicited
the help of a foreign embassy whose government, we learnt, was actually on the
same trail, thanks to its independent investigation into some money laundering
that involved the Central Bank. That name, we confidently learnt, has also been
passed on to President Jonathan. When he is ready to abandon his accommodating
policy towards the implicated, even the criminalized, an attitude that owes so
much to re-election desperation, when he moves from a passive “letting the law
to take its course” to galvanizing the law to take its course, we shall gladly
supply that name.
In
the meantime however, as we twiddle our thumbs, wondering when and how this
nightmare will end, and time rapidly runs out, I have only one admonition for
the man to whom so much has been given, but who is now caught in the depressing
spiral of diminishing returns: “Bring Back Our Honour.”
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