Dapchi 110: The Tragedy Of A Nation, By Reuben Abati
Reuben AbatiKarma is a bitch. Poetic justice is a bastard. Both have combined to wrong-foot the incumbent Buhari administration to make it look like a big mistake and an act of misjudgment by the Nigerian electorate. If Buhari had been disallowed from taking power in 2015, and those who advised President Goodluck Jonathan not to give a damn had their way, and Jonathan had remained in power and all the current problems had surfaced, it would have been said by Nigerians that Goodluck Jonathan truncated Nigeria’s destiny.
In 2015, the refrain, which was reaffirmed recently by those who authored it, was that Nigeria could only move forward with anybody but Jonathan. If Buhari was prevented from taking over power, Nigerians would have been very aggressive towards the Jonathan administration. It would have been said that the messiah was robbed of victory. It would have been argued that the man who would have saved Nigeria was prevented from doing so. It might have even been argued that under General Buhari, Nigeria could have become the greatest country on the surface of the earth.
Such was the impact of the propaganda. Such was the nature of the politics of the time. The Buharideens would never have allowed a post-2015 Jonathan government to work. Even if it did, the opposition would have imagined a greater possibility. But here we are, three years down the line: the messianic propaganda has failed. Their Saviour is not the Jesus Christ they imagined him to be. The country remains unsaved. Their promise of change has been no more than scaremongering. When the question is asked: are you better today than you were three years ago?, no ordinary Nigerian can answer that question positively: change has brought him or her nothing but agony and anguish.
Should they offer an answer, it would be a response marked by regret. The biggest tragedy that has occurred therefore is the demystification, the unmasking, the unveiling of a man who was thought to be a god but who has since danced naked and is dancing naked in the market-place. Strikingly, the Emperor is without clothes. Some of the most vociferous critics of old have also been exposed. Nasir el-Rufai deployed all the heights of his intelligence to demonise the Jonathan government on social media. No one else has been able to match the quality of his vitriol. Today, the same Nasir is busy demolishing the houses of anyone who dares to make a negative comment about him, or he takes them to court and threatens them with Armageddon. The same rights that he demanded for the Nigerian people, he now tramples upon.
There was also our beloved kinsman, Alhaji Lai Mohammed. He was the scourge of the Jonathan administration. He could issue five anti-establishment press statements in a day. There has been no one like him in Nigerian history doing the job of opposition spokesman. He was ruthlessly efficient. Nobody in the current opposition parties has demonstrated his capacity as an opposition figure, in part because all the opposition spokesmen have been harassed, blackmailed, dehumanized, and intimidated, but called to do the job, on the other side of the fence as Minister of Information, Alhaji Mohammed remains a study in self-contradiction. His five minutes of fame in the Nigerian political sphere has since ended.
He used to be creative and dynamic, but now faced with the challenges of the real thing, the only thing that comes out of his mouth is the dumb argument that Goodluck Jonathan is the source of all the problems of Nigeria or similar inanities. When the matter is not so phrased, we are told that the Jonathan administration stole the country blind. And yet whereas the government of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) borrowed the sum of N6 trillion over a period of 16 years, the APC government has borrowed more than N11 trillion in 3 years! Is it possible all the oil wells have dried up and Nigeria no longer makes money? What has happened to the country’s revenue stream? The absurdity of the situation is further explained by the fact that when a gas cylinder malfunctions in the house of an APC member or there is a crisis in their other room, the man that is blamed is Goodluck Jonathan or the previous administration. They defend the impossible and the unintelligible. But that trick is no longer working. The other tragedy of the Buhari administration is how it has allowed itself to get involved in a Nigerian version of the popular “one-corner-dance”, a downward, self-denigrating choreographic exertion. The result is that right now, people have now moved from the anything but Jonathan corner to the anything but Buhari corner in Nigerian politics. Karma is a bitch. Poetic justice is a bastard.
Nothing illustrates this better than the title of this essay, the entry into which has been deliberately delayed, to prepare a setting and a mood for the crisis that Nigeria faces. One of the reasons the Nigerian electorate voted out the previous administration was because of its perceived inability to rescue the abducted Chibok girls. There was an international outcry about this. Bring Back the Chibok girls even became the most popular hashtag on international social media, and Jonathan, who had also signed the anti-same-sex bill into law became a villain in the eyes of the international community. The various interested forces, local and global joined hands together to pull down his government.
During the 2015 political campaigns, General Muhammadu Buhari was packaged as a morally upright statesman who would put an end to the impunity of the insurgents and terrorists. Jonathan was considered weak. Buhari was regarded as strong. And so on and so forth- let me just put it like that in order not to be accused of comparison given my own antecedents. But here is where the rub lies: President Buhari has failed the people in their expectations. He has frittered away their goodwill.
He promised Nigerians that Boko Haram will be defeated, and somewhere down the line, we were told the Boko Haram had in fact been “technically defeated.” The President even received a captured flag of the insurgents, together with the personal Quoran of Ibrahim Shekau, the leader of the group. Today, the Boko Haram gang continues to show that they have not been defeated. The Federal Government negotiated with these same insurgents and gave them money to secure the release of over 100 girls, some Boko Haram leaders were released, but the other Monday, Boko Haram abducted over 100 girls in Dapchi in Yobe state. This is sad and tragic. Whatever the government may have gained has been lost. The girls that have been released have been replaced. The fight against Boko Haram is back to square one.
The clay feet of those who thought they knew better than everyone else has thus been exposed. For President Buhari, this must be a personal tragedy. His strongest promoters indeed believed that under his watch, the problem of insecurity will be solved. But under him, more money has been spent on national security, with poor results, and the security situation has only worsened. The previous government had the Boko Haram to deal with, this government has its cup full: the herdsmen-farmers conflict, the low level insurgency in the Niger Delta, the crisis of self-determination in the Eastern region, the nationwide proliferation of small arms and ammunition, the notorious Boko Haram and the angst of a disappointed public. On all fronts, the government is found wanting.
Yes, it has been found wanting and in a suspicious manner too. It is in fact curious that security forces were withdrawn in volatile areas of Benue state, just a week before the criminal herdsmen struck. Who ordered that withdrawal? The Inspector-General of Police has also reportedly withdrawn the Special Forces sent to secure the same areas. The Benue Governor, Samuel Ortom is so incensed he is now saying he is willing and ready to pay the supreme sacrifice for his people. In Yobe state, soldiers were also withdrawn from high-risk areas just before the Dapchi 110 were abducted. The military has since defended itself. It has no capacity its spokesman says, to protect all schools in the Northern part of the country. And we can’t blame the military, can we? It is a sign of the calamity that the country faces that soldiers are the ones now protecting virtually every inch of the Nigerian space, internally and externally. Our soldiers are tired and overstretched, over-used and over-abused. The police are also similarly overwhelmed. It has never been this bad. Fact: the government of the day has been humbled. I once argued that Nigeria is a very difficult country to govern but when you claim to know it all, you are bound to face the contradictions. Every problem solved generates other problems.
People choose their governments and leaders because they believe they can lead and protect them. When that trust is betrayed, the legitimacy of the government is in question. In more than 20 states, salaries have not been paid for months. And it is a stupid point to say that the previous government stole all the money. How about all the money that has been earned and borrowed since then? Missing? What is responsible really for this drift, this cluelessness, this self-abuse, from a know-it-all team that took over Nigeria in 2015? My other concern is that beyond all the propaganda and the hypocrisy and blackmail, President Buhari’s team may not really love him at all; they may in fact have truly, set him up for his downfall. Buhari’s biggest stake is the legacy he leaves behind. The little I see of that legacy is not good at all. I once published a piece in which I alleged that Nigerians had hopped into a one-chance bus; I want to modify that and add that it is actually President Buhari who boarded a one-chance bus, and for that he has my heartfelt sympathy. Whatever bus brought him to power is a one-chance bus.
What has happened so far merely vindicates the Olusegun Obasanjo and Oby Ezekwesili groups. The former is asking for a Third Force, a Coalition of powers and forces. The other is wielding a Red Card. Both are united in this regard: they consider the two political parties that have ruled Nigeria since 1999, useless and ineffectual. They want a new dawn for Nigeria. They want a discontinuity of hypocrisy and opportunism. They acknowledge one significant point: that Nigeria has remained at one spot. Nothing has changed, the change agenda has failed, everything remains the same. Whether these groups are able to achieve, or motivate the real change the people desire is another matter, but the honesty with which they have reversed themselves is telling, and good for our democracy. You need not raise the point that both Obasanjo and Ezekwesili belong to the same elite that they now repudiate.
I sympathise with the parents of the Dapchi 110. It is sad that their only hope is in God, and the possibility of a miracle. Students get killed in the United States, due to gun possession issues in a psychotic society, but to send a child to school and have him or her abducted by terrorists is the grievous pain ever possible in Nigeria. What is clear is that the Nigerian leadership elite has failed the people. This is not a political party matter; it is about capacity, political will, leadership and commitment. This is probably why a body of opinion has developed to the effect that the two major political parties in the country – the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have both failed the country. But can extant or any political parties, in their present shape, save Nigeria? I doubt, and that is my thoroughly non-partisan opinion.
The political party system in Nigeria has to be rebuilt, reformed and reconstructed. Beyond that, we need a new crop of leaders. The solution may not lie with Obasanjo or Ezekwesili or the Nigeria Intervention Movement but they have thrown up ideas about the national dilemma that cannot be ignored. Such ideas cannot be ignored because the biggest victims are not the ten per-centers or the men and women in high places who succeed not through talent or excellence, but mere opportunistic “faith”; the victims are young Nigerians, the same people we call the leaders of tomorrow – that tomorrow is already postponed, because that generation of the future is led by analogue leaders whose glory is trapped in the past. Nigeria needs to rescue tomorrow from the past and the present. Nigeria needs fresh energy, new ideas and a leadership revolution. Wherever they may be, may God protect the Dapchi 110, who have been failed by the Nigerian state. If Buhari rescues them, he may well succeed in rescuing his government a little from the devastating and ruthless onslaught of poetic justice. [myad]
The House of Representatives will focus attention on how to revive the moribund Ajaokuta Steel Company in Kogi State in a resumed sectorial debate scheduled for 
2019: Myth About “Buhari’s 12 Million Northern Votes” By Sufuyan Ojeifo
Short of saying, whether you vote or not, we will win, Kano state governor, Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje, who is locked in a supremacy battle with his erstwhile boss, former governor of the state and current senator, Rabiu kwankwaso, for the political soul of Kano, was boasting, the other day, of his capacity to mobilise and return five million votes for President Muhammadu Buhari, if he contests, in the 2019 presidential election. That is quite massive in a situation where it is realistic or doable!
For me, Ganduje’s declaration was nothing but a day-dream. But then, it could be preparatory to some advanced forms of rigging because, in the first instance, the figure of registered voters in Kano in the 2015 general elections was 4,943,862. Assuming, arguendo, that the figure goes up to between five and six million after the continuous voter registration, can the governor guarantee that five million voters would cast their votes for Buhari, especially if the leading opposition party decides to field a formidable northerner and possibly a Fulani man against the president?
I see Ganduje’s braggadocio, which feeds on the desperation to secure the solid backing of Buhari and the federal might with which to contain Kwankwaso and capture Kano for his governorship re-election enterprise, as a shallow strategy to build or create a mindset and prepare the ground for election rigging in the state in 2019. He had test-run his rigging plan with the massive deployment of under-age voters in the recent local government election in which only the APC participated and won all the forty-four local government chairmanship positions as well as all the councillorship seats.
Ganduje had, against the run of rational electoral strategy, unraveled too early, thus drawing global attention to Kano. Recall that the state gave Buhari the highest votes of 1,903,999 million votes in 2015 amid reported manipulation of the election. Therefore, Kano, as a potential swing state, must be closely monitored in 2019. Jonathan reportedly failed to monitor Kano and he got 215,779 votes. But curiously, the electoral process did not record a single voided vote, given the high illiteracy level of the vast majority of Kano electorate.
Without a doubt, the manipulation of the presidential election in Kano was a mockery of the right of the electorate to choose their leader. Despite the “landslide victory” that Kwankwaso assisted Buhari to get in Kano, certain developments cast a pall on the squalid narrative of how Jonathan was defeated, to wit: the strange one million votes’ disparity recorded for the National Assembly and presidential elections that held simultaneously; and, the controversial death of the Kano Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Mikaila Abdullahi, his wife and two daughters in a strange fire that gutted their home. There was speculation that the late REC was ill at ease with the electoral fraud and was probably going to spill the beans. But those who fixed it were apparently not ready to take prisoner.
Jonathan did not challenge the manipulation of the elections during which card readers were discarded in Kano and some other core northern states at the commencement of the presidential election. So far, INEC had tactically refused to publish data from the card readers because it was a colossal failure: the machine recorded about 85 percent failure in Kano, with little or no significant number of “incident forms” to complement it.
It was equally shocking that despite the fear of Boko Haram insurgents, which had led to massive emigration from Borno, Yobe and Adamawa ahead of the 2015 elections, Borno state, for instance, still returned huge votes of about 473,543 for Buhari and 25,640 votes for Jonathan. It was illogical for a troubled state to have returned huge votes while peaceful states in the south and north central zone returned unusually low figures, having been deliberately pegged down by the mandatory use of “ineffective” card readers.
Ganduje was perhaps very familiar with the strategy that produced the 2015 farcical presidential election results that gave victory to Buhari and is now probably planning to re-enact it with some modifications. Otherwise, who could have believed that an elderly Ganduje, who played the humble and loyal servant to Kwankwaso as deputy governor from 1999 to 2003, special adviser to Kwankwaso when the former governor was minister of defence and again deputy governor from 2011 until 2015 when Kwankwaso decided to enthrone him as his successor, has capacity for political chicanery and electoral mischief?
The governor has shown his combat readiness to embark on proxy battles for the powers-that-be in Abuja against any opposition to Buhari’s re-election bid, if he decides to contest. It is obvious that Ganduje is trying to be clever. He wants to ride on Buhari’s mythical popularity to win re-election as governor. That strategy is not as assured as it looks because Buhari’s popularity in the north and the cult-like followership that he enjoyed prelude to the 2015 elections have suffered serious setbacks. The president has lost enormous goodwill.
The northern consensus that produced him has been fractured. 2019 presents a different scenario. It is going to be Buhari, if he contests, versus another formidable northern candidate. Therefore, unlike 2015 when he enjoyed bloc votes from the north against Jonathan, a southerner, the votes would be shared this time round. The southern part of the country would become the game changer or the poll decider.
In 2007, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presented Umaru Yar’Adua, a Fulani, as its presidential candidate in the election in which Buhari was also a candidate. Buhari was beaten silly. Yar’Adua garnered about 24 million votes while Buhari got a little over 6 million votes. That has evidently knocked the bottom off the assertion by a former Board of Trustees’ member of the PDP, Chief Don Etiebet, that Buhari has a constant pool of 12 million votes in the north that he has been appropriating since 2003 when he began his quest for the presidency.
Buhari got it in 2003 when he contested against Obasanjo; he got it in 2011 when he contested against Jonathan and, of course, about 15 million in 2015 that saw him defeat Jonathan, but he never got it in 2007 against Yar’Adua, a formidable northerner. The records are there. I laughed off Etiebet’s analysis of Buhari’s northern support base of 12 million ready-made votes in Sunday Vanguard of February 26, 2018. The analysis was so simplistic, pitiably sycophantic and awkwardly patronising. The APC chieftain called on a mutative political stereotype to justify his jaundiced assertion. It was the height of political fraudulence designed to rig 12 million votes for Buhari.
In 2019, the northern votes will be greatly divided by leading northern candidates of frontline parties, especially now that the presidency of Buhari, these past three years, has brought about further impoverishment of the masses, especially in the north. There is, therefore, a desperate search for socio-political and economic revivalism, which search cannot reinforce and sustain the languid old order.
The voting masses and the non-voting elite are now united by the common pains occasioned by leadership ineptitude, nepotistic disposition and ethno-religious chauvinism. Therefore, the masses and the elite will expectedly deploy their power of choice, using the instrumentality of their permanent voter cards, to determine their respective fate and the fates of those who jostle to preside over the affairs of the nation in 2019. It is not going to be about any “12 million votes” sitting pretty somewhere for Buhari, but about votes that will be prudently cast after considering the anguish in the land and the need for national redemption.