The social media is awash with news on impunity that now pervades the society, like the Agatu killings, electoral mayhem in Rivers, and the siege on the Ekiti State government. These, you would not see published in the mainstream media because it is torn between confusion and protection of the government we installed. Such actions and inaction are, however, not new to the Nigerian political environment. In those days of military takeovers, illegitimate jackboots and coups, none succeeded without the backing of the media. According to accounts by coupists, every of their so called revolution never came to fore without the media steering the waters to ascertain the disposition and conviction of the people. The narratives even implied that media watchers could rightly predict at that time that a coup was being hatched. After such successful coups, the newspaper always fell asleep.

Those were the days when everyone’s ambition was to become a soldier boy. A period when young men only dreamt of attending the Nigerian Defense Academy or graduate from the conventional universities to enroll for the short services programme in the armed forces units to be commissioned as military officers. It was that period when notes (scribbled on pads) from military assistants and aide-de-camps open several doors of opportunities. Nobody tempers with your family if there exists even a sergeant in your lineage. Yes! That was how far we went before the rebirth of democracy in 1999. The same rhythm heralded the change of government from the People’s Democratic Party to the All Progressive Congress in 2015. We all had a stand; that stand has made it difficult for us to really perform our duties as media practitioners and change agents because we clamored for an Utopian state without studying the underlining factors that bore such conditions.

Like the dead and dying young men in Rivers State at the weekend election rerun, we all wished for change with the actors riding on our backs to achieve their aims and objectives but leaving us to lick our self-inflicted wounds sustained in exercising our right to support them while still clouded in ignorance. From the ocean end of Cross Rivers to the edges of Nigeria in Sokoto state, the same voice that cried and prayed for change is singing a recalcitrant song of disappointment in power outages, bad roads, shortage of petroleum products, high cost of living, insecurity — not boko haram at this times but that of the unknown marauders lurking around from nowhere at night in our cities, roads and villages. The distrust, both ethno and religious, and the ready answers from the government and the indifferent attitude to such yearnings of the people reverberate all over the country. The government is always quick to tell you that it is cleaning the Augean stable left behind by the previous administration of the PDP, forgetting that all successive governments in the history of Nigeria rode to power on the alleged ineptitude and cluelessness of predecessor administrations. None of them came on an agenda that was not hinged on the alleged lack of skills of the past overseers.

While the media has lost confidence and audacity to bark, it does not translate that the current state of affairs is the best bargain for Nigerians. Human rights abuses pervade the society with countless numbers of state-orchestrated criminality and individually planned kidnappings taking place everywhere at all time. The government is, however, silent on these, especially when they seem to have taken place in states aligned with the ousted opposition party, the PDP. A case in point is the abduction of female minor, Ms. Ese Oruru, from far away Bayelsa, to Kano state for eight months, and the continued alleged detention of Ekiti lawmakers in the dungeons of the States Services Department. The federal government has not come out to clear the air on whether it has hands or not in the tragic stories of harassment by federal security agents against the Ekiti State Government and its officials. All this makes mockery of the oath-taking ritual that is now seen as a ceremony. Because elected political and public officers have never adhered to it but have, instead, treated majority of the people unfairly and favour only those considered as their lackeys or of the same ethnic and religious background, in an attempt to quieten dissenting voices that preach true change. This they do, not realizing that it is this non-adherence to the oath of office that has caused all the failures of the past.

That is the same latitude that made a group of people accused of extra judicial killings in Agatu land to go public, claiming that they were behind the attacks on innocent women and children in Benue State. They had not only gone further to downgrade their case but claimed that their actions were a consequence of the activities of local cattle rustlers who stole over 200 of their cows and killed one of their important kinsmen in 2013. Those are the sad narratives we see and listen to in this clime daily. Stories that make our land insecure for foreigners who read the negatives in our stories; yet, we pretend to want to woo them into being part of us by bringing in their funds from more stable environments to invest in our country. In any part of the country you turn to today, there is one gory picture of someone who is being subverted by the system directly and with all impunity. It’s either you are denied your privileges and/or entitlement, or denied your rights by those who have sworn deceitfully to their oath of office using the Quran and the Bible. In some cases, you are indirectly punished with harsh policies of those who swore to protect you, in line with constitutional dictates. A very sad recurring decimal.

It thus calls for the government to look into the now ingraining culture of inglorious license for lawlessness in the country whether instituted and perpetrated by law enforcement officials, their allies, or the new class of untouchables whose population seems to be growing geometrically. Except in Africa, there is nowhere persons will want to see the people they want to serve killed, just to climb unto the podium of service, but in Nigeria. Alas, Nigeria belongs to all of us. We must also realize that today’s men will evolve into yesterday’s men in no time and they can only be judged by their actions of today by posterity. As for the ethnic jingoists and religious bigots, there is need for caution. They should allow peace reign in this country because Nigeria is a nation only when peace is seen as the rallying point amongst the people.

Twitter: @MOkpogode. [myad]

Nigerians hardly agree or indulge themselves in collective appreciation of the performance of any public officer. It is like a cherished culture of endless criticism, the people hate to relinquish. It is worse when the matter at stake concerns a national issue and the personality at the epicenter of the heat delights more in verbal justification job than action.
But there appears to be a unanimous consensus on how the current Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Tukur Buratai has handled the ongoing war on Boko Haram insurgents in the North eastern part of Nigeria. The war on terror is a global phenomenon, but since terrorists took a firm, offensive grip on Nigerians, the country has known no peace, manifest in all facets of national life. It was like a puzzle that can never be solved. But Gen. Buratai has given Nigerians hope of survival and dignity in their darkest hour, much as he has vibrated deadly labyrinths.
Until his appointment July 13, 2015, by President Muhammedu Buhari, as Nigeria’s COAS, Gen. Buratai was the Commander of the Multinational Joint Task Force, headquartered in the Republic of Chad. He succeeded Gen. Kenneth Tobias Jacob Minimah as COAS, whose reign diminished the once proud army which regaled in excellence on foreign assignments, anywhere in the world. Under Minimah, Nigerian soldiers were re-classified and derogatively described as worse than ragtag militias, evident in troop’s sheepish retreat in the middle of battle. Boko Haram militants held the country on its jugular, recklessly killing, abducting, conquering and annexing territories of Nigeria with their insignia boldly mounted.
Credentials of the Borno-born Army General are replete with trappings of excellence anywhere he has served the country before now. As Commander 2 Brigade covering other parts of the Niger Delta region, where he doubled as the Sector Commander Joint Task Force Operation Pulo Shield, Buratai brought respite to Nigerians in the restive Niger Delta region by significantly curtailing oil theft, piracy, kidnapping and armed robbery through relentless security surveillance and operations.
But what appears to have shot him to limelight is his new job as COAS. Many attest that upon his appointment as the Army’s helmsman, Buratai deemed it a personal mission to rescue his people. But when he vowed to confront the insurgent’s headlong; the terrorists mistook his outbursts as the same empty bragging of his predecessors.
Administering their usual baptism of fire on whoever dares them, the insurgents immediately unleashed an attack on his home town in Biu LGA of Borno, killing and destroying houses. While the action of the Islamic sect members was meant to permanently silence Gen. Buratai, it surprisingly rather emboldened him.
And with President Muhammadu Buhari’s relocation of the military command structure to the epicenter of the Boko Haram war, Buratai perceived it a rare opportunity to again excel in his military career.
Son of Alhaji Yusuf Buratai, a World War II veteran, the COAS reminisced his father’s admonishments to him at a tender age, when opted for the military. He remembered that his father, now aged told him to strive to excel and always be loyal to his superiors and constituted authority and to distance himself from any form of vice. So, he considered failing Nigeria in the insurgency war as failing his own biological father.
Therefore, having climbed the ladder in his military career to get to the peak, Gen. Buratai dammed the coziness of his office in Abuja, laced his boots, cocked his guns and personally led troops to the battle field. It was a marked departure from the disposition of COAS before his arrival on the scene.
To demonstrate that he is an Army General with proper grasp and briefs of his new assignment, Buratai restructured the Nigerian Army hierarchy by deploying his subordinates to superintend on new commands stations or areas. He set out to task with a singular mission; firstly, to boost the very low morale of troops, which hitherto made them dread war and by extension, to also extract a commitment from soldiers that insurgency is a war that must be won in record time, to enable soldiers get back to their regular duties.
Thereafter, Buratai frequently toured the zone embattled by insurgency war, even to dreaded Boko Haram controlled zones. It was on one of such mission that his convoy was ambushed while travelling to Maiduguri-Gamboru-Ngala. No senior officer of his ranking or portfolio had rendered himself to be caught in the crossfire of insurgents in the past. But Buratai braved the odds and did not only deflate the potency of the terrorists who attacked his convoy, but also arrested some of them who later made useful confessions.
It is clear that the Nigerian Army under Buratai’s watch have stamped their statement that the dreaded Sambisa Forest, where Chibok girls abducted by Boko Haram terrorists were held captive for months, unchallenged, was not only demystified, but also demolished. He proceeded to belittle the once fortified haven of the insurgents by establishing a military presence in Sambisa Forest.
Explaining his tactics, Buratai said, having studied the insurgency war in the North East, he decided to adopt the same guerrilla approach used by the terrorists by introducing motorbike battalion to move swiftly against terrorists anytime. No innovation, that simple with such positive impact that cannot attract world acclaim in the comity of Army Generals anywhere in the world.
He simply explained it as, “We are using the same guerrilla strategy adopted by the terrorists. We are giving them back their own strategy. We have motorbike battalion which has added more capacity as well as the ability to move quickly to wherever the terrorists are.”
Also, Buratai’s foot soldiers were constantly assured by the Army Chief himself, whether in the rain and in cold, about their welfare. He availed himself at their doorstep to personally respond to the issues confronting them to give them a psychological impetus to face the insurgency battle and come out victorious. Soldiers no longer complained of owed allowances, delayed salaries or pushed to battle front, on empty stomach and without ammunitions.
While addressing troops of the 112 battalion at Mafa, Buratai touched on their patriotism and emotions as Nigerians reminding of their sacred duty to the country thus; “We all know we have a task to clear this general area of these criminal elements once and for all so that we all can go back to our normal soldiering business. It is the commitment of the President, government, the leadership of the military, the troops and the support of Nigerians that brought the successes. We have intensified efforts to enable the military get to the insurgents before they cause any havoc or even run away from their hideouts…the most important thing is to prevent them from having the capacity to launch attacks on innocent individuals and on our troops` locations.”
In effect, when Nigerians now witness isolated incidents of Boko Haram attacks in towns and villages of the troubled North East, the world is now convinced that the remnants of terrorists who have been chased out of the forests, alienated in towns and caged in their hideouts, who are still venting their last spleen, which would soon extinguish. Confessions from some arrested terrorists now indicate that they are tired of the “business”, as against the haughty posture of some of their arrested colleagues in the past.
Buratai assures, “Terrorism is a global phenomenon. It may seem unending, but I want to assure you that here in Nigeria, we are working hard to ensure that the Boko Haram terrorists are completely eliminated. We still have some remnants of them, but we are closing up and clearing them by the day.”
Therefore, when Nigerians generally, including hardcore critics like the Comrade Governor, Adams Oshiomhole, and his Oyo state counterpart, Governor Abiola Ajimobi, applaud Buratai, its not unexpected and about the least laurel still awaiting this General ofthe people.
Oshiomhole sums it all: “We in Edo State appreciate the leadership that you are providing for the Nigerian Armed Forces and the Nigerian Army in particular. We watch you on television and we see a very senior officer going to meet his officers and men right in the battle field, sharing the dust, the sun and all the deprivations, the sort of thing you sometime see in foreign countries. I think that you are leading by example in every sense of the word.”
So, with Buratai on stage, the Nigerian Army is back from a long “sabbatical” leave, hitting and biting. There is now hope that Nigerian Army would once again regain its pride and status in the comity of the military world-wide.
. Orinya is an academic staff at FUW and contributed the piece from Wukari, Taraba State. [myad]