‘’I served on the Boko Haram committee and villagers kept telling us that in the middle of the night, helicopters piloted by white people kept landing and offloading guns, goods and all kinds of things and money to these people’’(the Boko Haram).
— Bolaji Akinyemi
Last week we dwelt on revelation by Al Mustapha, the former CSO to the late General Sani Abacha, who spoke about how the USA hid under the canopy of its aid agency, USAID, to mine a certain precious mineral called californium unknown to our intelligence community and unconcerned by our government.
This revelation provoked us to ask the question: are our leaders, especially at the national level, inoculated with a serum that immunizes them against a feeling of shame and reproach which prevents them from resigning in shame against some clear and unmistakable governance failings?
If they were perhaps not inoculated against some painful civilized norms, every other day we should wake up to hear unsurprising news that either our president, national security adviser, the head of foreign intelligence unit, the IGP of police and many other layers of leadership has thrown in the towel and submitted themselves to whatever punishment the people of Nigeria deem fit to inflict on them for certain severe/gross failures.
A few years ago, the Americans came to a part of Nigerian territory somewhere in Sokoto State and rescued a citizen of theirs that had been kidnapped in Niger Republic and was being kept in that part of Sokoto. They did the rescue operation and announced their success story to the world the following day after before our sitting president then heard of it like every other person in the country did. His intelligence chiefs never got any hint of the kidnapping not to talk of the bold rescue operation undertaken by the Americans.
This story and many similar others still on-going even as we write means that in our country, we operate completely in the blind, not knowing at all what ought to and should be known to those in the governing class. It means that we do not have any air defense system. We do not have anything in place that can tell anyone in authority that our territorial integrity is being violated and something has to be done to stop the violators. Anyone, including sophisticated inter-national armed robbers, kidnappers, gun runners and all manner of people can do whatever they want to do in our country and go away undetected. When that story broke, I expected that Buhari who was the chief of the country then will just resign in unbearable shame. Here was a retired General who commanded a division of our armed forces, the Armoured Division of the Nigerian Army in Jos. Nothing of the sort happened.
The action of the kidnappers, the planning and rescue of the kidnapped victim, the complete lack of knowledge of everything that happened will make Buhari weep in shame and tender his resignation. That would have been so honourable because it would have drawn attention to our glaring incompetence in security matters. Armed robbers, kidnappers and other criminals know the corners of our country better than those who are put in charge to superintend our affairs. It is so shameful to be a Nigerian.
And this conversation brings me to Professor Akinyemi’s testimony which is quoted at the beginning of this piece. It is amazing that a major security threat to the integrity of our country like Boko Haram happened and no one in our country up until the disclosure by a USA Congressman Perry could say which of the many ‘white’ enemies of our country was responsible. Akinyemi said he and his committee members made a mistake in thinking that it was the French and not the Americans who were responsible for the sponsorship of Boko Haram. Congressman Perry has now lifted the veil on the culprit Whiteman.
The alumni of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPPS) in Kuru, near Jos, used to say humourously that the abbreviation MNI which stands for Member, National Institute that comes after their name, actually stands for Managing Nigeria Intelligently. Are there no more persons who have been trained and groomed to intelligently lead Nigeria to glory? Why has the quality of our leadership deteriorated so sharply that it looks like we are being led by men and women who are blind of eyes and heart?
