In the last couple of days, Nigeria was thrown into deep mourning over the death of its highest military command officer, Chief of Army Staff, Ibrahim Attahiru. He and others in senior officers died in a plane crash in Kaduna.
The incident was later trailed with groans and whines particularly, the President Muhammadu Buhari’s absence from the immediate COAS funeral. A show of ingratitude or lack of empathy some have concluded.
But some of protagonists thought otherwise as they pointed out to a similar attitude shown by the previous president, Goodluck Jonathan.
When President Umaru Yar’adua died after a protracted illness and power tussle that followed, the soon to be president did not attend that funeral prayer, they argued.
However, a rather plausible reason given by unidentified sources which got accepted by many was that PMB absence from the funeral prayer was an issue of protocol. That for a president to attend such an occasion a formal notice is required at least 48 hours earlier. This has automatically cleaned the presidency since the funeral prayer occurred only about 24 hours after the accident.
But, the presidency defense which is a rather less than reasonable have shown that the sources claiming for protocol was on their on. In Garba Shehu words: “I have not spoken to the President on this (absence from COAS burial) but the president is someone who is concerned about the safety and well-being of ordinary Nigerians on the street.”
Why the presidency didn’t adopt the protocol reason which appears to be more plausible is a missed opportunity.
Plane crashes have been trailed with rumors and conspiracy theories in Nigeria especially when top government officials were involved. Though without much backings by circumstances, this incident that claimed the life COAS and other high ranking officers was not different.
The first plane crash trailed with controversy that could come to mind was that involving the Sultan of Sokoto Muhammadu Maccido, the deputy governor of Sokoto state, as well as Senator Sule Yari Gandi in 2006.
Senator Gandi was the forefront member of the red chamber who helped defeat a bill that would have allowed the third term agenda of President Olusegun Obasanjo.
So, plane crash involving him at that circumstances gave credence to the conspiracy theory to trend.
Fast forward, six years later, the chopper crash carrying former National Security Adviser Owoye Andrew Azazi and Kaduna State Governor Patrick Yakowa swept the country
Azazi has made several utterances that indicted his own party, the PDP, about terrorism uprising, at that time when the issue of Boko Haram went through the roof, declaring the plane crash that killed him as a set up was therefore conspiracy theory in context.
Why is conspiracy theory so seductive?
According to psychologists, among the reasons for a conspiracy theory is a large-scale incident.
The weight of the incident should be proportional to the reasons behind it, otherwise, the conspiracy theory fills in the void.
For instance, how could the assassination of John F. Kennedy by an assassin who in turn was assassinated by another assassin could said to be lone act by the individual assassins?
About six decades later, the majority of Americans and indeed the rest of the world still harbor a conspiracy theory about the incident.
So for some weighty incidents like the US president assassination, Azazi helicopter crash or now the chief of army incident, our psychological satisfaction demand that there must equally be a large scale reason behind.
Interestingly, there is a green light, because the possibility of conspiracy theory was not ruled out by the explanation of psychologists but rather limited it.
