Simply because President Goodluck Jonathan is easily the most unassuming individual to have risen to political prominence in Nigeria some people have taken that as a license to abuse, impugn and threaten him at will. The most recent is the duo of Solomon Dalong and Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed who have broken all rules of decency and issued an ultimatum to the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces. What unbelievable impudence!
Masquerading under the auspices of the Northern Elders Forum, Dalong and Baba-Ahmed asked President Jonathan to “produce” the Chibok girls kidnapped by Boko Haram before October as if the President has been hiding the girls at the Presidential Villa in Abuja. If Jonathan is too constrained by the proprieties of his office to tell Dalong and Baba-Ahmed and their co-travellers exactly where they should go with such insolence, this writer has no such restrictions: Dalong and Baba-Ahmed can go to hell with their ultimatum!
Since matters have come to this stage, we must tell ourselves some hard truths. Dalong and Baba-Ahmed are not children and, as such, cannot claim to be unaware of the many years of terror that were unleashed on people of Southern Nigerian extraction especially in the Northern cities of Kano and Kaduna. Not once did Dalong and Baba-Ahmed condemn the many periodic massacres of Southerners in those two cities and other parts of the North. Today, the monster that Dalong and Baba-Ahmed failed to condemn has turned round to consume those that nurtured it and Dalong and Baba-Ahmed have found the voice to issue Jonathan, their favourite whipping boy, an ultimatum. Rubbish!
Even though, Nigerians are blessed with incredibly short memories, nobody can come out today to claim he or she is not aware that Jonathan was promised by very senior Northern politicians that they would make the country ungovernable for him if he won the 2011 Presidential Election. When Jonathan won the 2011 Presidential Election, what happened? As promised, the activities of the deadly Boko Haram sect escalated, leading to the mass abduction of the Chibok girls. And, today, Dalong and Baba-Ahmed have come out to tie Jonathan’s political fortunes to “producing” girls that he DID NOT abduct! What manner of political blackmail is this?
In their diabolical ploy of playing politics with the lives and safety of the Chibok girls, Dalong and Baba-Ahmed have confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt that the sole purpose of Boko Haram has always been “to make the country ungovernable” for Jonathan just because he is a Southerner. Good grief!
As Afenifere, the socio-cultural organisation for the Yoruba people in Nigeria said in a statement responding to Dalong and Baba-Ahmed, “By linking the electoral fortune of President Jonathan in 2015 to ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ latest by October as well as ending Boko Haram at the time, the ‘elders’ have just confirmed the suspicions in the land that the activities of the Islamic sect, Boko Haram, is either enjoying the sponsorship of some elites of the North or at the least having their sympathy.”
Afenifere also said, “In all the sound and fury of the Forum, we searched in vain any outright condemnation of Boko Haram. And this has been the pattern of most reactions from the majority of the elites of the region who always appear politically correct to the insurgents while using their activities to rattle the government. The traumatized country that has been held in anxiety over the fate of the abducted girls cannot but challenge these elders at this stage to appeal to their wards in Boko Haram to release the innocent young girls who now appear cannon fodders in the struggle for ‘we want our power back’. A time has come to let these elites know they can no longer play the ostrich by burying their heads in the sand and think no one sees them because they are seeing no one.”
Indeed, the time has come to let the like of Dalong and Baba-Ahmed know in very clear terms that no part of Nigeria will ever be serfs to them again. This country belongs to all of us and we all must live in it freely and prosper together as equals or perish.
It is becoming a common but nonetheless bogus and annoying narrative from the like of Dalong and Baba-Ahmed that Jonathan is to be blamed for the troubles of the North. All that is required to debunk this incredible piece of falsehood is to ask which region of Nigeria has been in power for four decades of the country’s almost 54 years of independence, and then follow that up by asking why Jonathan should be crucified for the consequences of four decades of misrule and abuse of power.
And while it may be fashionable in some quarters never to see anything good about President Jonathan, it is still important that we ask why it wasn’t until his administration that schools were provided in the hundreds for the millions of Almajiri children in the North. Dalong and Baba-Ahmed may persist in fooling themselves if they so desire, but Nigerians from the North, East, West and South know the truth and no amount of insolent ultimatums can disguise it!
Written by Kayode Ojo.
