‘For Dis Buhari Time
A news item is attractive and one feels like writing about it then next minute a more juicy news item breaks on the front page. And wow! One must shift the interest to the latest just like a husband does to the latest addition to his seraglio.
On the 15th of August, some days after a faction of the Boko Haram, BH insurgents released the latest video purporting to show some of the girls it abducted from Chibok, Oby Ezekwesili, one of the founders of the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) campaign, was a guest on BBC Radio 4 Today programme in London, United Kingdom. For about three minutes, she spoke passionately on the BBOG campaign. She spoke on her disappointment with the Nigerian government’s attitude towards getting back the Chibok girls – especially the government’s slow attitude which might be interpreted as nonchalance according to Mrs. Ezekwesili.
– How could she say this? I said
– She’s right Mom. Parents want their girls back. My daughter said.
Later in the day, I was privileged to be present at a lecture hosted by Ms Diane Abbot, MP – introduced as a supporter of the emancipation of the peoples of the Diaspora – at the Westminster Parliament, London. The lecture, theme of which was Africa’s Democratic Dividend and the Search for Economic Transformation, was delivered by Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, Asantehene, King of Ashanti. The special guest was Wole Soyinka, our Nobel laureate. Among the things Wole Soyinka said after the lecture was that he didn’t feel apologetic anymore whenever he met foreigners asking questions about the Chibok girls. He believed that the Nigerian government was taking positive steps in routing out the Boko Haram insurgents and thereby showing positive signals of its’ decisiveness to bring the girls back.
When Will the Chibok Girls Return? Asks one of our dailies. Monday 22 August, Ezekwesili and Aisha Yesufu led a group of the BBOG campaigners to Aso Rock, Abuja. Photos in the papers the next day portrayed Mrs. Ezekwesili and her group before the gates of Aso Rock. The BBOG movement ‘pointedly told Mr. President, PMB, that he no longer had any excuse not to rescue the 218 Chibok school girls’. In fact they asked the President to lead troops to Sambisa forest.
If it was that simple the past government would have rescued the girls well before PMB’s time. How could the forest be stormed without inflicting heavy casualties among the innocent? Also the Chibok girls have been with their captors now for more than two years. Hasn’t anyone in the BBOG group heard of the Stockholm syndrome? Even Amina Ali Nkeki who was recently rescued from the BH is said to be yearning for her ‘terrorist’ husband for whom she’s had a child. She cried that, ‘I’m not comfortable with the way I am being kept from him’.
Actions or non-actions of Soyinka and Ezekwesili featured prominently in the newspapers of 26 August. Wole Soyinka is said to have declined ‘to speak on state of the nation’. While Oby Ezekwesili led the Bring Back Our Girls’ (BBOG) campaigners for the second time in the week to the Presidential villa, Aso Rock. As expected, they were prevented from marching on the villa. The group was reported to have later moved to the British High Commission where it was received by Paul Arkwright, the British High Commissioner. The BBOG campaigners were said to have urged ‘London to support the Nigerian Army, especially with intelligence needed to locate the girls’.
Mischievous tongues would say the BBOG campaign tone became highly pitched since last July when a co-founder, Hadiza Bala Usman, got appointed as the Managing Director of Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA. Others would advise the public to be careful of latter-day pastors who are only inspired by ‘stomach infrastructure’. When one can’t believe a Bible-carrying, spirit-filled pastor who also speaks in tongues then one tends to agree with those who say we’re at the end-times.
‘For dis Buhari time’ the Aso Rock is daily besieged by ex-Heads of State some of whom say their visit is to inform PMB how they’ll spend their holidays abroad. Other callers are protesters who want to exercise their democratic rights of having eyeball-to-eyeball talk with PMB. Some of these demonstrators may have sought the audience but got no clearance. They still go, all the same, and demand that the gates of the presidential palace be opened for them to see the ‘Oga’. These groups are often led by those who ought to have known better because they once served in the government. The Nigerian work culture has been extended into the Presidential villa. PMB should be left to do his work without interference from social calls.
Inasmuch as the public would want to sympathise with the Chibok families on the disappearance of their girls, one feels that the BBOG campaign is now taking a political leaning. The government is faced with unrest from all fronts and BBOG campaigners have now entered the arena to add their weight to the political, financial, social and mental malaise with which the government is battling. Judging from the remarks of some of the missing girls’ parents to whom the News Agency of Nigeria spoke last Tuesday 23 August, it’s evident that there’s a crack among them. Some still believe in the BBOG arm-twisting tactics while others seem to believe in the ‘softly, softly’ approach. The stand of this second group will certainly gain public support.
We understand that there are behind-the-scene moves by government to secure the release of these girls. But why should anyone besides the security personnel demand that they be briefed regularly about these missing girls? There’s mischief in this campaign. Some people believe that some of the group members want political patronage. Well, they’re wasting their time. They should be content with the entitlements they got from the juicy posts they held in and out of Nigeria. They should stop making a nuisance of themselves on Abuja streets and on the pages of newspapers.
Everyone’s demonstrating ‘for dis Buhari time’. Even the Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, were on the streets of Maiduguri last Thursday. Their complaint was over ‘poor feeding’ caused by inadequate supply of foodstuff from the National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA. It is alleged that NEMA ‘in the last three months has failed to provide foodstuff to IDPs in Borno …’ No food, no water, no security. Would those diverting the essentials meant for IDPs wish their fate to be visited on them?
There we go again – ‘stomach infrastructure’. ‘Ona ǫfun, ǫna ǫrun’ – the gullet’s the pathway to the heavens. It’s true that there’s no ‘Orişa’ like the gullet for everyday it takes its’ sacrifice. But when that sacrifice is soiled, the filth spreads throughout the body, corrupts and destroys it. NEMA, you see yourself! So who will fight for these IDPs? Who will champion their cause? IDPs too are victims of the Boko Haram insurgency. They say no food, no water for three months. So over to you Madam Due Process.
