The
dancing obscenity of Shekau and his gang of psychopaths and child
abductors, taunting the world, mocking the BRING BACK OUR GIRLS campaign
on internet, finally met its match in Nigeria to inaugurate the week of
September 11 – most appropriately. Shekau’s danse macabre was surpassed
by the unfurling of a political campaign banner that defiled an entry
point into Nigeria’s capital of Abuja. That banner read: BRING BACK
JONATHAN 2015.
President Jonathan has since disowned all
knowledge or complicity in the outrage but, the damage has been done,
the rot in a nation’s collective soul bared to the world. The very
possibility of such a desecration took the Nigerian nation several
notches down in human regard. It confirmed the very worst of what
external observers have concluded and despaired of - a culture of civic
callousness, a coarsening of sensibilities and, a general human
disregard. It affirmed the acceptance, even domination of lurid
practices where children are often victims of unconscionable abuses
including ritual sacrifices, intimate enslavement, and worse. Spurred by
electoral desperation, a bunch of self-seeking morons and sycophants
chose to plumb the abyss of self-degradation and drag the nation down to
their level. It took us to a hitherto unprecedented low in ethical
degeneration. The bets were placed on whose turn would it be to take the
next potshots at innocent youths in captivity whose society and
governance have failed them and blighted their existence? Would the
Chibok girls now provide standup comic material for the latest staple of
Nigerian escapist diet? Would we now move to a new export commodity in
the entertainment industry named perhaps “Taunt the Victims”?
As
if to confirm all the such surmises, an ex-governor, Sheriff, notorious
throughout the nation – including within security circles as affirmed in
their formal dossiers - as prime suspect in the sponsorship league of
the scourge named Boko Haram, was presented to the world as a
presidential traveling companion. And the speculation became: was the
culture of impunity finally receiving endorsement as a governance
yardstick? Again, Goodluck Jonathan swung into a plausible explanation:
it was Mr. Sheriff who, as friend of the host President Idris Deby, had
traveled ahead to Chad to receive Jonathan as part of President Deby’s
welcome entourage. What, however does this say of any president? How
came it that a suspected affiliate of a deadly criminal gang, publicly
under such ominous cloud, had the confidence to smuggle himself into the
welcoming committee of another nation, and even appear in audience, to
all appearance a co-host with the president of that nation? Where does
the confidence arise in him that Jonathan would not snub him openly or,
after the initial shock, pull his counterpart, his official host aside
and say to him, “Listen, it’s him, or me.”? So impunity now transcends
boundaries, no matter how heinous the alleged offence?
The
Nigerian president however appeared totally at ease. What the nation
witnessed in the photo-op was an affirmation of a governance principle,
the revelation of a decided frame of mind – with precedents galore.
Goodluck Jonathan has brought back into limelight more political
reprobates - thus attested in criminal courts of law and/or police
investigations - than any other Head of State since the nation’s
independence. It has become a reflex. Those who stuck up the obscene
banner in Abuja had accurately read Jonathan right as a Bring-back
president. They have deduced perhaps that he sees “bringing back” as a
virtue, even an ideology, as the corner stone of governance,
irrespective of what is being brought back. No one quarrels about
bringing back whatever the nation once had and now sorely needs – for
instance, electricity and other elusive items like security, the rule of
law etc. etc. The list is interminable. The nature of what is being
brought back is thus what raises the disquieting questions. It is time
to ask the question: if Ebola were to be eradicated tomorrow, would this
government attempt to bring it back?
Well, while awaiting the
Chibok girls, and in that very connection, there is at least an
individual whom the nation needs to bring back, and urgently. His name
is Stephen Davis, the erstwhile negotiator in the oft aborted efforts to
actually bring back the girls. Nigeria needs him back – no, not back to
the physical nation space itself, but to a Nigerian induced forum,
convoked anywhere that will guarantee his safety and can bring others to
join him. I know Stephen Davis, I worked in the background with him
during efforts to resolve the insurrection in the Delta region under
President Shehu Yar’Adua. I have not been involved in his recent labours
for a number of reasons. The most basic is that my threshold for
confronting evil across a table is not as high as his - thanks, perhaps,
to his priestly calling. From the very outset, in several lectures and
other public statements, I have advocated one response and one response
only to the earliest, still putative depredations of Boko Haram and have
decried any proceeding that smacked of appeasement. There was a time to
act – several times when firm, decisive action, was indicated. There
are certain steps which, when taken, place an aggressor beyond the pale
of humanity, when we must learn to accept that not all who walk on two
legs belong to the community of humans – I view Boko Haram in that
light. It is no comfort to watch events demonstrate again and again that
one is proved to be right.
Thus, it would be inaccurate to say
that I have been detached from the Boko Haram affliction – very much the
contrary. As I revealed in earlier statements, I have interacted with
the late National Security Adviser, General Azazi, on occasion – among
others. I am therefore compelled to warn that anything that Stephen
Davis claims to have uncovered cannot be dismissed out of hand. It
cannot be wished away by foul-mouthed abuse and cheap attempts to impugn
his integrity – that is an absolute waste of time and effort. Of the
complicity of ex-Governor Sheriff in the parturition of Boko Haram, I
have no doubt whatsoever, and I believe that the evidence is
overwhelming. Femi Falana can safely assume that he has my full backing –
and that of a number of civic organizations - if he is compelled to go
ahead and invoke the legal recourses available to him to force Sheriff’s
prosecution. The evidence in possession of Security Agencies - plus a
number of diplomats in Nigeria - is overwhelming, and all that is left
is to let the man face criminal persecution. It is certain he will also
take many others down with him.
The unleashing of a viperous
cult like Boko Haram on peaceful citizens qualifies as a crime against
humanity, and deserves that very dimension in its resolution. If a
people must survive, the reign of impunity must end. Truth – in all
available detail - is in the interest, not only of Nigeria, the
sub-region and the continent, but of the international community whose
aid we so belatedly moved to seek. From very early beginnings, we warned
against the mouthing of empty pride to stem a tide that was assuredly
moving to inundate the nation but were dismissed as alarmists. We warned
that the nation had moved into a state of war, and that its people must
be mobilized accordingly – the warnings were disregarded, even as
slaughter surmounted slaughter, entire communities wiped out, and the
battle began to strike into the very heart of governance, but all we
obtained in return was moaning, whining and hand-wringing up and down
the rungs of leadership and governance. But enough of recriminations -
at least for now. Later, there must be full accounting.
Finally,
Stephen Davis also mentions a Boko Haram financier within the Nigerian
Central Bank. Independently we are able to give backing to that claim,
even to the extent of naming the individual. In the process of our
enquiries, we solicited the help of a foreign embassy whose government,
we learnt, was actually on the same trail, thanks to its independent
investigation into some money laundering that involved the Central Bank.
That name, we confidently learnt, has also been passed on to President
Jonathan. When he is ready to abandon his accommodating policy towards
the implicated, even the criminalized, an attitude that owes so much to
re-election desperation, when he moves from a passive “letting the law
to take its course” to galvanizing the law to take its course, we shall
gladly supply that name.
In the meantime however, as we twiddle
our thumbs, wondering when and how this nightmare will end, and time
rapidly runs out, I have only one admonition for the man to whom so much
has been given, but who is now caught in the depressing spiral of
diminishing returns: “Bring Back Our Honour.”
Wole SOYINKA.
Happy birthday to an icon,2face aka 2baba.
