NO matter how much we paint the situation, when a government becomes so weak and so incompetent that it can no longer protect its citizens; and when a nation becomes so corrupt and overtaken by criminality, then, the major indicators or symptoms of a failed state are registered.
That is the sorry state to which the Boko Haram has pushed Nigeria. The visionlessness of our leaders has now moved the once vibrant, once most powerful black nation, to the cliff that, we think it is only a question of time before the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) predicted apocalypse on Nigeria becomes true.
Nigerians hold their Kings – the Obas, Obis, Emirs and Peres – in high esteem. If one day we came to the rude awakening that the Oba was at the battlefield, personally pulling the triggers and cutting down the enemies, it would simply mean that there was something seriously wrong.
Many would not wait to be reminded to leave whatever they were doing and head for the battlefield. To us, the King does no wrong. After all, he is God’s representative on earth.
We wonder how much truth is healthy for the citizenry in a democracy. If the Governor-General of the nation suddenly became blind and unable to perform the functions of his office, how prudent would it be for us to rush to the press and make a public broadcast of his predicament? Or, would we rather keep sealed lips for some time while carefully managing the affairs of state and looking around for the best possible optician?
In the life of a leader, there comes a point at which one hundred percent disclosure on him is unhealthy to the citizenry. There must be aspects of his life that should not be known to all the people.
As a natural corollary, it is not everything the leader knows that should be known to the people. But for the careful management of information around this writer, he would not have gone to university when he did. By 1972, the rumour was rife that Armageddon was to come in the winter of that year.
My sponsor kept the secret to himself and went ahead to pay all my fees. Without telling me about the doomsday prediction, he encouraged me to go to school while he quietly intensified prayers that the Armageddon should not come. Perhaps because of my uncle’s intercessory prayers, the Armageddon has not still come, 40 years after.
A good leader does not fret. Neither does he disclose to his subjects, all perceived dangers. He acts without giving full explanation for his action. At the village level, the village head would suddenly decree that for the next seven nights, all the women in that village would dance round the village n*de, cursing evildoers. In the Christendom, the Reverend would suddenly declare a 21-day dry fast for all members. He does not disclose why.
In a telling paragraph of his book, The 33 Strategies of War, Robert Greene makes it abundantly clear that the world has become increasingly competitive and nasty. We face opponents who would do anything to gain an edge. Hear him: “More troubling and complex are the battles we face with those who are supposedly on our side. There are those who outwardly play the team game, who act very friendly and agreeable, but who sabotage us behind the scenes, using the group to promote their own agenda….”
Does President Goodluck Jonathan require any soothsayer to tell him that Boko Haram is a satanic organisation that wishes Nigeria no good? Does he not know that if the group had the wherewithal to sink Nigeria or set it ablaze, it would not hesitate for a moment to do so?
Again, it is unclear what President Jonathan seeks to achieve with his recent “Sermon on the Mount” in whch he poured out his full assessment of the Boko Haram: “The situation we have in our hands is even worse than the civil war that we fought. During the civil war, we knew and we could predict where the enemy was coming from. You can even know the route they are coming from, you can even know what calibre of weapon they will use and so on. But the challenge we have today is more complicated.”
This revelation is as useful to the President and Commander-In-Chief as it is useless to the rest of us. If anything, it succeeds in knocking some of us off balance. It can only be a soothing balm if it comes in the past tense, as a passing mention after the group has been crushed.
Our President merely stated the obvious, “Boko Haram is everywhere, in the executive arm of government, in the legislative arm and even in the judiciary. Some are also in the armed forces, the police and other security agencies….” Shall we add, they are predominant among the unemployed, the very population that Jonathan is looking up to, to fortify the security services? All the same, the buck stops with the President.
In his capacity as the Commander-In-Chief, he commands the good, the bad and the ugly; and good enough, they all obey him. There is no evidence that if the Vice-President were of the Boko Haram persuasion, for instance, he would refuse to take instructions from the President.
Evidently, President Goodluck Jonathan is saying more than we should hear and doing less that we should see. The reverse is what Nigerians want – more action, less rhetoric. He must also stop frightening himself. And in all this, time is of the essence.
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