President Goodluck Jonathan has his unique ways of expressing challenges Nigeria faces. If we believe him, he will leave us wallowing in the hopelessness of situations.
“Boko Haram is everywhere, in the executive arm of government, in the legislative arm of government and even in the judiciary. Some are also in the armed forces, the police and other security agencies,” Jonathan said. “Some continue to dip their hands and eat with you and you won’t even know the person who will point a gun at you or plant a bomb behind your house.”
The President wrote a good advertisement copy for the sect. The message is capable of providing cover for others to cause mayhem under the guise of Boko Haram.
How will the President handle Boko Haram if security agents, legislators, and judges are members of the sect? What has the President done with this information? Was the President illustrating the complications of the security challenge or indicating surrender?
Sometimes the President creates fear with his analyses. He chose moments after the armed forces memorial service to give Boko Haram some credits. “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 even 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,” the President said. We never knew the situation was that serious.
From the President’s utterances, intelligence gathering remains a challenge. What can the security agencies do without information? Why do we keep going round equipping the police?
After the security drifts in the Niger Delta, we thought any other security challenge would be a child’s play. How can Boko Haram’s activities be more demanding than the civil war? Is the President trying to impress us or gain our sympathy?
No doubt, there are security challenges, which if the security agencies attack with more vigour, we could overcome. The President, however, is over-indulgent with his praises. “Our security services are trying because as the President, I know what they are doing.”
“I assure Nigerians that we shall get over it. We are meeting everyday and we are planning. We are going to increase the strength and the capacity of the security services to confront the modern challenges we face,” he promised.
More perception will confirm to the President that the enemies are many – poverty, corruption, unemployment, poor governance, illiteracy, injustice, ethnicity, and religiosity – and they cannot come from one direction. They merely manifest in insecurity.
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