Northern elders’ ultimatum on Chibok girls

PUNCH

BY PUNCH EDITORIAL BOARD
Contact: editor@punchng.com

THE hypocritical ultimatum of the Northern Elders Forum to President Goodluck Jonathan to find the Chibok girls or forget re-election is an opportunistic and provocative part of a desperate struggle for the Presidency in 2015. There are no winners in this bout between two failures. The group that claims to speak for the North says in a statement that “in the light of our firm conviction that the insurgency and related security challenges pose threats to the 2015 elections and the survival of our nation, we strongly advise President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to bring an end to the insurgency in all its manifestations and produce the Chibok girls before the end of October 2014.” It further warned that “in the event that President Jonathan fails to do this, Nigerians will be left with the only conclusion that he has forfeited his right to ask for our mandate beyond 2015.” This arrogant ranting is invalid.

We agree that “the security situation represents the most serious threat” in the country’s history. There is even nothing wrong or illegitimate for a political bloc to contest for power and influence in a democratic and free society. But everything is wrong when terrorism, particularly the horror of the Chibok abducted schoolgirls, becomes handy in phrasing slogans and political intrigues between government and opposing interest groups. The plain truth is that a faction of the northern elite is totally fixated on grabbing the Presidency with all the power and affluence that accompany it, using the unfortunate Chibok episode as a political bait. This is regrettable.

NEF and other northern elite factions have always opposed Jonathan’s ascendancy to the Presidency and have been adamant that he should not seek a second term. Posing now as champions of the Chibok girls is disingenuous and self-serving. That the Jonathan administration has been unpardonably ineffective and indecisive in dealing with grave security threats is incontestable. But the northern elite are not blameless in providing the environment for the incubation and nurturing of the violent ideology. Indeed, the monstrous security challenge and development mess that Jonathan is confused about have largely been created over the years by the Northern political, clerical and traditional elite.

Boko Haram is just the final expression of the evil of religious fundamentalism in the North. Abubakar Shekau clearly defined Boko Haram’s mission in July 2010, when he declared, “Jihad has begun.”Western education, according to him, is the foundation of evil in the world and must not only be rejected but also replaced by religious education and the installation of an Islamic caliphate. Since then, his murderous group has tailored its activities to achieve just that. As informed elders, the NEF members missed the point by their irresponsible allegation that the killings in the North “are engineered to weaken the North politically and economically by some interests.” This re-echoes the repeated threats by prominent northern elders in 2011 that they “would make the country ungovernable” if Jonathan became president.

We remind the northern elders once more that poverty, illiteracy, economic and social ruin, sectarian massacres and Islamic extremism are the chickens they hatched coming home to roost. A former federal permanent secretary, Ahmed Joda, in an Op-Ed article in the Daily Trust in June 2012, said of northern leaders; “Perhaps, our greatest mistake was to totally neglect education…We are now hiding behind religion to deprive our children the vital tool that frees all human beings…” Recalling that it was the North, “led by Sokoto, Katsina, Kano, Zazzau (Zaria) (and) Bauchi, that mounted the stiffest opposition” to the Universal Primary Education scheme launched in 1973, Joda said the evils of illiteracy, poverty and laziness had now confronted the region with Boko Haram and other insurgencies.

There should be openness and sincerity if we truly want to end this virulent malignancy that threatens our country. The bitter truth is that the northern elite have failed woefully to deliver on the basic test of leadership, which is freedom from ignorance. While the late Ahmadu Bello sought as premier to foster mass education, his successors have entrenched illiteracy, preferring instead to safeguard their wealth and privileges by manipulating religion and ethnic sentiments. The North should not continue to be “its own worst enemy” as Joda said. Its elders should, as canvassed by Shehu Sani, a civil rights activist, “be more proactive in finding solutions to the raging insurgency and religious violence than scoring cheap political points from tragic situations.”

Today, the region is, in the words of Aliyu Babangida, chairman of the Northern Governors’ Forum, dragging the rest of Nigeria back with its backwardness. With the world’s highest poverty rate – according to the UNDP, the third highest number of adult illiterates (CIA Factbook) – and the highest number of children out of school, by UNESCO’s reckoning, millions of child beggars; 93 per cent of females illiterate, jihadist terrorism and less than 5 per cent of child immunisation coverage by 2011, according to Ibrahim Gambari, a diplomat, the region needs robust leadership and selfless elders. Sadly, Gambari’s call in 2011 for committed, “responsible, experienced, dedicated and retired northerners” to lead the region out of its crises of development had no takers.

Like responsible citizens everywhere, NEF and other groups should eschew dirty politics and join with all sincere bodies to end the nightmare in the North-East. The political environment for effective war on terror must be created. This journey has to start with de-radicalising the youth, promoting an emergency programme of mass, compulsory education and mobilising all northern communities against terrorists. All segments of the society should join hands to combat the barbarous group and destroy all vestiges of rabid Islamism in the North, instead of transferring all the blame to Jonathan. Support for Boko Haram crackdown must be total.

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