Editor, Politics/Features, EMEKA ALEX DURU, writes on the resurgence of terrorist attacks in some parts of the country and their possible impact on 2015 elections in the affected states
President Goodluck Jonathan
With 2015 general elections barely one year ahead, authorities of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) are undoubtedly under huge stress. This is essentially on account of crippling security challenges ravaging some states in the North East and other parts of the country.
Last week, for instance, the nation was thrown into mourning following an explosion that occurred in Nyanya bus terminus, at the outskirts of Abuja, on Monday morning. Members of the outlawed Boko Haram Islamic sect were suspected to have carried out the attack. By the close of the week, there were conflicting reports on how the blast happened. The police claimed the explosion affected 16 high capacity buses as well as smaller commercial vehicles, some of which had loaded and were ready to leave. Another source said three persons who boarded three different FCT high capacity buses might have been the ones behind the blasts.
By Wednesday, official estimates put the number of people killed in the explosion at 76, with many injured. Witnesses, however, maintained that the figures could be higher.
President Goodluck Jonathan, who visited the scene of the blast, condemned the attack, assuring that his administration was on track at exorcising terrorism from the land. House of Representatives Speaker, Aminu Tambuwal, also condemned the attack and tasked the police to fish out the perpetrators.
Same Monday, 129 students of Government Girls’ Secondary School, Chibok in Borno State were reportedly abducted by the terrorists.
The Nyanya bus park attack was not the first of Boko Haram offensive on Abuja and environs. Earlier in 2010, for example, the terrorists had bombed the Eagle Square venue of a national day celebration, killing scores and injuring many. The group had also, at a time, attacked United Nations’ office in the city, leaving in its trail, blood and anguish. Elsewhere outside the capital territory, the terrorists had bombed a Catholic Church in Madalla, Niger State, killing many worshippers.
The attack, on Monday, came on the heels of similar offensive by the group on Borno villages, earlier. Barely 10 days ago, for instance, suspected members of the sect had invaded three villages – Ngoshe, Kaigamari and Anchaka in Gwoza, Konduga and Bama local government areas in Borno – killing about 98 people and setting ablaze several houses and shops.
Ngoshe is located east of hilly Gwoza town between the Camerounian border with Nigeria, while Kaigamari is a remote settlement in Konduga, a town which has suffered several attacks by the terrorists.
Gwoza is about 140 kilometres south, while Konduga is a 40-kilometre drive from Maiduguri, the state capital.
The invaders, said to be armed with improvised explosive devices (IEDs), petrol bombs, AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled launchers (RPGs), attacked Ngoshe about 10pm on Saturday, April 12, and opened fire on the already sleeping and unarmed residents, killing 30 of them and inflicting injuries on several others, before setting ablaze some residential houses.
Similar dastardly act reportedly took place in Kaigamari, where no fewer than eight people were said to have been killed on Sunday, April 13, when another set of gunmen attacked the village and set ablaze some buildings.
The pattern and dimension of the latest onslaught fell into the series of attacks that had been visited on the residents of Borno and neighbouring states by the rampaging insurgents in recent times. Before the recent episode, there was the killing of 59 pupils of Federal Government College, Buni Yadi, a boarding school in Yobe State. Adamawa has also, on occasions, come under siege by the group.
Observers note that with the level of apprehension in the area, the people of the affected states are presently living under palpable fear.
The apprehension has been that the continuous attacks by Boko Haram militants on the North East may affect 2015 general elections in the affected states. Some even harbour the fear of elections not holding in the states, or, if held, would eventually be marred by low voter turn-out.
INEC Chairman, Attahiru Jega, had earlier raised this concern last year. He said: “We are working very closely with security agencies, and our hope is that the security challenges in these areas will be long addressed before the 2015 elections. We hope that these challenges will be solved or drastically reduced before 2015. What is clear is that we cannot conduct elections under a period of emergency. If there is generalised insecurity, how can we hold elections? It will be disrupted or people will not come out.”
Incidentally, since December 2013 when Jega raised this alert, Boko Haram has taken its activities to extreme height, including random killings of villagers in their sleep.
Even the most audacious efforts of the federal government to mobilise more security operatives on the embattled states have failed to make them safe for habitation, let alone conducting elections in 2015.
President Jonathan had initially thought that going after Boko Haram with a sledgehammer was the most effective approach in ending the sect’s campaign of terror.
“We will hunt them down, we will fish them out,” the president had declared in May 2013, while proclaiming a state of emergency on the troubled states.
Rather than tame the insurgency, the troops that the president sent appeared overwhelmed with the barrage of attacks from the terrorists on civilians and even their barracks. This is even as the Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshall Alex Badeh, had assured that the military would quell the insurgency in the areas.
TheNiche gathered that it was on account of the uncertain situation in the area that may have informed the remarks by the INEC chairman.
The affected states are, however, not taking the alarm from INEC lightly. In fact, penultimate week, the governors of the states – Murtala Nyako (Adamawa), Kassim Shettima (Borno) and Ibrahim Geidam (Yobe) – came out strongly, insisting that elections should be held in their domains.
The governors had, in a joint statement, argued that rather than contemplate shifting elections in their states or extending the emergency rule, INEC should take a cue from Afghanistan’s electoral body, which recently held the country’s presidential and provincial elections despite strong threats issued by the Taliban to unleash hell on the election day.
“This is the kind of courage expected of genuine patriots,” the governors stated. “Our INEC should please learn from the landmark elections that took place in Afghanistan, during which election officials took the bold step of going on to conduct elections despite threats by the Taliban to send the country into extinction if the elections were held.”
The governors stressed that the current regime of insurgency in the land has similar attributes to the Taliban doctrine in Afghanistan, though with increasing complicated character, arguing, however, that INEC should, as a matter of counter-insurgency approach, ensure that no part of Nigeria is excluded from the 2015 elections on account of threats.
“Suspending the elections on account of threats by insurgents and other sundry social miscreants would amount to succumbing to their doctrine and conceding victory on the part of Nigeria,” they stated.
The governors contended that in the event of INEC going ahead with its decision to exclude Adamawa, Yobe and Borno states from the 2015 elections, what the criminal gangs would need to do is to extend the attacks to other parts of Nigeria and have more places excluded from future elections.
All Progressives Congress (APC), the leading opposition political party in the country, had earlier registered its disapproval to any attempt at excluding the states in the North East in 2015 polls. In kicking against the move, which INEC has, however, denied, APC had, through its Interim National Publicity Secretary, Lai Mohammed, accused the election umpire of intending to act a script authored by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The intention, he alleged, is to chisel out some states under APC column.
The calculation is that in the event of elections not holding in the three states owing to the insurgency, it would mean that their governors would have to hand over the affairs of their states to the military after the 2015 elections.
This, according to analysts, would be a deadly blow on the APC. Adamawa, Borno and Yobe, incidentally, belong to the party. While Borno and Yobe were originally of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) that later fused into APC, Adamawa was of PDP before Nyako’s defection to APC.
Supporters of APC, particularly, argue that it hopes to garner about 90 per cent of votes from Borno and Yobe, and 60 per cent from Adamawa in 2015. They, thus, argue that exclusion of these states from the elections, especially the presidential election, would work against the interest of the party.
Nyako, Geidam and Shettima, while insisting on elections holding in their states, have, however, not come up with strategies to augment federal government’s efforts in tackling the regime of insecurity in their states.
“It is only the living that participates in election; dead men do not. My immediate concern is how to survive with members of my family that are presently scattered among friends and relations. It was by the grace of God that we escaped the carnage in our state. I am not, for now, thinking of going back for anything, let alone election, when no tangible security arrangement seems to be in place. Let those who want to stay behind for the election do. It is their business,” said Zanna Ibrahim, a distraught Bama indigene, in an encounter with TheNiche.
Ibrahim, who described his escape from the terrorists as miraculous, expressed doubt on credible election taking place in the states, with the prevailing state of insecurity in them.
Experts are divided on the propriety of holding elections in the states.
Dr. Adedeji Emmanuel, a public opinion analyst, looks at the unfolding developments from the angle of the electoral rights of the indigenes of the affected states being abridged in the unfolding situation. According to him, skipping elections in the states would mean disenfranchising the electorate.
“It also does not make for credibility of the exercise. The eventual winner, especially in the presidential poll, cannot clearly be said to be enjoying the mandate of the voters from those states. It will also amount to denying them their rights. What the government should do is to ensure that the violence is contained, so that the elections would go on,” he stated.
Monday Ubani, Chairman, Nigerian Bar Association, Ikeja branch, Lagos, however, has a different view. In his opinion, it makes no sense for the 2015 elections to be conducted in the violence-prone states unless the security situation in them improves.
“When you have a state of emergency, does it make sense to conduct election amid insecurity? If INEC says election cannot hold in those states on the grounds of insecurity, I think they can be excused. See what happened in Nyanya. Do you think people would go and queue for election only for somebody to blow them up?” he asked.
Abdulazeez Ibrahim, a Kaduna-based lawyer, argues along the same line, stressing that once the state of emergency in the affected states lingers till election period, elections would not hold in the states.
His words: “The constitution says if there is a state of emergency, there won’t be election. This is a state of emergency that the constitution doesn’t envisage and the governors cannot extend their tenure beyond 2015. So the governors will have to relinquish their office in 2015.”
This is seen as the concern by APC on the possibility of election not holding in those states. Some analysts are even raising the fear of fifth columnists having a hand in the fragile security situation in the country. But government has given assurance of being on top of the situation.
