The greatest challenge to Nigeria’s corporate existence is not the on-going intrigues and subterfuge attendant with the impending 2015 presidential poll; on the contrary, it is the Boko Haram insurgency. There’s hardly a day that passes by that I don’t wonder whether it isn’t iced water rather than blood that courses through the arteries and veins of our leaders. How else could they comfortably go to sleep, drink exquisite wines, eat exotic menus and generally engage in all manner of electoral campaign revelry in good conscience, in the midst of the sadism that Boko Haram continues to subject citizens of this country to.
The jury is still out on the missing Chibok girls. Given the length of time that has elapsed and the barbaric treatment the insurgents subject their victims to, have our leaders ever wondered about the state of mind and health of the parents of the abducted girls and what they themselves would have done if their own children were the ones abducted?
I recently stumbled on the story of one Alhaji Mustache Linkage and, boy, did it make me shed tears uncontrollably! Alhaji Linkage returned to Nigeria with his family from his base in Spain in November 2011 on a long vacation. He had planned to gradually relocate his children to Nigeria, so they won’t forget their roots. He also saw it as an opportunity to audit the family investments in the country (recall that successive administrations have been pleading with Nigerians in the Diaspora to return home and/or invest in job and wealth creating business ventures).
There was a third reason for Alhaji Soyinka’s visit: he wanted to attend the wedding ceremony of the daughter of a bosom friend in ‘relatively peaceful’ Kaduna. He had no grim sense of foreboding because he has been doing good business with customers in major cities in the North and he counted many Northerners among his friends. Besides, he is a ‘practising’ Muslim and scholar. So, in February 2012, a feverishly excited Alhaji Linkage and spouse (a Christian named Rachael) boarded a mini bus arranged by their friend in Kaduna to convey wedding guests in the South West to and from Kaduna.
The journey turned awry when they arrived the outskirts of Kaduna on that fateful evening. They were accosted by armed men at a check-point wearing Nigerian Army camouflage but who later hellishly turned out to be Boko Haram insurgents.
To cut a very long and horrifying story short, the insurgents mercilessly slaughtered Christians they had tricked into shouting “Jesus! Jesus!” by suddenly firing gunshots into the air and Linkage shortly lost his sight when he was hit on the head with the butt of an AK-47 for volunteering that even as a Muslim, he wasn’t prepared to kill for Allah. His beloved wife, along with other captured women in the mini bus, was serially raped almost on a daily basis for three months!
When providence smiled on them and the traumatised captives managed to escape, they had to leave a young girl behind. Linkage revealed that the teenager was in very high demand on account of her youth and charming beauty, which meant the Boko Haram rapists usually came for her more than once in a day! The girl was consequently so ‘over-used’ that she couldn’t even stand and was too weak to escape unaided.
Now, that girl may be nothing more than a mere statistics to our insensitive leaders, but she is somebody’s daughter and a citizen of Nigeria with an inalienable constitutional right to be protected at all costs by the government.
Alhaji Linkage was informed at all the hospitals he visited that he is now permanently blind. But he isn’t giving up hope. He has started selling all his investments in Nigeria to garner funds for eye surgery when he returns to Europe. He has sworn never to have anything to do with Nigeria again. Alhaji Linkage may equally constitute just another statistics to our leaders, but he is somebody’s father, somebody’s husband and somebody’s son. And even if he regains his eyesight and recoups his material investments, what about the psychological trauma of knowing that his wife was raped on a daily basis for three months by a gang of uncouth degenerates?
Can the likes of Alhaji Olayinka ever experience full closure? And how would his plight further the cause of government officials gallivanting all over the globe, ostensibly to convince Nigerians in the Diaspora to come back home and play a significant role in nation-building? This insurgency is not doing the image of the country any good and we must stop frittering money away in a corruption-laden image laundering project. The government must henceforth apply maximum force against Boko Haram rather than continue to wallow in self-delusion.
This is not the time to play ‘big boy’ when you are really a toddler. The government must cobble together a coalition of friendly nations with expertise in counter-terrorism without further delay.
Just the other day, Boko Haram humiliatingly overran a foremost police training college and reportedly established a Gwoza caliphate headed by an ameer (caliph?) who now occupies the throne of the same emir who was assassinated shortly after making a public SOS plea to the government. Police stations and army barracks are regularly being bombarded by the insurgents. It has even reached a stage where soldiers are required to protect important police facilities!
Our politicians must stop playing politics with the Boko Haram insurgency. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), for example, must stop nonsensically accusing the opposition of supporting the insurgency and hell-bent on stifling President Goodluck Jonathan’s efforts to develop the nation, while the opposition should stop irresponsibly alleging that the Jonathan administration is sponsoring the insurgency to marginalise the North! On his part, the president should provide exemplary leadership. By seriously focusing on the real issues on hand, 2015 will take care of itself.