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| President Goodluck Jonathan |
Boko Haram: Death toll in Borno, Adamawa hits 138, screams
The Nation newspaper this morning.
Did you also see the heart-wrenching AFP picture on the front
page of The Punch this morning? A lonely child cries beside the ruins that
remain of her erstwhile home, while a soldier keeps watch in the background.
It’s a war scene; a one-sided war, where the victims were armless,
harmless and helpless.
The carnage continues, while the state watches. What is the use
of a state of emergency that could not protect these innocent souls?
An account indicated that 300 houses were torched in a
village in over FOUR hours of operation. How can anarchy reign for all of four
hours in any part of Nigeria without a challenge from our armed forces? Yet we
have a government. We might just as well be without government and retain all of
our rights to protect ourselves.
When criminals strike in sane societies, they are swift. The
attack and escape must be planned to happen safely within the response time of the
police or other state forces. It may be 5 minutes, 10 minutes or 20 minutes.
Failure to get away within that time means you are ready to be caught and be
made to face the law. What is the response time for the police and other forces
in Nigeria? Five hours? 24 hours? Eternity?
What are the people in the intelligence corps doing? Once in
this country, people lived off providing information to the forces. Growing up,
we heard of ‘police informants’ who drew consistent financial reward from the
police for providing useful information.
This practice has been discontinued because of lack of
money. How can we be rich enough to have a 10-aircraft fleet for our president,
hundreds of limousines and bullet-proof vehicles for our state officials, yet
we cannot afford to fund intelligence-gathering? How can we pay each law-maker
hundreds of millions of Naira per quarter, yet we cannot provide the police
with basic radio communication or even fuel their patrol cars?
What manner of a president and C-in-C is comfortable
watching this happen?
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