Ahmed Yahaya – Joe
Is the raging banditry in the North West and insurgency in the North East worthy of a political solution similar to the Niger Delta Amnesty program?
While many Nigerians are ignoring to answer this pertinent question, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi is not. Agreed, the dynamics appear different. That however is just skin deep because in overall context they are fundamentally the same.
Militancy, insurgency and banditry are all elite creations by political entrepreneurs at various intersections seeking sectional advantage on the Nigerian chessboard.
Soon after his appointment as the 20th Chief of Staff, Nigeria Army, Lt. General Luka Yusuf (1952-2009) appointed a Board of Inquiry to investigate the huge theft of arms from 1 Base Ordnance Depot located at Kaduna. The report unveiled the grand larceny was masterminded by Henry and Charles Okah with funds provided by Niger Delta governors in 2002.
The act was perpetrated by Major Suleiman Alabi Akubo, Sergeant Matthias Peter, Lance Corporals Alexander Davou, Moses Nwaigwe and Nnamdi Anene including Private Caleb Bawa who were all sentenced to life imprisonment in August, 2008.
No former governor nor prominent politician from the South-South was indicted. Rather the Niger Delta Amnesty deal was packaged. The rest as they say is now history.
That the insurgency in the North-East and banditry in the North-West have political undertones is not without doubt also.
What is the way forward?
Umar Musa Yar’adua during his presidential campaign in 2007 promised to summon a Niger Delta Summit within 100 days in office, if elected. He not only pulled it off but went ahead to provide a comprehensive peace program on what his political mentor and predecessor, OBJ had reacted to with a heavy hand and brute force.
It is all about perspective. What OBJ looked at militarily, Yar’adua approached politically.
Sheikh Ahmad Gumi has his issues, biases and agenda. Don’t we variously have ours also?
Let us therefore meet on the conference table.
None the less the former soldier has raised a fundamental issue. While his prescriptions are self-serving and not sacrosanct his grandstanding cannot be ignored.
Gumi has started a national conversation which should not be drowned with our babel of contrary voices.
There are too many TV images of top government, security kingpins and military brass meeting and re- meeting at the Villa. These officials are always seen with, “bulky folders containing benumbing maps and videos and statistics and graphs and pictures.” Meanwhile, attacks have not abated and abductions are a daily occurrence across huge swaths of our nation.
Time now for elite consensus in Nigeria. Political problems require political solutions!
