Facts File!
I PITY THE
NEXT PRESIDENT!
No matter how good a president might think he is, if the North doesn't want him to succeed, especially in the area of security, it would be hard for him to achieve it.
We saw the evidence to this assertion, when other previous presidents were also in power.
During the times of almost every president in Nigeria, there were killings in that part of the country and up till today, the killings are still impunitively going on and no one has been able to stop it yet.
Killings in the North didn't just start today. It is historically agelong and has been happening in that part of the country, even before my great grandparents were born.
When President Buhari was outside Aso Rock yesterday, so he also thought it won't be a very difficult task to achieve by his government, moreso as a retired and experienced army general and the son of the soil from the core Muslim North. He was so sure of his capacity to nip the disturbing issue in the bud, but he got it wrong.
It is five years of his government into it and the guerrilla warfare still rages on actively.
The issue of killings in the North, is peculiarly a fundamental problem, which requires the right approach and solutions to resolve. Little wonder the country has been sacking and changing service chiefs every other day in the past and nothing much has changed, except the news of killings we still hear from that part of Nigeria on daily basis.
It is a socio-cultural and orientational issue. The only realistic and better solution to it, is the North itself and not the magical capabilities of any only one president and his obviously already overwhelmed service chiefs.
The former Emir of Kano, Lamido Sanusi Lamido, has been articulating and talking about some of these fundamental solutions, but instead, he was shown the way out probably for talking too much about the social ills of that part of Nigeria!
However, any culture, which trains, educate and orientate children to tie daggers and swords around their waists and slaughtering this and that for daily living adventures, would definitely hardly always produce adult citizens, who would have the right value for the sanctity of human life, let alone those of other animals or living things.
That is the main issue with most of the tribes of the people of that part of Nigeria!
When a menace is realistically about the peculiar nature of the way of life and socio-cultural orientation of a people, it is always difficult to stop as easily as that by any president or governor, no matter how good he might think he could do it.
If there is any time there appears not to be killings in any part of the North, it is not necessarily because the president or the governor is good at securing people, but the North doesn't just want to kill.
I insist, if there would be killings in that part of Nigeria, there would be and no president or governor would be good enough to prevent it from happening or do anything satisfactory about it.
To kill; to maim; to harass and to spontaneously destroy for socio-religious and political domination, is a way of life and the social sport of most of the aboriginal people of the Northern part of Nigeria.
So, I repeat, that president, who would permanently decimate it or stop it completely, as far as I am concerned, is not yet born in Nigeria!
No matter how good or incompetent we might think a president and government is, if the North wants him to succeed, especially in the area of security, he would easily be, and if that region does not want him to succeed, he won't succeed.
That is why there is hardly any president, who had governed or ruled Nigeria in history that Nigerians did not blame or accuse of being 'incompetent' on the issue!
And when we complain that it is about the failure of intelligence from our multi-various security agencies, and I answer:
"Failure of security intelligence! Failure of security intelligence, before my great grandfathers were born!
A close family relative and a benefactor as well as his 4 male children were slaughtered like rams in the Zangokataf religious riots of 1989 at Kawo Kaduna.That was 31 years ago and up till now, that is the frustrating news we still hear about that part of Nigeria.
Was that also about the 'incompetence' of the Babangida military government and other successive presidents to stop the killings at that time or the failure of security intelligence as well?!
Obviously, it is when we do not know what the fundamental nature of a problem is all about, or we know, but deliberately want to continue to shy away from it, that we keep blaming it or expecting solutions from unrealistic sources.
Little wonder one of the Holy books says:
"And yee shall know the truth, and only that truth shall set Nigeria free, from all the recurring and agelong perennial insecurity problems, coming out from many parts of Nigeria ..."
However, until all the stakeholders, running this present Nigerian polity from different parts for the federating units, are ready to sit down to talk about implementing the right fundamental solutions to this problem for the ideal survival of our country, this is how we might continue to have it in Nigeria.
- Olukayode Salako.
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