“The difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while the statesman thinks about the next generation”
― Hillary Rodham Clinton
Monday, April 14, will remain one of the most melancholic days of my life. My God, people woke up early that day to pursue legitimate means of livelihood and as they set on their way, some misguided animals in human skin detonated explosive devices, which sent possibly well over 100 people to their untimely graves, in a twinkling. How would a country survive like this?
A few days before this Boko Haram attack on the crowded Nyanyan bus station in Abuja, some schoolchildren travelling to sit for the matriculation examinations into higher institutions, were reportedly killed by these agents of death. And as if all that was not enough, 200 girls were on Monday night abducted by Boko Haram insurgents. This is indeed a sad end that people of my generation would never imagine possible in Nigeria.
All said, however, I think that Nigerians would have found a better way to deal with these challenges if our leaders behaved a bit more responsibly. The day after Nigeria lost 72 people to the bomb attack, the President embarked on a political jamboree in the ancient city of Kano. When he left Kano, he flew straight to Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, to felicitate with the Olubadan of Ibadan on his 100th birthday anniversary. While I am not suggesting that the President should not embark on whatever catches his political or social fancy, I cannot but wonder if delaying his revelation of the political infidelity of the Kano State Governor, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, which turned out to be his most noticeable statement from the Kano trip, would have changed anything. Would it rather not have earned the President a bit more of credibility and boosted his public perception? But for scoring cheap political points from the Olubadan and his kinsmen, what exactly did Jonathan’s journey to Ibadan add to the very urgent task of reassuring Nigerians of their safety and joining us to mourn the loss of our compatriots.
The President’s Peoples Democratic Party hardly ever helps matters. On the same day that Nigerians were subdued in emotions as a result of the bomb attack, the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh, issued a statement, which pointed fingers at some leaders of the opposition All Progressives Congress of Nigeria as instigators of the violence that has engulfed the country. Of course, Nigerians got angry at the attempt to politicise this national tragedy.
But our political leaders never allow themselves to be outdone by anyone, let alone a politician from another party. The same evening that Metuh issued the statement which turned the heat on him, a former governor of Lagos State and National Leader of the APC, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, fired a salvo at the PDP. He said the bombing was an indictment of the Jonathan administration adding that “…a government unable to protect its citizens deserves to be queried,” thereby concluding the round of accusations between the two major political parties in the country.
I think it is unfortunate that many of Nigeria’s political leaders and elder statesmen see the violence currently perpetrated all over the country as a Jonathan problem. For the avoidance of doubt, Boko Haram is not the only violent group that Nigeria currently contends with. On Monday, 10 people were said to have been murdered in Wukari, Taraba State as a result of some ethnic conflict. That is about one year after more than 100 persons were murdered in cold blood in this same village.
The peace which Boko Haram has taken away from north-eastern Nigeria has also eluded a lot of communities in the North-Central part of the country for the better part of this year courtesy of Fulani herdsmen who have regularly clashed with farmers leaving tears and blood in their trail. This spread to the North-West last month when no fewer than 100 people were either burnt, stabbed or shot to death in the southern Kaduna village of Moro’a. In essence, hardly is any state in the northern part of the country spared the violent termination of lives of hundreds of innocent men, women and helpless children!
So many questions to ask the President indeed but then, as many questions do all Nigerians have to answer. It is evident that the extent that Jonathan is willing to go will be dependent on the quality of support that he gets from opinion leaders not just in the north but across the whole country. That support is something we cannot vouch for at the moment. Rather than come together to fight this common enemies of our survival, political and ethnic expediency has coloured the minds of many a leader and elder statesman. The cacophony of opinions coming from the northern part of the country is sufficient to unsettle a president. Since the declaration of a state of emergency in three north-eastern states last year, northern leaders have taken one of three positions. Some would continue to accuse the President of not taking enough actions, some would accuse him of an overkill while some others will not even say anything. And I have not stopped asking myself how we expect the best of a President in the circumstance.
While we can identify with the position of northern leaders, most leaders from other parts of the country have carried on like this is not a business that blows our collective psyche. The fact that most of the violence has taken place in the north makes it rather convenient for leaders from other parts of the country to look the other way; but for how long would this remain especially with Monday’s attack on Abuja?
Yoruba people say that a community where there are no elders or where elders have neglected to perform their roles would go to rot; I am sorry to suggest that this is what is happening in Nigeria at the moment. Most of those who qualify to be addressed as elders in Nigeria are busy milking the country to the effect that they do not consider positive roles that they can play in the confusion that currently engulfs the land.
In their individual cocoons, these elders are comfortable and happy with themselves even as the peers of their children and grandchildren are wiped out in this senseless encroachment of evil. As far as most of them are concerned, they have refused to lift a finger since their children would not be affected. But can anyone really predict who would be the victim of any attack?
This is why leaders of all persuasions in Nigeria must immediately come together in the interest of the country. They must drop their already tired ambitions, think about the future of their children and join hands with government at all levels to find an end to the trouble that threatens to consume Nigeria before it gets too late for all of us.