Who Is Afraid of Goodluck Jonathan? News (Vanguardngr.com) By Femi Aribisala Femi Aribisala Articles APC members have shown greater
determination in attacking the
Nigerian government than in attacking
the Boko Haram. Dr Femi Aribisala On September 24, 2014, Atiku
Abubakar of the APC declared at the
Yar’Adua Centre in Abuja that he was
running to be president of Nigeria. The
occasion was without incident. This
was followed on October 15, 2014 by Muhammadu Buhari of the APC who
declared in Eagle’s Square, Abuja that
he was also running for president.
Again, the occasion was without
incident. Pastor Femi Aribisala But on November 10, 2014, the day
before Goodluck Jonathan declared
that he was running for president at
Eagle Square in Abuja, the Boko Haram
struck. 50 students were killed and
about 80 injured in a suicide bombing in Potiskum, Yobe State. This shows in
clear and unambiguous terms that the
Boko Haram has no problem with
either Atiku or Buhari running for
president. But it is against Goodluck
Jonathan. Brotherhood of insurgency The “coincidence” between Boko
Haram assaults and PDP events and
their lack of incidence at APC events
has become a standard operational
procedure. On September 26, 2014,
Rabiu Kwankwaso, PDP governor of Kano State, and four other PDP
governors, defected to the APC.
Bombs did not explode as a result of
this. However, on April 14, 2014, the
day before Ibrahim Skekarau, former
governor of Kano State was welcomed by Jonathan to the PDP at a rally in
Kano after defecting from the APC;
over 80 people were killed by the
Boko Haram with a bomb planted at
the Nyanya motor park near Abuja. It is incontestable that the Boko Haram
script against the PDP aligns
conveniently with the interests of the
APC. Indeed, instead of condemning
the Boko Haram for killing innocent
Nigerians, the APC seizes on these murderous incidents to attack the PDP
for not cancelling the events both the
Boko Haram and the APC are
determined should not hold. Accordingly, Lai Mohammed, the
National Publicity Secretary of the APC,
accused the president of dancing
“Azonto” on the occasion of
Shekarau’s defection rally instead of
being concerned about the killings. When the bombs went off the day
before Jonathan’s declaration of his
candidacy, Mohammed again declared
as “utterly insensitive and absolutely
callous” the decision of the president
not to cancel the scheduled event; saying the president was: “dancing on
the graves of the students.” But as any
right-thinking person knows,
cancelling the event would have been
tantamount to succumbing to Boko
Haram blackmail. APC readily exploits national calamities
in order to score cheap political points.
This leads to the conclusion that it is
either complicit in the attacks or
insensitive to them. The APC does not
seem to believe it can win the coming election against a sitting president and
an entrenched PDP. Therefore, its
assignment is that of an unscrupulous
mischief-maker that would do
anything and use anything to
undermine the government of Nigeria. Who is afraid of Goodluck Jonathan
running for president in 2015? Two
main protagonists have a
consanguinity of interests: the Boko
Haram and the APC. Boko Haram apologists There can be no question that the
interests of the Boko Haram and those
of the APC are in tandem; leading
observers like Femi Fani-Kayode to
declare that as the IRA (Irish
Republican Army) was the armed wing of the political Sinn Fein in Britain;
so can the Boko Haram be described
as the armed wing of the APC in
Nigeria. As a confirmation of this, APC
members have shown greater
determination in attacking the Nigerian government than in attacking
the Boko Haram. However, now that
they are fishing for votes nationally,
some of their prominent Northern
figures are now attacking the
insurgents. Let us take, for example, the position
of the presidential candidate they have
finally chosen; three-time loser
Muhammadu Buhari. For years Buhari,
who often betrays inadvertently his
true colours as a sectional and sectarian Northern champion, was an
ardent apologist for the Boko Haram.
In an interview with Kaduna’s Radio
Liberty in November 2012, Buhari
demanded that the Federal
Government should stop the clampdown of Boko Haram
insurgents, insisting they should be
given special treatment like the Niger
Delta militants. These are Buhari’s words: “They (the
Niger Delta militants) were trained in
some skills and were given
employment, but the ones in the north
were being killed and their houses
were being demolished. They are different issues. What brought this? It
is injustice.” That same year, Buhari
said he does believe there is a real
movement called Boko Haram and
claimed the federal government of
Nigeria was: “the biggest Boko Haram.” Wole Olaniyi was a fly in the wall at a
meeting in Kano Government House in
2013 designed to persuade rebel PDP
governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso, to
decamp to the APC. Assuming that
only Northerners were present, Buhari declared the Boko Haram was a
“strategic plan” by the government of
Goodluck Jonathan to “destroy the
North.” When Jonathan declared a
state of emergency in Yobe, Borno and
Adamawa states, Buhari came out against it. Seeing the conflict with
Northern goggles, Buhari claimed
Goodluck Jonathan was using the
insurgency as an excuse to wage war
on the North. Attempt at volte face It is necessary to remind Nigerians of
this position of Buhari because now
that he is shopping for Christian and
Southern votes, he is singing a
different tune. He is now smooth-
talking Nigerians; naming Christians before Moslems in his speeches, and
putting the South before the North in
them. But let us not forget that Buhari
was so clearly identified as a friend of
the Boko Haram that, in November
2012, Abu Mohammed Ibn Abdulaziz, the second-in-command to Boko
Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, in
announcing a readiness to negotiate a
ceasefire with the Nigerian
government, named Buhari as one of
the few “trusted” Nigerians it would be ready to negotiate with. Buhari’s blatant sectarianism has not
gone unnoticed.

Part 2

Buhari is a big security risk to Nigeria’s
corporate existence.” Truly progressive Northerners also
sought to distance themselves from
Buhari’s sectarianism. Jibril Mamman
Vatsa, spokesman of the Arewa
Youths Forum, said: “Buhari does not
speak for all Northern leaders. His statements on Boko Haram exist as
part of a continuum of Northern
leaders’ responses to the problem,
which have ranged from proposing
dialogue to condemning the FG’s
approach to, if some allegations are to be believed, actively supporting the
movement. If the Boko Haram
members are becoming more daring
by the day, it is because of the support
given to them by some highly placed
persons.” Refurbished image However, now that Buhari is gunning
again for the presidency and seeking
votes from a national constituency, the
need has now arisen for him to tamp
down his pro Boko Haram rhetoric. Therefore, in an about turn, he is now
pretending to be a big critic of the
Boko Haram. He says: “These people,
whose actions are not sanctioned by
any religion and who subscribe to no
known values, will not succeed. Our people are resilient and strong, and
our nation is capable, based on our
rich human and material resources, of
successfully tackling these nihilists. We
will together see the end of them and
their reign of terror.” Buhari’s new stance should not be
believed. A chameleon can only
change its colour; it cannot change its
shape. Buhari would now like us to
see him as the Messiah who would
bring the Boko Haram insurgency, which he said was a Southern ruse,
under control. To do this successfully,
Buhari needed to be refurbished as an
enemy of the Boko Haram. Into this
new playbook came the alleged attack
on his life by the insurgents. APC supporters should forgive me for
being totally cynical about this. The so-
called attack on Buhari’s life benefits
no one but Buhari himself because it
fits into his new script of trying to
distance himself from the Boko Haram. Buhari does not normally go around
in a bullet-proof car. But quite
conveniently, when he was attacked,
he had borrowed one especially on
that occasion. His car was not bombed
but sprayed with bullets. Some people died from the attendant bomb blast,
but not a single one of Buhari’s aides
died. In any case, the Boko Haram
never declared they were the ones
after Buhari. APC blunder Rather than condemn Buhari’s
attackers, the APC was more interested
in using the incident to absolve itself of
complicity in the spate of terrorist
attacks in Nigeria. Lai Mohammed
issued a statement saying: “If indeed the APC is behind Boko Haram and
General Buhari is a sympathiser of the
evil group, as the Federal Government
wants the world to believe, could it be
that the insurgents do not know their
leaders or sympathisers, assuming they are behind the attacks? Whatever
happens now, the satanic and
repulsive theory of the PDP-led Federal
Government that the opposition APC is
using Boko Haram to truncate the
administration of Jonathan is up in flames.” Lai Mohammed blundered with this
statement. It easily leads to the
conclusion that the whole point of the
attack on Buhari was to launder the
image of the APC and distance it from
the Boko Haram. This was quickly recognized by the PDP. Olisa Metuh, the PDP national publicity
secretary said: “We are shocked,
disappointed and disgusted that the
APC leaders chose to use the ugly
development to embark on image
laundering. Nigerians now ponder; they ask, was the attack a setup aimed
at scoring some political points? Or
could it be APC’s desperate strategy of
trying to disentangle itself from the
internationally acknowledged link
with terrorists and possibly undermine the planned probe of their
involvement by the United Kingdom?”
Nigerians watch your back.