JANUARY 15 every year is set aside as the day when activities to remember and honour members of the nation’s armed forces come to an end. This year was not different. What was different was that it was a day the President, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, finally came out of his shell. Let me not say he came out of hiding.
You will recall that after the bomb blasts near Eagle Square on October 1, 2010, which were later blamed on the outlawed Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), Boko Haram activities picked up the following year around Abuja, and the president resorted to inspecting the ceremonial change of guards on independence days in the courtyards of Aso Villa. When the armed forces flushed the terrorists from Maiduguri and other towns in the North east into Sambisa and other “forests”, Boko Haram defied series of emergency rules and started attacking villages, hamlets, schools and markets in the three states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa.
Last year alone, Boko Haram not only killed boys in a Yobe boarding school but also abducted 276 girls from the Day Secondary School in Chibok, thus sparking worldwide outrage. The Islamist militants became emboldened and abandoned asymmetrical warfare. They acquired conventional weapons and started acquiring territories, overrunning towns such as Bama, Baga, Gwoza, Madagalli, Michika, Mubi and others, bringing at least sixteen local government councils under its control. The Nigerian Armed Forces suffered humiliating media image, as mutinies and sabotages became the order of the day. This forced the army to conduct series of Court Martials.
Many Nigerians were frustrated that their president did not see it fit to visit the North east and show he cared. On January 14th this year, we saw a different President Jonathan. Wearing a simple grey with a black “boat hat” to match (without bullet-proof vest) GEJ went to the Abuja military cemetery to participate in the solemn ceremonies of paying tributes to fallen members of the armed forces. The papers reported a rumpus during the parades, in which one of the soldiers firing the gun salute got his rifle hooked to the belt of his tunic. The president’s dare-devil guards immediately shielded him with their own bodies because it seemed the soldier intended some foul play. When it was later established that it was an innocuous mix-up, the ceremonies went on. Through it all, GEJ, as The PUNCH put it, “remained unruffled”.
www.vanguardngr.com/2015/01/jonathan-maiduguri/