Everything about the All Progressives Congress (APC) seems to be false and phoney. The statement credited to Kashim Shettima the running mate to the party’s presidential flag bearer Bola Tinubu that they would end Boko Haram insurgency in six months is the most spurious claim I have heard in recent times. This was the same way President Muhammadu Buhari boasted about ending insurgency in the North-East but seven years after, insurgency, terrorism and armed banditry have metastasized to every nook and cranny of our beleaguered country. Nigeria not only has the Boko Haram but other deadly terrorists’ gangs that have made the country the most terrorised part of the globe.
The questions that have continued to agitate the minds of concerned members of the public are: what did Kashim Shettima do when he held sway as the governor of Bornu state and the state chief security officer to curtail the Boko Haram insurgency and safeguard the lives of the citizens of the state? And if Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Shettima have this great idea about fighting insecurity and ending terrorism in Nigeria, why have they not sold it to the present government that they are part of?
The answer is simple: they are making fraudulent political statement to beguile members of the public and the electorate. They neither have the capacity nor the willingness to combat insurgency forTinubu has always maintained sealed lips on the issue of insecurity in the country since the emergence of the APC regime. Under Shettima, Borno state was the most insecure place in the country. Thousands were killed, maimed and many more rendered homeless by terrorists but Shettima never cared. All he was interested in was blackmailing the government in power then. He never visited the various IDP camps that sprang up as a result of the insurgency. So, if Shettima could not secure Borno, his own people, how can he secure the nation made up of 36 states and the FCT?
Another pertinent question at this juncture is: how can Shettima fight Boko haram? We can still remember Shettima’s role in the Chibok Girls kidnap saga. On the March 12, 2014, the then Minister of State for Education, Mr. Nyesom Wike, wrote him intimating him on the imminent security alert informing him on the need to take the students from Chibok Federal Government College to a safe zone and advised him to close all schools. But he bluntly refused to heed the advice just to spite the government of President Goodluck Jonathan and the Northern Christians.
And on the night of April 14, 2014, the Bokotharam insurgents dressed in Nigerian military uniform struck and abducted about 276 girls mostly Christians where they were assembled in the dormitory instead of the exam hall. Thereafter, it was alleged that the kidnapped girls were taken to a house in Gwoza instead of Sambisa Forest the Boko Haram stronghold to make it difficult for government to locate their whereabouts. And curiously, the school principal who was inexplicably absent during the encounter and who should have been reprimanded was appointed a commiss.
In truth, the APC cannot rescue Nigeria from the stranglehold of the APC. Nigeria needs the services of a true statesman, a detribalizyed Nigerian and a nationalist that can rescue the country from the APC regime, unify and reposition the country on the path of peace, prosperity and progress.
The opposition APC then had used the kidnap of the Chibok girls as propaganda issue to intimidate and vilify the then President Jonathan. And now eight years after, most of the innocent school girls are still in captivity, raped, ravished and forcefully married off to the terrorists. Tinubu’s choice of Shettima as running mate is an insult not just on the Christian North but on the entire North.
Nigeria has a choice to make between the continuance of the present insecurity and unity, peace and progress. Nigeria must not repeat the mistake of 2015 if it hopes to remain one indivisible entity beyond 2023.
Hajia Mohammed writes from London, UK via
