Hatred For Jonathan, Ethnic Bigotry, Mendacity Mar Buhari’s Fight Against Boko Haram

On assumption of office on May 29 2015, Major General Muhammadu Buhari who was declared winner of that year’s presidential election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) against the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as at the time, showed-off that insurgency in the North-east Nigeria would be history by December of that year.

It was a statement taken by many Nigerians with a pitch of the salt owing to Buhari’s stance against the Jonathan administration (with the view that the fight against the sect was a fight against the North). The Jonathan government was headlong in fighting the terrorists to standstill.

However, in what Buhari took as criticism against the Jonathan government, on June 2 2013, he told the world as a “Guest of the Week” – a Hausa programme of the Kaduna-based Liberty Radio – that the pronouncement by Jonathan and subsequent declaration of State of Emergency in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe States and the following military offensive against the Boko Haram Islamic sect, was a fight against the North.

Buhari was visibly angry that splinter militia groups in the Niger Delta Area, where Jonathan comes from, were never dealt with by the military, as the Jonathan government was dealing with the Boko Haram sect.

Buhari’s traitorous comments in defense of Boko Haram

Buhari said at the time that what is responsible for the security situation in the country was caused by the activities of Niger Delta militants. Adding that every Nigerian that is familiar with what happened knows this. He further said that the Niger Delta militants started it all.

“What happened is that the governors of the Niger Delta region at that time wanted to win their elections, so they recruited the youths and gave them guns and bullets and used them against their opponents to win elections by force,” Buhari said.

He said it was after the elections that the boys were asked to bring back the guns and they refused; hence the governors as at the time stopped the allowance that was being given to the youths by the governors.

“The youths resorted to kidnapping oil workers and were collecting dollars as ransom. Now a boy of 18 to 20 years was getting about $500 in a week, why will he go to school and spend 20 years to study and then come back and get employed by government to be paid N100,000 a month; that is if he is lucky to get employment? So kidnapping became very rampant in the south-south and the south-east. They kidnapped people and were collecting money,” Buhari fumed.

Buhari defends Boko Haram

Buhari believed that the leader of Boko Haram, Mohammed Yusuf, was not supposed to be killed when he was arrested by soldiers and handed over to the police.

“The appropriate thing to do, according to the law, was for the police to carry out investigations and charge him to court for prosecution, but they killed him, his in-law was killed, they went and demolished their houses. Because of that, his supporters resorted to what they are doing today,” Buhari said.

He added that in the case of the Niger Delta militants, the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua granted amnesty to the members unlike the Boko Haram members.

“They (Niger Delta militants) were trained in some skills and were given employment, but the ones in the north are being killed and their houses demolished. They are different issues, what brought this? It is injustice,” he said.

Did Buhari lie that there was no Military crackdown against the Niger Delta Militants?

Scores of the militants in the Niger Delta were killed when the Nigeria’s military launched a crackdown in the area in 2008-2009.

Wikipedia reported, “In August 2008, the Nigerian government launched a massive military crackdown on militants in the Niger Delta. They patrolled waters and hunted for militants, searched all civilian boats for weapons, and raided numerous militant hideouts.

On May 15, 2009, a military operation undertaken by a Joint Task Force (JTF) began against Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta(MEND) militants operating in the Niger Delta region.

“It came in response to the kidnapping of Nigerian soldiers and foreign sailors in the Delta region. Thousands of Nigerians have fled their villages and hundreds of people may be dead because of the offensive.”

Buhari continues to blame Jonathan for the 2015 deadline

“Despite the December deadline he had earlier given the military to end terrorism in the affected part of the country, Buhari admitted that the country might not win the war completely by the end of the month,” The Punch of December 28, 2015 reported, in the headline, "Jonathan’s govt provoked soldiers into mutiny —Buhari".

Hear Buhari, “We investigated and discovered how funds that were penciled down for arms procurement were diverted and shared by government officials who served the last administration. The government at that time sent the soldiers to the battlefield without arms and ammunition to prosecute the war. That was what led some of them to mutiny. They were arrested and detained because of this.”

Did Jonathan procure weapons to fight Boko Haram?

Jonathan said on 27^thJanuary 2016, during a programme titled, ‘Focus on Africa’ aired on an international news and current affairs television channel based in Paris, France 24.

When Jonathan was asked to speak in particular on whether he was sure his administration laid the foundation for the fight against the insurgents, Jonathan said, “Of course, you know the new government is working hard and I believe they are still using the equipment we procured.”

Despite having open pity for Boko Haram Buhari still deceives Nigerians

Despite having open pity for Boko Haram members during the Jonathan government, Buhari assured Nigerians that the Multinational Joint Task Force of the Lake Chad Commission would defeat the insurgents by the end of 2015.

He made this pronouncement on August 2 2015, while on a one-day visit to Cotonou in his honour, as the special guest of honour, by the President of Benin Republic, Boni Yayi, at the 55^th independence anniversary.

“I assure you that we will defeat Boko Haram by the end of this year," Buhari said, while commending Yayi for increasing the number of Benin troops to 800 for the MNJTF.

Buhari complicates self

Since Buhari made the statement that his government would defeat the insurgents by the end of 2015, the terrorists have not stopped their dastardly act of destroying lives and property in the affected North-east of the country; and Buhari is not near winning the sect.

On January 31 2016, the overpowered Buhari said Boko Haram terrorists were so fraught to embarrass his government, while at the same time saying in a statement issued by Malam Garba Shehu, his senior special assistant for media and publicity that “the insurgents had suffered immensely from the sustained bombardments of their camps and hide outs by the Nigerian military and had resorted to using desperate measures to gain cheap media attention.”

This is the same Buhari who frowned at Jonathan’s military offensive against the Boko Haram!

While reacting to the wave of suicide bombings in Chibok market, Dalori Internally Displaced Person’s (IDP) camp in Borno State and the Gombi market in Adamawa State, Buhari swaggered that he had bombarded the sect’s camps and sundry; something that the Jonathan government did and Buhari added ethnic colouration to it.

Buhari apparently accepted that he has not defeated Boko Haram by the end of 2015 and he pleaded to Nigerians, saying, “I urge all citizens wherever they live to own the war against terror and to be part of the fight because it is the only way we can finish the remaining work that needs to be done to make our country safe again”.

Buhari’s mendacity continues on Boko Haram

In the earlier statement, Buhari had opined that instead of killing the Boko Haram members, they ought to have been treated fairly and given amnesty.

But in faraway New Delhi, India, for the Third India-Africa Forum Summit, on October 30 2015, Buhari grossly turned away and gave reasons why to crush the insurgents would be better than negotiate with them.

“We want to get them (the 250 kidnapped Chibok girls taken away by the insurgents in 2014) back safe to their parents. But we are not sure of a credible leadership that is prepared to talk yet about Chibok girls,” he told the New Delhi Television (NDTV).

He also told the NDTV that the terrorists are on the retreat, saying, “They are on the retreat. If you go to the front, you will find out that they no longer occupy the areas in the North East they once did.”

Yet, he reiterated, blaming that the “war in Libya was pushing Islamic State fighters into Nigeria, filling the ranks of Boko Haram.”

“A lot of trained people have returned to their bases in Nigeria and are finding their way back to strengthen Boko Haram,” he said.

Buhari was in support of Amnesty for Boko Haram during Jonathan govt

Buhari who is today invariably not in support of amnesty for Boko Haram members was in support of the idea in 2013, during the Jonathan government.

He made this disclosure on April 10 2013, as the CPC presidential candidate, while addressing pressmen in Abeokuta, Ogun State, on his way to Ikenne to pay condolence to the Yeye Odua, Chief (Mrs) HID Awolowo on the death of her son, Chief Oluwole Awolowo.

Buhari who was accompanied by the party’s vice presidential candidate in 2011 election, Pastor Tunde Bakare, the former House of Representatives Speaker, Aminu Bello Masari and CPC National Chairman, Prince Tony Momoh, said that whatever would bring peace to Nigeria must be pursued.

“It is good that they have set up a committee on amnesty. I have not seen the terms of reference, but it is a right step in a right direction. This is not the first time amnesty would be given to a violent group. You remember it happened in the time of Yar’Adua when he gave amnesty to militants, but whatever would bring us peace as a society, we should do it,” Buhari stated.

Conclusion: Buhari’s fight against Boko Haram is suspicious and paper fight

According to a report credited to Reuters on September 8, 2015, “In spite of President Buhari’s reassuring words, a spike in violence by Boko Haram militants in northeast Nigeria has forced almost 800,000 people to flee their homes since June and over 17, 000 lives pummeled and thousands of houses and property destroyed.”

On February 6 2016, during a condolence visit to Dalori village where 65 persons were reportedly killed (weekend before last by the insurgents), Senator Baba Kaka Garbai, senator representing Borno Central in the National Assembly and a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), told newsmen that Boko Haram still occupies half of Borno of the Northeast, which Buhari had been boastful that the sect had been confined to the Sambisa forest – the terrorists known camp.

“I feel highly demoralised, devastated in the sense that this is the village we visited during the election and they were going about their normal business. The activities that were ongoing were like confidence building.

“They actually got the signal a few days before the attack that the insurgents were likely to attack them, they reported this to the constituted authorities but nothing was done to provide security for residents and their belongings.

“It is very important and more so that this place is porous, so there could be attacks from any direction. It is a wrong assumption that most of the local governments in Borno have been recaptured from Boko Haram.

“In reality, this is not true in the sense... From my count, only three local governments are fully liberated, while 21 local governments remain partially occupied by insurgents – that is, there is still some level of Boko Haram occupation side by side the military or some other constituted authority,” Senator Garbai said.

Odimegwu Onwumere is a Poet/Writer; he writes from Rivers State. ( [email protected] ). Tel: +2348057778358.