AREWA RAPID RESPONSE NETWORK (Press Statement)

 

"Hold Senator Kashim Shettima responsible for worsening insecurity in North-East"

A REJOINDER

There are times and instances when keeping mute even when a barefaced lie has been told against you is far better than joining issues with opponents who hide under pseudo identity to throw darts and arrows at you.

A so-called North East Peace Congress (a clearly cowardly group of nitwits and half-baked political losers) which issued a statement captioned "Hold Senator Kashim Shettima responsible for worsening insecurity in North-East" and signed by one Alhaji Sidi Ali (another cowardly pseudonym) fits into one of those instances deserving of no reply at all. Although it, in its entirety, is undeserving of any reply based on the childish and outlandish presumptions, some of us who are familiar with the antics of their paymasters, feel duty bound to respond, not just to put the record straight but to put the lie to the ill-informed, baseless, unwarranted and politically motivated thrash put together to skew opinions and do a worthless and unhelpful image laundry job for the immediate past service chiefs and their powerful backers in the corridors of power. 

In the unfortunate and ill-timed balderdash, the North East Peace Congress tried to push the blame of the recent spike in attacks on troop positions in Yobe and Borno states at the door step of Senator Kashim  Shettima. In fact, the Cingress went to the extent of blaming the Senator for all the unfortunate militancy in the South East as encapsulated by the rise in criminality of IPOB and ESN, which, as the North East Peace Congree puts it, became more daring "since the current Service Chiefs of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria assumed duty."

The whole gamut, going by the consistent and persistent reference to the former service chiefs, was, in reality, about exonerating the sacked service chiefs from being held to account during their time on one hand, and trying to cast a shadow of doubt on the competence of the new set of service chiefs.

But the bigger objective, from all indications, is to profile Senator Kashim Shettima, single him out as the arrowhead of the nationwide demand for the sacking of the former service chiefs and work on the psychology of Nigerians to see the sacking of the clueless and outgunned sacked service Chiefs as the best thing that had happened to the nation's security. 

Is it not so shameful and irresponsible for any group of people, no matter their sentiments, to even attempt to cast the former Borno state Governor as the fall guy of a system failure which the era of the former service chiefs represented. How can anybody, in his right senses attempt a hack job for sacked security chiefs whose notoriety for failure was known to almost every Nigerian? 

To say that they are pained "that the hurried change of service chiefs which was a strategic miscalculation and political suicide canvassed by some selfish and self-seeking North East leaders is fuelling this orgy of violence" was the height of insensitivity one has come across in recent times. It is rather uncharitable and even disingenuous for anybody to seek to, so soon, cover the glaring failure of a better forgotten era of high level corruption in the purchase of high tech armament which characterized that period and which accounted for the mess in which Nigeria had found itself and from which it has yet to extricate itself.

The call for the sacking of the former service chiefs was one of the very few instances Nigerians were known to have a common ground. The call was not only spontaneous and national, but a bi-partisan clarion call to dispense with their services in order to rejig the war, rebuild waning confidence in both the citizenry and the troops and to allow fresh hands to bring about fresh ideas and strategy.

At a time, President Buhari was the only Nigerian who believed in the capacity of those incompetent chiefs. Every other Nigerian had made up his or her mind that doing away with them was the best decision to save the country from going down under the weight of insurgency, banditry and other associated crimes all over the country. 

Come to think if it, if it is true that there is indeed a spike in the activities of insurgents and bandits across the country, who, between service chiefs that were in office for six years and another set that took over less than three months ago should be held accountable? We are talking about service chiefs who collected billions in the name of purchasing military hardware to save the country but who ended up being accused of shortchanging the country and of enriching themselves.

Even recently, the National Security Adviser General Mohammed Monguno was on international radio channels, re-echoing popular belief that the equipment for which the billions were released were nowhere to be found. 

The new service chiefs too, had given a hint, to that effect when the new Chief of Army Staff, while appearing before a House of Representative's Committee investigating how the appropriated funds were wasted, asked the Honourable members to shift their searchlight to the direction of the former service chiefs for answers to their posers. 

Of course, Kashim Shettima had, at some point joined the call for the sacking of the underperforming and under fire ex-service chiefs. He also moved the motion in the Senate to give effect to it. To begin with, he was not the only Senator who supported that call.  He was merely re-echoing what had become a national sentiment.

And he should know. Even during the Jonathan era when he was the Governor, he told truth to power when he described the insurgents as better equipped and motivated than the Nigerian soldiers. A gang up was orchestrated against him by similar powerful backers then, buoyed by pseudo groups of the ilk, to the point President Jonathan himself threatened to withdraw security details of the Governor to teach him a lesson. 

It is simply unbecoming of anybody, to describe Senator Kashim Shettima as the "face of the self-centred Borno leaders who canvassed for a change in Service Chiefs without thoughts for the consequences that are being visited on the country and on the north east in double portions". Nothing can be father from the truth. Nothing also, can be as preposterous. Is there anything that has happened in the last three months since the new service chiefs have taken over that has not occurred many times over in the six years that Buratai and co held sway? If it took Nigerians over six years to patiently gauge the incompetence of the former service chiefs, why can't we wait at least six months for us to situate the capabilities of a new set of chiefs? 

We will not pick holes in the conclusion of the North East Peace Congress that "Senator Kashim Shettima spearheaded the advocacy to change the service chiefs" because even if it were true, the fact of it was that the country could just not continue to condone an era of brazen system failure that had the potential to break Nigeria into pieces on account of the incapacity of out-of-touch and out-of-ideas service chiefs. 

The nation rose against them and the President, despite his notorious rigidity, read the mood of the people and acted appropriately, even though some people felt that it was belatedly and almost too late to avert the very consequences which their apologists are now trying to push away to new entrants.

Laughably, the North East Peace Congress concluded by demanding "that Senator Kashim Shettima immediately deploys the same tactics and resources he committed to hounding the former service chiefs out of office into pressurising the incumbents to seek help from their predecessors so that the military can again have a grip on the situation."

Can anything be more irrational? If the former service chiefs have what it takes to deal with the situation, why were they sacked in the first place? If they had "a grip", as claimed by the North East Peace Congress, how come Nigerians from all walks of life, set aside their differences and unanimously harangued a hard-to-convince President to fire them?  If, indeed they are good, what will they be doing as nondescript Ambassadors in a country in dire need of military egg heads to quench the fire that was set by the incompetent lot?

Signed

Bello Abdullahi Mijinyawa 

(Coordinator)