President Jonathan, in a statement that could only be seen as an indictment of his gross incompetence, openly claimed that together with his executive arm, the legislative and judiciary arms, the security forces in the country too have been infiltrated by the dreaded terrorist group known to many as Boko Haram.
Under normal circumstances, in real countries that is, an admission like this would have drawn many criticisms and outrage from the citizenry, so much so that the leader would probably have resigned by now.
An extra-terrestrial would however be forgiven for expecting this kind of outcome in Nigeria.
But most Nigerians know better.
The fact is that a typical Nigerian leader isn’t one to give power up that easily and in any case, there have neither been many criticisms nor has there been an outrage by the citizens of Nigeria, as far as this damning admission of incompetence is concerned.
Naturally, one would ask why people aren’t talking that much about this scandalous revelation; and while I was at it, the not so farfetched answer popped into my head.
The President’s revelation is not news stupid! If anything, to most Nigerians, it is even an understatement of the fact.
Nigerians have always felt themselves terrorised by the ruling class, from a president that allocates N3,000,000 of national wealth per day for his daily meals, to the legislators whose yearly salaries and allowances it would take Obama four years to earn, to a judiciary whose pronouncement of “justice is served” only stretches further, the certain assurance of the injustice that awaits you should you not be ready to submit to the dictates of their crooked court robes which exude the repugnant stench of corruption, and finally to the security forces that will tell us that they are our friends, yet inflict on us with much impunity, a cruelty that puts to shame the brutality our slave masters and colonisers, who largely regarded us as beasts of burden, used to put us in check.
Why then should Nigerians be bothered that Boko Haram has infiltrated the ranks of the country’s leadership? To most of us, this is a case of one group of terrorists infiltrating another, and it makes no difference.
For most Nigerians though, the security forces constitute the most dangerous of all terrorists because it is us that suffer their daily routines of brigandage and gangsterism, of which resistance guarantees you violence worse than every description of hell you’ve ever heard.
We’ve heard cases of hard working bus drivers being shot dead because they refused to allow themselves robbed of N20 by policemen who mount illegal roadblocks on highways, we’ve heard the case of the pregnant woman that was shot dead in front of a bank for no apparent reason, except that the officer was trigger happy, indeed, we haven’t forgotten the coldblooded murder of the Apo six, whose cries for justice still linger in limbo seven years after.
We also remember the terrifying images we saw of the extrajudicial massacre of countless civilians in Maiduguri, under the façade of fighting terrorism.
There seems to be no end in sight to the terror inflicted on Nigerians by the so called security forces. Just yesterday (09/01/2012), some people in different cities were murdered in cold blood, by terrorists within the same security forces. One of them, an innocent young man, Ademola Aderinlo, was first brutalised by these mad men in uniforms.
As if that was not enough, he was shot and killed in cold blood. His only crime was protesting against the removal of fuel subsidy by the present administration.
He never had the chance to defend himself.
The violent mad men terrorised him to death.
Mind you, these are just the acts of terrorism that we can account for. Countless others don’t even go beyond the knowledge of the terrorisers and the immediate families of the victims.
Ademola Aderinlo being brutalised by armed terrorists before he was murdered.As I post this note, the good news of the arrest of the officers involved in the cold blooded murder of Ademola is making the rounds in the media, but don’t get excited yet; so also did good news of the arrests of the ones involved in the Apo six killings spread, only to be relegated to near irrelevance by the apathetic silence of time.
The truth is that until justice starts being served, and until it starts being seen to be served. Nigerians will forever remain hostages to one terrorist group or the other, be it Boko Haram, the security terrorist forces or the greedy gluttons in government and it will never make that much of a difference which one is infiltrating the other.
Idris Ajia.
