By Ochereome Nnanna
ALHAJI Lawal Kaita and Professor Ango Abdullahi are two men who can’t hide their born-to-rule mentality. They are Atiku boys politically, even though they are both older than the Turaki of Adamawa.

It was this Atiku political group that joined with the likes of General Ibrahim Babangida, Mallam Adamu Ciroma and others to form the Northern Leaders Political Forum, NLPF, with the sole purpose of using the so-called “majority” power of the North to either force President Goodluck Jonathan to give up his constitutional right to contest the 2011 presidential election or get him voted out.

As Jonathan pressed ahead with his ambition, Atiku at a media briefing threatened that those who made peaceful change impossible would make violent change inevitable. Ango Abdullahi and Lawal Kaita continued to predict doom for the President at the 2011 polls until the elections came and went. Not only was Atiku beaten ragged at the PDP presidential primaries, President Jonathan coasted home to a comfortable landslide victory in an internationally-acclaimed credible election in 2011.

Atiku and his boys were proved dead wrong, because the result of the election was a pan-Nigerian mandate that defied regional, sectional and religious stereotyping. It instead proved that primordial gang-ups are no longer fashionable in our democracy, and that those (such as Kaita and Ango) who pin their prognosis on them would always get it wrong.

It seemed that those who threatened to make the system ungovernable for the President meant business when, all of a sudden, so soon after the 2011 elections, Boko Harm insurgency, which had been crushed by the regime of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, made a stubborn resurgence. In two years of bloody campaign, they crippled the economy of the North and started making territorial claims. We called on the President to take action as his predecessors did in the past when rebellion went beyond the scope of the Police.

A monolithic wall of opinion among the Muslim North eilte led by Sultan Abubakar Sa’ad, put pressure on President Jonathan to offer the terrorists amnesty. The President succumbed and set up a committee. Meanwhile, the terrorists became emboldened and the President finally declared a state of emergency on Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states. The President took the right step: quell the insurgency first and explore amnesty later. Today, the enemy is in flight and Nigeria’s total sovereignty is on the verge of being recovered.

But, of course, Ango Abdullahi would not have any of it. Speaking on behalf of the Northern Elders Forum he wailed that the President had “declared war on the North”. It was clearly a statement meant to incite the North against the President; a weapon to be used against him when the 2015 elections come up. Both Ango and Kaita had since gone back to their old, jaded refrain of predicting doom at the polls for the President, conveniently forgetting that this antic failed only two years ago.

Happily enough, the majority of Northern Nigerians, including its Governors’ Forum, have applauded the emergency rule, though it came a little belatedly. Ango would have the President go on his knees and beg Boko Haram to accept amnesty so that he could call him as a “weak” leader. Ango and Kaita and their cohorts will never be satisfied with anything Jonathan may do until they achieve their dream of forcefully snatching power from him. This will not happen. Therefore, I call them perpetual losers.

Power will go to the North when the time comes, and it will be a democratic decision taken across the diversities of our citizenry. It is unwise to play politics with security. The President’s decision to declare emergency is in the interest of the North in particular and the nation at large. It is the right thing. The popularity of the decision is evident in successful operations of the security agencies, which made our President to surmise over the weekend that the emergency rule may end before six months.

When the insurgents are silenced and peace returns to the North I will be waiting to hear from Kaita and Ango!

 Re: Emergency rule

MR. Nnanna, I am happy you know the President “has superior information and advice from our security chiefs who should know better than the rest of us.” With that in mind, my response to your article is this: The seemingly indecisiveness and lack of will on the part of the President to take on the insurgents before now was tactical to some extent. When it started, Boko Haram was a complete guerrilla outfit.

They lived among the people, held meetings underground and struck via suicide bombings and withdrew into the midst of the people. At that stage, it was impossible to take the kind of action being taken against them now. They had no physical camp and occupied no territories then that anyone could attack. The President is not stupid; he could not have sent the army against residential settlements even in places believed to be harbouring the militants.

But the so-called indecisiveness of the President gave the insurgents the false belief that they can overrun the North-East and maybe the entire North and beyond. That was when they had the confidence to start establishing camps, burning Nigerian flags and planting their own. It was now easy for the Nigerian army to isolate them and carry out an onslaught against them as we are presently seeing.

The President in my estimation is not weak neither is he indecisive. He probably understands this unique nation and its governance than most of us. Above all we must not forget that discretion is the better part of valour.

Adiza Osilama (taken from Vanguard Online)