By Josef Omorotiomwan
WHETHERyou are a sadist or a masochist simply depends on your source of joy. All those who derive joy from the hurt of others are sadists. This is where a callous man would rape an innocent minor and still shoot her dead after the rape.

On the other hand, the masochist derives joy from his own hurt. Examples abound here. In fact, Nigerians live with this everyday: We happily celebrate cases of deadly corruption against ourselves. We are happy when our legislators make laws that are unenforceable. We happily break our own laws with impunity.

How else can we explain a situation where we have an Act of Parliament called the Electoral Act 2010; and the Act is being serially violated at our own expense and on our national media? Section 99 of this Act clearly states: “The period of campaigning in public by every political party shall commence 90 days before polling day and shall end 24 hours prior to that day”.

By INEC’s time table, the next presidential election is slated for February 14, 2015, which means that the campaign for that election can only start on November 16, 2014 and end at midnight on February 12, 2015.

For more than six months now, PDP has been throwing its weight around. If all those noise across the six geo-political zones in the country by President Goodluck Jonathan and PDP (Nigeria) Unlimited as well as all the noise from Jonathan and his Transformation Ambassadors PLC are not campaigns for the 2015 elections, we wonder what they are. Which other campaigns can determine more accurately, their strength and weakness in all the geo-political zones?

When we squander billions of Naira acquiring all the useless bullet-proof cars in Germany; when a single ministry squanders more than N10 billion on taxi rentals; when, as a poor nation, we maintain the largest presidential fleet of about a dozen aircraft at an annual maintenance cost of close to N10 billion; when our system is such that a single individual can afford to steal “only N23 billion”; when an Assistant Director can conveniently misappropriate over N200 billion of our military pension fund unchallenged; when billions of dollars can vamoose from our main account, which has remained un-audited for decades; when we entertain ourselves with vain debates around our filthy lucre; and meanwhile, we are unable to feed our people back home; we are simply wallowing in criminal irresponsibility and there can be no greater masochism than that!

Even in our masochist stance, we do not know how much lies we can tolerate on the Boko Haram menace. Before now, Boko Haram had been given the spirit-like aura – nobody knew them and nobody saw them.

But last week, they came face to face with our combatant soldiers. Some 480 Nigerian soldiers were reported to have fled to Cameroun following fierce fighting with the Boko Haram militants. In reporting the incident, the Camerounian Army Spokesman, Lt. Col, Didier Badjek, said the soldiers had been disarmed and they were being accommodated in schools.

This introduces a big dent on the claim of the Federal Government that the Boko Haram are not better equipped and better trained, even where as an apparent after-thought, Nigeria’s Defence Headquarters claim that Nigerian soldiers withdrew in “a tactical maneuver” into Cameroun during fierce fighting with Boko Haram insurgents and had to surrender their weapons to Camerounian authorities. What is the difference between half full and half empty?

Ordinarily, it would be safe to assume that the descent on Boko Haram has begun in earnest; but certainly not if our Federal Government will treat last week’s hot exchange between former FCT Minister, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, and the immediate past Chief of Army Staff, General Ihejirika, as just another fire-side chat – a mere comic relief!

Hear El-Rufai: “Australian hostage negotiator, Stephen Davis, has just named former Borno Governor Ali Modu-Sheriff and immediate past Chief of Army Staff, Lt-Gen. Ihejirika as the Boko Haram brains on ARISE NEWS… The kingpins not only finance Boko Haram but they also select targets for assassination and execution…”.

Perhaps like the Christian that he is, Gen. Ihejirika neither denied nor accepted the allegation. He only reminds us of our little nephew who never announced his failure at school directly. Each time he was asked of his result, he usually reeled out a long list of those who failed, without talking about himself – John failed; Peter failed, Moses also failed…

Reacting to the accusation, Ihejirika said that El-Rufai is one of the front-line commanders of the terrorist group. Hear him further: “The likes of El-Rufai started the campaign of human rights abuses in order to divert international attention from the heinous crime being committed by the Boko Haram terrorists… In fact, El-Rufai and his likes are the same group of people that ensured the army did not get the requested equipment to deal with this menace once and for all, as they used their cohorts to tell the government that procuring modern equipment was not necessary”.

Hearing from the horse’s mouth that our Army has been ill-equipped and ill-trained? Hear this: Ihejirika recalled recent allegation that he took away N48 billion, an amount he said is still in the coffers of the Ministry of Defence. If the Military has been sitting on N48 billion as claimed by Ihejirika, how have we been financing our military operations? Why are we surprised at Boko Haram’s superior weaponry?

This is where corruption has left us – always napping! At the outbreak of hostilities during the Civil War, we were running around scouting for weapons when the Biafran soldiers were dealing with us. On the Federal side, it was convenient to label the war as a “police action”, which was a euphemism for our lack of preparation.

Boko Haram has sent over 5,000 Nigerians to their early graves. President Jonathan must realise that 2015 is not all there is to life. And if we must exist beyond 2015, the time to act decisively on Boko Haram is now!