By Abel Audu

At a time when an average Nigerian politician appears to have taken courses in film acting and stage performance, the tears shed by Borno state governor, Kashim Ibrahim Shettima when he led the state elders on a visit to President Muhammadu Buhari, were suspect.

Not even his bawling and cracking voice, when speaking with State House correspondents, could convince one that he is not an alumni of sort with Ayodele Fayose the former theatrical governor of Ekiti State and the entertaining Dino Melaye, who recently suffered a fainting spell when he turned himself in to the police.
Shettima is clearly not a dullard. The timing of his visit to the President could not have been more strategic.

The visit was calibrated to coincide with a time when the country direly wants to be done with Boko Haram insurgents, the group’s birthplace is Borno. It is coming at about the fourth year anniversary of when the 2015 elections were postponed to fight the group. It is a time that the combined military is on an onslaught to dislodge the terrorists – and the military is reporting success in the wake of a directive to wipe out the vermin.

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The Borno governor, who is outgoing by the way, choses now of all times to present a ten-point demand to President Buhari. These demands were meant to be under wraps so that they would have been acceded to before Nigerians become any wiser, by which time it would have become too late to roll back whatever concessions have been made to Shettima and his chosen successor. But much of the classified demands have become subject of public discourse since that which is hidden inexplicably become revealed in line with the tradition that has now become commonplace even for military secrets.

Before touching on Shettima’s demands, it is appropriate to revisit the past if only to refresh memories and put certain facts in proper perspective.

The first thing to remember is that Boko Haram has its roots in the political misadventure of someone that once occupied the position that Shettima is about now vacating. Street urchins that were recruited as political thugs, infamously called ECOMOG then, were the founding blocks that were later brainwashed and radicalised into the first generation members of Jamā’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’wah wa’l-Jihād (derisively referred to as Boko Haram until the name took hold and the stigma it was meant to connote was stripped away).

This Shettima’s political forebear was complicit in the killing in custody of Yusuf Mohammed, Boko Haram founder, which paved way for the decade of violence that has been visited on Nigeria. It must be noted that the then Borno Governor paid similar cloak and dagger visits to the Presidential Villa to confound issues with the late President Umaru Yar’Adua.

It must be similarly recalled that the virulent group had its founding demand as the strict implementation of Sharia law across the country. A few years of fighting has taught them that this is a pipe dream that will never materialized – the international news network and media that used to intone this objective have since dropped it from their reportage.

With its recent association with the Islamic State, Boko Haram’s objective in this regard has changed from desiring a sweeping implementation of Sharia to carving up a caliphate administered to its own barbaric taste. This would be an interim goal of a few decades since the larger objective of the Islamic state is to have a single caliphate spanning from the Mediterranean to Central Africa.

To Shettima’s demand, the memo he submitted to the President included asking for the Civilian JTF to carry automatic weapons and for all Borno State Indigenes in the Police and military to be redeployed to their home state, Borno, to fight for him. He premised these demands on the grounds that he no longer trust the current Nigerian Military. He also made points that the Borno state government already pays the allowances of the Civilian JTF members in addition to procuring the hardware they use in their operation against Boko Haram terrorists.

These demands are innocuous of the surface. A dispassionate review would however reveal that Shettima has, through these demands, revealed an ambition that is worse than the initial proposition of Boko Haram and comparable to the terrorists’ current quest for a caliphate.

Audu contributed this opinion from Lagos Street, Maiduguri.