By Francis Ehigiator<\/p>\n
Leaders of the All Progressives Congress have been battling strong criticism over their attitude that conveys the impression they are hand-in-gloves with the dreaded Islamic sect, Boko Haram. They have also been severally accused of fuelling the sect\u2019s terrorist atrocities with their unguarded utterances, with the intention of using the calamity they visit on Nigerians against President Goodluck Jonathan and his party, the Peoples Democratic Party, in the run-up to the 2015 elections. They have stoutly denied both accusations.<\/p>\n
Recent developments, however, betray their claim to innocence.\u00a0\u00a0As we inch closer to the elections, the Jonathan-is-to-blame rhetoric on the activities of insurgents is rising; so is their reference to the sect\u2019s exploits.\u00a0\u00a0In what has become an evidence of their desperation, two of the APC presidential aspirants — Major-General Muhammadu Buhari and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar — are trying to outdo each other in making political capital out of our collective misery as a nation.<\/p>\n
First, it was former head of state, Buhari who said in Asaba last Wednesday that the country may be overrun by the dreaded Boko Haram sect in the next four years, should the PDP be allowed to continue in power.\u00a0\u00a0It was followed with another statement by former Vice President Atiku, in Enugu, the following day, warning Nigerians that a vote for Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in 2015 general elections, was a vote for continuation of insurgency.\u00a0Both men, well known to have made highly incendiary statements in pursuit of their selfish political ambitions in recent times, could not have done better as scare-mongers.<\/p>\n
When considered against the backdrop that the party had in the past boasted that if elected in 2015, an APC President would bring the terrorist activities to an end, their leaders\u2019 recent pronouncements call to serious question, their claims to innocence in the insurgency that is ravaging our nation.\u00a0\u00a0While only a few expected that the APC will leverage the terrorist group\u2019s exploits as a campaign tool for the 2015 national election, it becomes logical, therefore, to believe that it is only a party that controls the levers of the sect that can bring them to attention. Is the puzzle falling into place?<\/p>\n
The fear that Buhari was prepared to play politics with the misery of his countrymen and women came to the fore in February last year when he first gave the Boko Haram terrorist group its first ethnic colouration.\u00a0\u00a0Speaking on Liberty Radio in Kaduna, he had charged the Federal government to stop their offensive against the terrorist sect.\u00a0\u00a0His reason was as curious as it can be: he said the action of the federal authorities was tantamount to injustice against the North.\u00a0\u00a0It won him applause from narrow-minded fellow Northerners and inspired the letter by former Adamawa governor, Murtala Nyako in which he accused President Jonathan of genocide against Northerners.<\/p>\n
His doomsday prophesies become somewhat amusing when one considers his inglorious role in introducing violence into the polity since the last presidential election.\u00a0It is still difficult to reconcile his questionable status of \u2018elder statesman\u2019 with the combustive statements he had made as presidential\u00a0candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in the run-up to the 2011 election, when he told his supporters to go on a lynching spree if the result did not favor him.\u00a0\u00a0Though he eventually lost in a contest adjudged free and fair, it did not stop the post-election violence that broke out fuelled by that careless pronouncement.<\/p>\n
Recently, Buhari led APC members on \u2018condolence\u2019 visit to Kaura Local Government Area of Kaduna State, an area that suffered a human calamity that is the killing of more than 119 people in violent attacks by unidentified gunmen. Condolence was the last thing on his mind, as he used it as an opportunity to play politics. According to Buhari who was accompanied by APC Deputy National Chairman, Aminu Bello Masari, Deputy National Secretary Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, and many others,\u00a0\u00a0\u201cIf Nigerians will give their mandate to APC come 2015 general elections, we will address the prolonged insecurity that has been bedeviling the country which the government of President Goodluck Jonathan has woefully failed to address.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0It was like dancing on the graves of the dead.<\/p>\n
Atiku Abubakar, who is credited to have made the infamous warning that \u201cthose who make peaceful change impossible will make violent change inevitable\u201d at the Northern stakeholders Forum in 2010, is not too different.\u00a0\u00a0Shortly after the insurgents took control of Mubi last month, Atiku Abubakar had held a press conference ostensibly to alert the attention of the world to the humanitarian crisis that has come in its wake, but it ended as an attempt to make some political capital at the expense of President Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP.\u00a0\u00a0Rather than situate the crisis properly, he blamed the growing insurgency on \u201ca crisis of leadership\u201d and made scathing remarks about the supposed inability of our defence forces to defend the nation.<\/p>\n
While it is not the first time Buhari and Atiku have made such statements that denigrate our fighting forces, the last one\u00a0was most irresponsible, to say the least. Such absurd statements follow a pattern which has become associated with the APC leaders whose utterances have fuelled rather than help calm the insurgency, or assuage the feeling of the victims. More sinisterly, they are intended to deliberately distract the government and the security forces in their efforts to contain the insurgency.\u00a0\u00a0The questions that keep agitating the minds of Nigerians is: why do scathing criticisms of government efforts to contain the nation\u2019s ongoing cycle of violence come mainly from known leaders of the main opposition party, especially from\u00a0the two men who have\u00a0contributed the most to what has today become a national calamity through\u00a0irresponsible utterances?<\/p>\n
While President Goodluck Jonathan may not have recorded the type of overwhelming victory we all desire against the hoodlums, every patriotic Nigerian appreciates the fact that he has worked so hard to tackle the menace. If Buhari and Atiku are sincere with their denunciation of the sect that has brought so much sorrow to many Nigerian families, they would not have turned the issue into a tool for electoral advantage.\u00a0\u00a0While it is likely that the APC knows more than it is prepared to openly admit about the raging insurgency in Nigeria, it is most cowardly, therefore, for the party to use the present situation to further their narrow political interests.<\/p>\n
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