By Ehichioya Ezomon
Were it an unserious issue, it would’ve been a case of different strokes for different folks, for the seeming insensitive disposition of politicians to the Kankara tragedy of the penult week.
Politicians, disesteeming Nigerians’ lives when scheming for elective positions, used the period of seizure of students of the Government Science Secondary School (GSSS) in Kankara, Katsina State, for politicking, to advance their interests in the 2023 elections.
Besides defections from opposition political parties to majorly the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), two high-profile politicians iterated, albeit by proxies, their jockeying for the presidency.
The defectors were: December 15, Rep. Aliyu Yako (PDP-Kano) and Rep. Danjuma Shiddi (APGA-Taraba) to the APC; December 16, Rep. Tajudeen Adefisoye (SDP-Ondo) to the APC; and December 17, Rep. Samuel Onuigbo (PDP-Abia) to the APC.
It’s a comic relief on December 16 when APC’s factional chair in Edo State, Anslem Ojezua, finally joined Governor Godwin Obaseki in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), after staying behind to destabilise the APC for Obaseki’s re-election on September 19.
In Ibadan, Oyo State, the old political headquarters of the South-West, politicians wanting to “drag” the National Leader of the APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, into the 2023 fray, met to launch their logo.
They kick-started their campaign with visits to the Olubadan of Ibadan, Oba Saliu Adetunji and the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi III, to seek blessings for their agenda.
At a gathering on Tuesday, December 15, the group of former lawmakers of the South-West, codenamed South West Agenda (SWAGA), led by Senator Dayo Adeyeye, urged Tinubu to contest as president in the 2023 polls.
The ex-legislators are working on the premise of “an agreement among APC leaders during the 2015 election, that presidential power would rotate to the South after President Buhari’s tenure.”
On behalf of the group, Mr Adeyeye said: “We are here for politics; politics has started. We, the Yoruba, believe that it is our right to produce the next President.
“There’s an agreement that presidential power will rotate from North to South. May God preserve President Buhari. After his tenure, power will shift to the South. Yoruba will be part of the contest.”
Former Vice President and presidential candidate of the PDP in the 2019 elections, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, rolled out a youth-based campaign group to canvass for yet his bid to be president.
On December 17, the group, Atiku Support Organisation (ASO), was launched in Abuja, and in the 36 states, with Abubakar Babawo as its director-general and Atiku Mohammed as chairman.
The outfit’s mission is to project Atiku’s “visionary idea of sustainable national development,” as he prepares to declare for the presidency he’s twice failed to attain.
During the inauguration, Mr Babawo stated that Atiku is committed towards running a youth-friendly government and giving the youths a greater representation in his administration.
And to the group’s North-Central coordinator, Anngu Orngu: “We will not rest till Atiku is elected president of Nigeria… He will be proactive in addressing insecurity facing the country, attract foreign investments and give support to millions of small and medium-scale enterprises, and 40 per cent youth-inclusiveness in government.”
One may be inclined to excuse both Tinubu and Atiku, as they weren’t directly involved in the launching of their support groups. But they would’ve been briefed and given the groups the go-ahead to project their ambition to be president, as 2023 kicks into gear.
Yet, a disturbing aspect of the Kankara saga, and similar incidents in Chibok and Dapchi (where 110 students of the GGSS in Yobe State were seized in 2018) is critics, sans opposition’s readiness to spin conspiracy theories about the abduction.
To the critics, that the schoolboys were kidnapped on the day Buhari arrived in his hometown of Daura, and “expeditiously” released on his 78th birthday was to showcase the president as a Commander-in-Chief that will leave no Nigerian in harm’s way.
Conspiracy theories had dogged the 2014 and 2018 abductions of schoolchildren – respectively occurring on former President Goodluck Jonathan’s watch, and under the Buharii presidency.
For the 2014 seizure of 276 students in Chibok, the Jonathan government reportedly felt it’s coordinated by the Buhari-led APC, to portray Jonathan as incapable of protecting the citizens.
The abduction came in the heat of campaigns for the 2015 general election in which Jonathan eventually squared-up against Buhari, the APC presidential candidate, whose party deployed the Chibok schoolgirls seizure as a campaign tool.
That’s, perhaps, why the 2018 snatching of 110 students in Dapchi was pinned on the PDP, in its alleged attempts to depict the Buhari administration as incompetent to securing Nigerians.
So, the Kankara schoolboys’ abduction couldn’t have come at an inopportune moment: the second in two years, and when Buhari was holidaying in Katsina, in advance of his 78th birthday.
It’s a perfect occasion for conspiracy theories: That the presidency arranged the abduction for a “photo-up” after the schoolboys would’ve been “rescued” or the opposition sponsored the bandit-terrorists’ operation to embarrass Buhari and his government.
You can’t take anything past politicians, including shedding of blood of the innocents to gain power, fame and unlimited access to state resources. But can a government conceive, plan and carry out the kidnapping of schoolchildren as a stunt to boost its image?
For the world’s absurdities, an opposition, having nothing to lose, could swing a mass arrest, but no government would pull that off for image laundering. The security and political risks are too high!
Take the case of the Kankara schoolboys, whose figures were speculative until they turned out to be 344, minus the scores that had escaped the bandits’s forceful conveyance through the wild.
Could a government wager for the safety of the large numbers of children to be seized, even by a trusted armed gang, on its behalf, as a camouflage for actual kidnapping, to boost its image?
Government’s critics would admit such desperation, noting that in the Kankara episode, the grabbing, tracing and release of the schoolboys was choreographed to fit into a pattern: No harm should befall them, and none in their weeklong sojourn in the forest.
Icing the cake, critics referred to the “speed of Nigeria’s notoriously lethargic military” in tracing, locating, encircling and pressuring the bandits to hand over their prized targets, “without firing a shot.”
Incredulously incredible assumptions! But that’s what the age of social media has done to the psyche of the people: Many believe conspiracy theories and “fake news” than the reality.
The bandit-terrorists really seized the schoolboys, but the government and security operatives, doing what they’re voted and hired to do, saved the day for humanity: The children’s families, the government and people of Nigeria, and the global community.
Individuals or groups, with or without involvement in the planning and execution of the abduction, but had profited or hoped to profit from the incident financially or politically, are unpatriotic and inhumane as the bandit-terrorists. Quod erat demonstrandum!
Mr. Ezomon, Journalist and Media Consultant, writes from Lagos, Nigeria.