Dear President Jonathan: We, the more than 200 victims of Boko
Haram’s latest savage bomb attacks, feel we must write to you from
beyond the grave. Our simple message is summed up in the phrase: Enough
is enough.
As you know, we were dispatched to our sudden death by the gruesome
bombs of depraved people who think they have God’s mandate to kill and
maim others. We did not commit any crime deserving of any punishment,
much less the horrific deaths meted out to us. We were simply going
about the business of our varied daily lives. We just happened to be
about when craven men who take pride in playing god set about their
heinous business of sowing bombs the way more honorable people sow yams.
The bombs exploded in a fraction of a breath, left us no praying
chance, no time even to think swift, endearing last thoughts about loved
ones. Forget about saying hurried good byes. Incendiary, deafening
blasts, and it ended. In a flash, more than two hundred of us, men and
women, adults and children, became gored, scalded, bloodied bodies,
twitching as we turned into corpses. The bombs severed limbs, tore open
skulls, disgorged brains and viscera.
The rabid, misbegotten zealots of a twisted version of Islam planted
the explosives that killed us. But the space and idea called Nigeria is
complicit in our dastardly fate.
The pieces of our decapitated bodies had not been harvested yet when
the Nigerian state commenced its mindless business of dishonoring the
dead. The security agencies that could not anticipate and forestall the
attack that wasted our lives began its usual dumb game of statistical
fibbing. They said “only” twenty-something of us had died. And then, as
the evidence mounted about the scale of the tragedy, they revised their
figures upwards. Only seventy plus people had perished, they asserted.
Why does the Nigerian state resort to lies after every act of
carnage? Isn’t it bad enough that the country’s security agents are
unable to protect innocents from the murderous designs of evil merchants
of death? What end is served by this macabre falsehood? Is there a
prize of nobility handed out to countries that consistently under-report
the number of people who perish in acts of violence? Even if
twenty-five of us died, instead of two hundred, does that earn Nigeria
some great glory? Does that make Nigeria a rosier destination for
tourists? Are foreign investors perpetually on the lookout, waiting to
rush their cash into any country that, a, routinely falsifies the number
of casualties in terrorist attacks and, b, would place the word “only”
before twenty-five or seventy-five corpses?
This morbid lying with figures is yet another way that Nigeria
violates most of its populace. Most of those unfortunate enough to be
called Nigerians are systematically degraded in life and diminished in
death. Alive or dead, Nigerians don’t count!
About this time last year, two young men, blood brothers, set off
pressure cooker bombs near the finish line of the Boston marathon. Three
persons died, with scores more injured. US officials did not spend one
moment trying to mislead the world about the number of victims. Instead,
from President Barack Obama through Governor Deval Patrick of
Massachusetts to the mayor of Boston, one message and one message
emerged: the perpetrators would be unmasked, and the people of Boston
would grow stronger from the horror.
The full power and intelligence of American law enforcement got
cracking. Investigations led to leads led to identification of the
perpetrators led to a massive manhunt that led to the death of one
suspect, the capture of the other.
Through it all, the American people, led by Mr. Obama, remained
focused, resilient, determined to learn the hard lessons and to be more
vigilant in order to avert, or at least reduce, future attacks.
What President Obama did, Mr. Jonathan, is a profile in what’s called
true leadership. Let’s contrast his admirable example with yours.
Our torn limbs were still being gathered, it seemed, when you,
President Jonathan, took off to Kano to keep a campaign date. It was
deplorable enough that you felt the urge to proceed with partisan
politicking hours after a dreadful series of explosions killed so many,
physically scarred many more, and left uncountable numbers bereaved,
shaken with grief. But the kind of political rally you choose to have
spoke volumes about your profound confusion about the meaning and
quality of leadership. You had on stage with you musicians who played
heady music, as if the slaughter of Nigerians at Nyanya motor park was a
crowning achievement of your presidency. You even swayed to the music,
titillated your fellow party men and women with a few dance steps. Then
you unleashed a torrent of lowbrow, partisan vituperations against your
political opponents.
Here’s what you didn’t do, what you failed to do. You didn’t project a
solemn expression that would have shown you were aware of what time it
was in Nigeria—aware that it was Death time, Horror time, Mourning time.
If you had to do an event in Kano, you might have used the occasion to
spell out a major policy initiative for addressing the plague of Boko
Haram. You did not tell confused, angry and terrorized Nigerians what
you plan to do to checkmate those who deal death to others in the name
of fighting western values.
No, you danced. You danced—we might as well say—on the corpses of
those who died; on the wounds of those still bleeding from their
injuries; on the agony of the bereaved. For you, sir, and for other
Nigerian officials, leadership seems to be one giddy carnival that goes
on interminably, must go on regardless of the number of corpses piling
up on the streets, no matter the depth of disquiet on the faces of
“ordinary” Nigerians for whom death at the hands of Boko Haram is a real
and present danger.
You and your aides have often accused your political opponents of
sponsoring sorties of Boko Haram attacks. If this is true, then it’s
your duty to do something about it. Nigerians are sick of this ploy,
tired of the fruitless pointing at faceless, nameless nemeses. Unmask
the sponsors, now. Order their arrest and prosecution, now. It doesn’t
matter how politically or financially big they are. Go ahead: name,
arrest and prosecute them.
If you’re scared of these champions of death, if the arsenal of your
presidential powers can’t match their homicidal will, then it’s time you
stepped down from the office you hold. If Nigeria’s crime entrepreneurs
are so big that the president and the institutions of the state must
cower in fear of them, then Nigeria has zero reason to continue
existing.
Mr. Jonathan, stop this carnival train that parades streets piled with corpses! Leadership is not a party.
Please follow me on twitter @ okeyndibe
(
okeyndibe@gmail.com)
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