Fanning the embers of war?

[Mirror]

The drums of war are thundering. The gladiators have shut their senses tight, as they gyrate to the beats. MEND, Boko Haram, Ombatse, ex-militants etc. Exactly what do they want?

For political watchers, the current unease which permeates practically all parts of the country did not just begin yesterday. Just on Tuesday, President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in Adamawa, Yobe and Borno states – a culmination of months, if not years, of terror unleashed on those places by the Boko-Haram sect and its splinter groups. Prior to the declaration, the Federal Government had extended an olive branch to the sect, offering its members amnesty if they would lay down their arms.

Though the Federal Government's move drew a lot of knocks, it persisted and even raised a panel to oversee the implementation of the amnesty: the Presidential Committee on Dialogue and Peaceful Resolution of Security Challenges in the North, headed by Mr. Kabiru Turaki (SAN).

When the sect finally reacted officially, it rejected the gesture of the government. Days after this, there began serious, long and bloody engagements with the Joint Task Force, a combined military team overseeing the security of the areas in which the sect's activities are more pronounced.

An engagement with security forces at Baga, Bornu State left no fewer than 185 people dead and 55 in Bama a few days after. These were exclusive of other killings in other confrontations with security agents and massacre of innocent civilians, abduction of women and children and bombing of religious places especially churches.

According to a group, no fewer than 4,000 lives have been lost to the Boko Haram crisis since it began. Coming down south, sometime in April, no fewer than 12 policemen were killed in Bayelsa State, the home state of President Jonathan. They were attacked at Lobia 11 narrow waterway.

A group, which called itself ex-militants, claimed responsibility. That was well after the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta, MEND, had initially claimed responsibility. Weeks after, MEND through its spokesman, Gbomo Jomo, threatened to take up arms again.

This time around, the group which had accepted Federal government's amnesty said it would take up arms to protect Christians who have always been the target of the Boko- Haram group. MEND said that starting from 31 May, 2013; it would commence the bombings of mosques, Islamic clerics and monuments in retaliation of Boko Haram's killings of Christians. While the main MEND dissociated itself from the statement, others condemned it. Some praised it, while yet some others warned that the threat should not be totally ignored.

As if these were not enough, in a startling remark to U.S. officials in Washington late last month, the Special Adviser to the president on Niger Delta, and Chairman, Presidential Amnesty Programme, Presidential aide, Kingsley Kuku warned of "dire consequences" in the oil rich Niger Delta should President Jonathan fail to secure a fresh term in 2015.

Kuku, who was speaking at a session with officials of the U.S. State Department led by the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (Bureau of African Affairs), Donald Teitelbaum, told the gathering that only Jonathan could guarantee peace in the restive region and hence, the compelling need to persuade him to seek re-election in 2015.

"It is true that the presidential amnesty programme has engendered peace, safety and security in the sensitive and strategic Niger Delta. Permit me to add that the peace that currently prevails in the zone is largely because Dr Goodluck Jonathan, who is from that same place, is the President of Nigeria. That is the truth.

"However, if we allow anything to hurt the peace in the Niger Delta, Nigeria's economy will be endangered and energy security in Nigeria and even America will not be guaranteed.

The attention and interest of the U.S. in Nigeria must remain the stability of the Niger Delta and the easiest way to ensure this is to encourage President Jonathan to complete an eight-year term," he was quoted.

This was followed later by leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force, NDPVF, Alhaji Mujahid Dokubo Asari, who also said that: "There will be no peace, not only in the Niger Delta, but everywhere if Jonathan is not president by 2015, except God takes his life, which we don't pray for. ... We must have our uninterrupted eight years of two terms.

I am not in support of any amendment of the constitution that will reduce the eight years of two tenures that Goodluck Jonathan is expected to be President of Nigeria."

As the debate on the eligibility of President Goodluck Jonathan to contest the 2015 presidential election continues to heat up the polity, two northern leaders have warned that the crisis the re-election bid will cause is capable of breaking up the country.

As a result, they want President Jonathan to apply caution and remain committed to his publicly declared campaign promise not to contest the next election in his interest and that of the nation.

The north never took this lying low; it came out firing from the hips. In its reaction, the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary Anthony Sani, said it was not correct for the media to ask the forum to react to Dokubo's vituperations against the north on issues of national importance, given his pedigree as a person.

"Alhaji Dokubo's views on politics of 2015 and 2019 reek of ethnic nationalism devoid of democracy as a healthy contest of ideas and reasons. It is too early to forget that it was the leaders of Ijaws in the run up to 2011 who said if President Jonathan was not returned as president in 2011, there would be no more Nigeria. "Such statements smack of politics of threat and intimidation.

Kingsley Kuku has said that much recently about politics of 2015 that there would be no peace if Nigeria did not return President Jonathan in 2015, as if there is peace in any part of Nigeria now. Surely, that amounts to redefining democracy."

Former governor of defunct North-Western State Alhaji Usman Faurk said the militant leader is deceiving himself with the threat. "There is no danger in Dokubo's threat, he is only deceiving himself. History will repeat itself should anybody try to put the country on fire.

Tell him to go and read about Biafra or civil war and see how the war was fought. He has made the greatest mistake by uttering that word," he said. Controversial National Vice Chairman of the pro- North socio-political organization, Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, Senator Joseph Kennedy Waku, said, "President Jonathan should not even contemplate making any move to contest the 2015 election because such will be dishonourable, immoral, satanic and catastrophic."

Seventy nine years old former governor of Kaduna State, Alhaji Lawal Kaita warned the president not to venture into the 2015 race. "All I want to say is: I will advise him (Jonathan) not to contest," he declared. The threats and counter threats have continued with only a few voices sounding low decibel warning against unnecessarily heating up the polity.

Whichever way it is seen, the drum beats of war are being sounded no matter how faintly they seem to sound.

National Mirror