My Transition - Jonathan Ebele REMADE (B) Page 3
a fluid transfer of power. Coming from the debilitating effects of
the Third Term trauma, which the PDP managed to survive, that
transition marked out a new direction for the country and it was
one moment the party should have been proud of, but it was
tremendous credit wasted on a spirited effort to save the party
from a one-man assault on the Constitution.
Not quite long after our inauguration, unexpected problems arose
with the President. I had come in as a Christian, South-southern
Vice President to a Northern Muslim President who took very ill.
Now, many who assume they understood Nigeria but do not,
would miss the huge implications on that ticket's equation. The
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equation which would have remained quiet if the president's
health had held. The problem is, the president's health did not
hold and the ethno/religious equation did not stay calm either. It
got tragically worse. We will return to that.
A page to which I would love to flip is Boko Haram. After the
gruesome fate of their leader (Mohammed Yusuf) in police
custody about July 2009, the terrorist sect began to project a
malignant outrage. Our government had to deal urgently with the
extremely dangerous threat the insurgents posed to national
security and the well being of our people.
Government overhauled and virtually reinvented our security
architecture to confront Boko Haram and its surge. We
reorganized our security apparatus by re-equipping and fully
motivating the armed forces afresh. Issues would get further
complicated with the curious intervention of former president
Olusegun Obasanjo, whose visit turned out to be the precursor to
another murder most foul. A brother of Yusuf was slaughtered
mercilessly.
Tragically, President Yar 'Adua died! He passed on barely two and
half years into our tenure. I was sworn in as Head of State in Abuja
and continued as interim president for the remaining months
which brought the late president's term to conclusion in 2011. I
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vowed to continue the late president's policies on the Niger Delta
peace process, tackle corruption, work on the often (rightly)
criticized electoral process and fix the country's energy problem.
In summary, after two years of service as Governor in Bayelsa
State (2005-2007) and another two years as the Vice President of
Nigeria (2007-2010) followed by the sad, untimely death of the
president, I was thrust into a political arena that I had no previous
intention to participate in.
As I said earlier, there is a key knowledge to acquire about Nigeria.
This is the password into the deeper reality of our country. No one
without this key knowledge could decode the nation. It really does
not matter how brilliant or intelligent you might be. If you do not
have it, you would not get it.
Northern Nigeria (predominantly Muslim) and Southern Nigeria
(predominantly Christian) have had an aged and still ongoing
struggle for the control of power in the polity. It is a titanic
struggle sewn into the foundations of the curious state. I will
explain briefly.
When I contested for my first term in 2011, Northern Muslims
disagreed fiercely. They claimed that it was their turn to fill the
vacancy in the presidency. They raised a veil of a smoldering
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argument over the Constitution. They needed one of their own to
complete the north's term. It was not about Nigeria any longer.
The reason they gave was that a Southern Christian just left after
eight years in office. Many people of the northern stock
(predominantly Muslims) voiced out their reservations about my
further participation in the race. They wanted me to walk away
from that Constitutional right.
It was a moment of correct definition of the country called
Nigeria. It does not come frequently. This true definition usually
sleeps beneath a lot of pretence. Sadly, it is on the basis of this
mendacity that the world sees and assesses Nigeria, our trajectory
and the conduct of principal actors in this polity. You see, our
constant discord and disquiet are always traceable to the
foundation of Nigeria. Even the name of the country is not
native. Of course, the protagonists would ask, what's in a name?
The chief inheritors and beneficiaries of the chaos are also the
past masters of the duplicity game.
During the 2015 elections, the arguments became further
inflamed and intense. Northern Muslims insisted power had been
with Southern Christians for about sixteen years.
President Yar 'Adua did not complete the North's term because
of his untimely death, which caused very serious tension even
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among members of my party. Some even went to the ridiculous
extent of taking the case to court contesting my nomination on
the grounds that I took the oath of office as president in 2010 to
complete the late president's tenure and in 2011. Therefore, they
claimed I could not take another oath of office as that would mean
doing three terms. The ridicule in the proposition would appear
lost because there had been an attempt at messing with the
Constitution to achieve three terms. This was still in Nigerians'
recent memory, but the system somehow saw the cheap chicanery.
As the storm gathered, intrigue was in abundance. The region and
religion pushers in my party argued that I should not seek re-
election. Many were torn between supporting me and standing up
for their region and religion, which meant a whole lot. When some
individuals alight to preach one Nigeria, those who know them
better simply chuckle. One Nigeria is what I believe is best for the
people of this country. That is my belief and act. However, it
assumes profound differences depending on who is sloganeering
and who actually means it. For some people, one Nigeria is an
organism with mutative powers. Nothing constant. It is a virtual
reality device which they altered and upgraded, depending on the
trend and their "enlightened" personal interest.
The intrigue and tension rose roof high, such that those who
feigned support for me in public glare dived the depths to work
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against me ostensibly out of sight. As I said before, very few
political intrigues are hidden from the president. Those who
appeared to be upstanding faced enormous pressure from their
various constituencies. This was followed by major and minor
betrayals and treachery. Many key party members fell under the
compulsion to cross over to the opposition party. I would attend
to this in Chapter Three in greater detail.
The pressure was sustained and even increased right into the
campaign. By the time of elections proper, it was practically
impossible for my supporters in the north to come out and vote.
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If you knew a thing about Nigerian elections, you just knew that
violence plays a massive role in determining who comes out
victorious and who loses. It was a very sad commentary on the
political setting which passed the baton to us. There were too
many deaths. Too many profanities thrown into the political space
by otherwise eminent personality. There were extremely reckless
phrases like "do or die, garrison commander etc. They all
militarized the political space to the extent that peace was in full
flight. It took our tenure in the presidency to rid the polity and
politicians of that mindset.
This fact easily bends the argument one way or the other over the
deployment of armed forces during elections. The more
vociferous antagonists are usually the ones ready with local
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muscles fully armed for the elections. They would not want
soldiers to spoil the party. What the soldiers do was to give voters
the courage to come out and vote. These are voters who would
have stayed home as warned by their neighborhood thugs. All they
needed to do was a slight display of weapons and psychological
intimidation.
The North is a totally different ball game. There has always been
an order of violence which became useful at several moments of
decision. This violence is usually wrapped in religion and ethnic
robes. For a long time, it was dignified in a shield of military
camouflage.
One of the most traumatizing moments of my presidency was the
cold blooded murders of youth corpers in the north following our
victory in 2011. I thought long and hard over the waste. It just did
not make any sense. How does a parent lose everything like this?
How does a nation kill its future in this manner? I still recall the
spread of their names in the papers. The promise of a very close
tomorrow. They were graduates already. Almost all of them from
the South, and one from North Central... Kogi.
That was a sure threat which told some voters to stay away from
the polling booth. It was one potent threat everyone knew would
be carried out if it caught their fancy. The statement issued before
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and after the elections on dog and baboon served two purposes. It
raised tension before the elections and emboldened wanton
destruction and waste of lives afterwards. The corpers were the
highlight, but many more people died than was reported. For
lovers of peace and country, we never could win. It was a catch 22
situation.
If this was explicable in some evil way, what about the statement
issued by the ACF in the middle of the 2015 campaigns? One
Engineer Abubakar Umar warned Igbos, Yorubas and South-
southerners in the north to be careful of their handling of
northerners in the East. He warned that northerners should be
treated like kings and queens, or else...
Now, this part of his submission is not the tragic definition of
Nigeria. It was not even the brazen seizure of the law by the
deputy scribe of ACF. It was the recount of an earlier carnage.
Abubakar goes on to remind everyone of the wanton waste of the
post-2011 election.
"...Yorubas suffered 480 billion Naira loss in investments
destroyed. Igbo lost 410 billion and the South-south 970
billion...we know these statistics. We have these statistics, so we
expect the Igbos to treat our kinsmen as kings and queens".
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A president does not bare his mind on this in the saddle no matter
how deep the pain runs. This is the kind of threat we speak about.
You do not hear these things and look forward to voting. Indeed,
another threat was coming on the palace terrace of the revered
Kano stool. Some young boys were issuing marching orders to
southerners with a proclaimed ultimatum.
There were the Jumat rages which happened like flash-floods.
There were the moments of amputation in Zamfara. There was
the gory Akaluka stake. A lot strings all the way back to Maitatsine.
Many of these would appear far from elections, but they never
strayed so far from power pursuits and supremacy struggles. As
cattle herders spread all over the country with death and
destruction over resource, so did some leadership in history align
to this by acts. The Ogoni murders, Odi massacre, Zaki Biam,
Bakolori, the Middle Belt current killings and others too
numerous to mention. I mean, how many murders did the choking
Delta waters witness with their oily shimmering eyes? How many
of the children these waters succored returned to their bosoms
with their bloods drawing painful crimson maps on their oily
surfaces. The fish could not witness. A forlorn, altered marine.
No one could possibly forget how the "doctrine of necessity"
came about, following the unnecessary stalemate manufactured
by an anti-constitution, ethno-religious champions who
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masqueraded as democrats and patriots. The tension I saw in the
presidency was about religion and the North-South divide.
Muslim youths were mobilized to frighten PDP members and the
ones who stood firm were simply disenfranchised. These
ceaseless conflicts at the time involving power sharing and power
shifting accounted for the turbulence which would follow and
remain sustained during my tenure.
My Transition Hours is a combination of stories and facts
accurately stated in my words. In this book, I shall focus in depth
on the political platform in Nigeria and the 2015 elections, with a
day by day account of my decisions, personal feelings and
international responses.
Our nation and citizens faced a cascade of challenges over the past
four years (2011-2015). The worst was the vastly increased
menace of Boko Haram with their mindless terror, insane mass
killings, utter savagery, kidnappings of innocent children and
other despicable acts of brutality. The Abduction of Schoolgirls
by Boko Haram Terrorists.
Monday, April 15, 2014
01:00 Hours -
The notification came that heavily armed Boko Haram Islamists
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had arrived in open trucks and quietly abducted about two
hundred girls from a boarding school in Chibok, Borno State in
North-Eastern Nigeria, which is about two hours drive from
Nigeria's border with Cameroon.
On a Monday night, as students slept in their dormitories, gunmen
stormed the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok. The
school had earlier closed because of the danger posed by Boko
Haram terrorists. However, some students were asked to stay
behind because of the ongoing Secondary School Certificate
Examinations (SSCE). They were supposed to take their physics
paper the following day. My wife and I were devastated on
receiving the intelligence report. The country was numb with
shock.
Why did this happen? How did it happen? The girls were
only a bunch of innocent teenagers. A lame question laid heavy on
my mind...wasn't a school supposed to be safe?
Before now, the terrorists had struck in schools in Borno and
criminally murdered kids, but two hundred! It was devastating, to
say the least. This North-East which was the headquarters of the
terrorists was where we also had military men on ground. This is
why the revolting development was very disturbing.
I began to question why these girls were abducted in the night and
taken away in open trucks. Why was it that none of the girls ran
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away? My curiosity was further roused by the information that the
girls left in a very orderly fashion and there were no reports of
gunshots. Was that possible?
My mind was ravaged by a torrent of questions:
Why was there not a teacher or the principal around? The girls
were left all on their own? Who leaves such young girls alone like
that? Where is it done? Someone must have given the girls some
assurance that they were going to a safe place?
What was the significance of transporting the girls through the
forest and not a tarred road?
Why did the girls not jump and run for it at the times that truck
must have slowed down?
Most importantly, what prevented any shootings?
It was a very complicated story. Reports indicated that there was a
broil between the police and terrorists that night, some distance
from the school. Was that a decoy?
Would that not have spooked the girls enough to make them run,
since they all knew the drill in a seriously murderous environment
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like theirs? In my secondary school days, everyone ran on catching
wind of any crisis.
Not one of the security agencies sighted the truck in the dead of
the night carrying two hundred little girls? Not the military, police
or secret service? None?
As if on cue, protests broke out broke out within hours. They were
tightly choreographed and nicely distributed around the country.
They were popping up like poxes on a body prime for it. It was too
fast and too good to be true. Whoever knows the nature of
protests would see through these. Yes, many joined of their own
freewill and many in the bliss of ignorance, just doing good. The
heart of it bore the machination. We should not get this wrong. I