Resurgent insecurity and PMB’s legacies

BY ABU DUNIYA
There are several clandestine plots to frustrate and blur the legacies of President Muhammadu Buhari in battling the multifaceted insecurities to a standstill in Nigeria. Some politicians who are pulling the strings are gradually exposing themselves by unguarded public exclamations.

What is however a common denominator with these ex-governors is the vagueness of their insistence to be in the Senate. Every one of them, without exception retires from governorship into the Senate in pursuit of higher political ambitions at the national level.

One can excuse the underperformance of some of these ex-governors; but its painful to forgive them for plunging their states into insecurities, penury, hunger, poverty and disease. One becomes angrier that these former governors are also neophytes in legislative business.

The contributions of such ex-governors to debates and motions in the parliament during plenaries infuriates, lacks depth and wisdom. The national question is often thrown overboard; while patriotism is unconscionably sent on sabbatical leave.

Less than a year in the Senate, a senator divulged his motives. With such outpourings, it leaves no one in doubt that he migrated into the Senate in search of his personal greener pastures on the political turf. He is not in the senate to either serve the interest of his constituents or Nigeria, but someone who fits into the description of a vagabond in power.

He nurses personal political dreams that’s why he is hibernating in the Senate, which is his inalienable right. But what is repugnant in his conduct is the desperation to run down personalities and institutions to achieve his ambition.

Today, Boko Haram has morphed into a major national security threat, with its variant in ISWAP terrorism, terminating thousands of precious lives; destruction of properties estimated at over eight billion dollars. If there is a state in Nigeria whose memory invokes pain in Nigerians is Borno state because of Boko Haram atrocities.

That is where it started, mushroomed and grew into a national plaque.  President Buhari and the current Security Chiefs brought sanity in the counter-terrorism campaigns in the Northeast and Borno state in particular.

While seeking to shoot himself into limelight, and diminish President Buhari’s legacies on insecurity, he is using the unfortunate Boko Haram attack on Auno village, near Maiduguri which terminated the lives of some travelers as his launchpad.

Dissatisfied that he has not vibrated enough he in another separate public statement advised the Nigerian Defence Headquarters (DHQ) to constitute a panel of inquiry into the insurgents killings in Auno village.

He said of the insurgents attacks, “Of them all, the incident at Auno on Sunday night has been the most dehumanizing and disturbing. As Senator representing Borno Central where Auno is situated, I have the option of lobbying my colleagues and sponsoring a motion for the Senate to constitute an investigative panel on the Auno incident, which clearly begs for some answers.”

He passionately played to sentiments by endearingly referring to his constituents in trauma of terrorism. But he was mute when the 2020 defence was deliberated in the Senate and a meagre sum allocated to security agencies in the age of multiple battles with insurgencies. At the point of debates on proper funding of the Military.

It’s a bad game for him because Nigerians are wiser. With his present antics, he has rather courted the image of a desperate political saboteur who thinks of himself alone. He smacks of a leader who can even sacrifice or compromise the peace and security of his people for personal political ambitions.

Duniya is a public affairs analyst and wrote from ATBU, Bauchi