History teaches us about past events. It answers questions of ‘how’ ‘where’ and ‘when’ did events occur. The essence of seeking answers to such questions is nothing more than to reflect and avoid repeating same mistakes. In Nigeria, history was a subject in the before it was removed from the secondary school curriculum.
About four weeks ago, around 8pm to be precise, my immediate younger brother who happens to be in his 20s as usual parked his motorcycle at home. Few minutes after parking the bike, he received a friend’s phone call, asking him to lend him the bike to attend a reception! Alas, my brother refused to honour the request, but he promised to take him to the venue of the reception.
Despite not being used to going out without informing our mom, but on that fateful day, around 9:30pm he took his bike without informing her! The clock ticked 11:30 pm, yet, this young brother was still not home and we tried his phone where it rang, but the call wasn’t picked. To cut the story short, on that day, I along with our parents couldn’t sleep till dawn, wandering where he was! Needless to tell you the situation our mom found herself into, for you all know the bond between mother and child. The next day, we got to know that he was arrested by police patrol team on his way back home from the reception.
Around February, 2014 a deadly attack was carried out by Boko Haram terrorists on Federal Government College Buni Yadi in Yobe state, in which the lives of about 50 students were lost. In that same year, the same Boko Haram invaded a female boarding school in Chibok and took away hundreds of girls from the school.
That happened at a time when the Northeastern region was faced with heartbreaking number of out of school children. The tragedy of Chibok girls’ abduction and the killing of Buni Yadi students led many parents to stop their wards from attending school, out of fear of losing them. This was done during the era of the administration that northerners regarded as “the most clueless”.
Efforts were made to rescue those abducted school girls, a politically clouded campaign team known as Bring Back Our Girls (#BBG) was formed by the then major opposition figures to force the government to rescue those girls. Airwaves and internet were always buzzing with Chibok stories, yet, the efforts were unsuccessful until the present administration tried and rescued some of them.
Later on in 2018, the same terror group abducted hundreds of children in the same region, this time in a different state. The abduction of girls in Dapchi drew the attention of the local and international media, which led them to raise their voices at the same time. Fortunately, most of them were rescued, but there remains a girl that has not been released by their abductors.
These and many more occurred in a region ravaged by high rate of illiteracy, poverty and lack of social amenities! Not only that, the region has strong shock absorbers to survive the effects of Boko Haram activities.
On December 11, the president arrived the ancient city of Daura (his home town) for a one week vacation. The president and some of his entourage arrived Katsina via a plane, and were later transported to Daura via helicopter. To date, all his trips from Abuja-Katsina, he neither used a car nor road. Even his trip to Daura, he flew a helicopter. This is to tell us that he might not be aware of the dangers of Nigeria’s death traps (roads) and how kidnappers consistently attack road users.
Some hours after the arrival of the president, a group of armed men with AK-47s invaded a government school in Kankara (a town of short distance away from the president’s vacation home) and abducted about 600 students, although, later on almost half of them were lucky to escape from the kidnappers along the way, but over 300 are still with the kidnappers or unaccounted for!
In an effort to contain the situation, the governor of Katsina state, Aminu Masari ordered the closure of all boarding schools in the state pending new security arrangement. As usual, the president only managed to express condemnation of the “cowardly attack”.
As stated above, the school that witnessed that ugly abduction is only a few kilometers away from the president’s home town. Although, he was on hand that he managed to visit his farm house and check on his animals, yet, he only sent a delegation to the grieving parents!
During the #EndSARS violence, the speaker of the House of Representatives vowed not to approve the 2021 budget until a provision to compensate people of his constituency and region that lost their lives and properties on the hand of #EndSARS is included in the budget! Alas, this is happening at a time when many were killed in the North.
Last August, a day after the Beirut explosion that claimed the lives of over 300 persons and rendered thousands homeless, the then Lebanese prime minister announced his resignation because he felt that as the C-in-C of the country, he failed to secure the lives of his country men and women!
During the campaign tension, insecurity was the major weapon used to oust the Jonathan government, the current president was quoted as saying, “Jonathan should vacate and give way to a competent hand to govern the country”. Unfortunately, insecurity is now all over the North-western part of the country.
If history is something of importance to our leaders, they would’ve adopted the like of rotational expectation theory and use what happened in Buni Yadi, Chibok and Dapchi to predict and prevent the occurrence of the recent attack on Kankara school.
Finally, this Kankara scenario is a litmus test for the president to look into history with passion for future deterrence and use his power to bring in ambitious, fresh and capable hands from the military with feasible and contemporary ideas to end the insecurity menace ravaging the country. And for the then globetrotting Chibok #BBG campaigners, this is another chance for you to give your all for those abducted young Nigerians with zeal for education to be free from their abductors and to pursue their educational careers in a secure environment!
Sagir writes via [email protected]
