ABUJA (Sundiata Post) I will not use the abduction of the Dapchi girls against the president. The first reason for this is I’m not partisan and the second reason is that throughout my ten years on facebook, I’ve been advising people not to use security issues for politics; so I won’t go against my own advice.
One of the factors that crippled the counterinsurgency against boko haram was that the insurgency came at a time when the nation was deeply polarised as a result of the aftermath of President Yar Adua’s death and the 2011 elections. The boko haram phenomenon was therefore freely tapped for political ends by both sides of the political divide. As a result, we couldn’t forge a consensus on what the insurgency was about, who was behind it and what we needed to do. And we couldn’t identify the main factor for why the counterinsurgency was failing i.e. corruption. Instead, we deployed conspiracy theories which we hoped could cause the maximum political damage. We couldn’t recognise and act in good time when the Chibok girls were abducted because we thought that political enemies were just spreading falsehood. And boko haram realised that the opposing political camps hated each other more than they hated it and so it took advantage of that.
The Dapchi abduction shows that our enemy remains boko haram and that as much as we want it to be the case, the group’s insurgency operations don’t fit into our conspiracy theories. The only way forward therefore, is to unite and face the group squarely and stop bringing party politics into it. All those who bring politics into this matter, whether they are supporters or opponents of the president, should know that they are helping boko haram and are making it more difficult for the group to be defeated. Boko haram is not interested in our politics, its only interest is to harm us and ultimately defeat us. Therefore, our only interest should be its defeat.
Source: Facebook/RajiBello