MUCH ADO ABOUT A TWEET!
When Donald Trump sneezed, Nigerians from all corners of the world caught catarrh!
In my article of 30th January 2025, titled: ‘DONALD TRUMP, THE MISSING PART OF AFRICA’S LEADERSHIP JIGSAW?’, I concluded by asking the rhetorical question whether Donald Trump could be the missing part of Africa’s leadership jigsaw? Not surprisingly, the message, like the Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13:1-9, fell in some cases by the way side, and the fowls in human skin came and devoured them! Only very few fell into good human ground and brought forth good fruits. While the former merely hissed after reading it, the latter, with richer understanding, thumbed it up. The rest is now history.
In relation to President Donald Trump’s tweet about the security challenges in Nigeria, there’s the need for the government to purge the security agencies of the moles within the security apparatuses and stop treating suspects with kid’s gloves. Amnesty for bandits should be a thing of the past if the government is poised to showing any modicum of seriousness in its attempt at solving our country’s surmountable security challenges. Gumi must be kept out of business forthwith!
With the noise that many Nigerians have been making in relation to the level of insecurity in Nigeria which had fallen on deaf ears, it is sad to record that it took only a threat of an invasion through a single tweet by a foreigner for our politicians to start running helter-skelter.
Let me state unequivocally (and unapologetically) that I DO NOT SUPPORT any form of invasion in (and of) our country. Very far from it! However, if the THREAT of an invasion would drive sense into the heads of our politicians and ginger them up into taking decisive action towards ensuring that ordinary Nigerians can sleep with their two eyes closed, so be it. I knew we could not continue like this till ‘Thy Kingdom come’! I envisaged that one day, one party would give way.
I don’t believe that the government is helpless. It is just a question of misplacement of priorities. When Buhari was ready to speak to Nnamdi Kanu in a language that he would understand, he abducted him from Kenya, and he has since remained not only incarcerated but also ‘castrated’. If that was not an expression of intent, then I don’t know the appropriate nomenclature for it. When he, (Buhari), wanted to speak to Sunday Igboho in a language that he would understand, he deployed many security operatives to his private residence, killed innocent individuals, and even arrested a Cat because the accompanying herbalist told them it could be Sunday! He even pursued him to Benin Republic in a failed attempt at repatriating him to Nigeria so that he could be treated to some bitter lessons!
Meanwhile, the same Buhari deliberately decided to close his eyes to the marauding activities of the AK47 wielding criminal elements within the herders! It was the same Buhari, who on 13 October 2010, led a team of Arewa Consultative Forum to engage with the then Governor Lam Adesina of Oyo State to interfere (not intervene) in the skirmishes between the Fulani herdsmen and the people of Oke-Ogun in Oyo State. So, it was no surprise that he feigned ignorance of their nefarious activities throughout his eight years of tenancy in Aso Rock. The herders seized the opportunity to operate as if they were licensed to rape, maim, and kill!
Against the backdrop of the hues and cries that greeted the ‘Muslim-Muslim’ ticket, many Nigerians expected that President Tinubu would be more proactive in nibbing the problem of insecurity in the bud, but rather his political calculations evidently took precedence over and above the security of lives and properties of Nigerians. All entreaties to make him face the problem headlong were dismissed by his tireless political cheerleaders (who are never in short supply) for obvious reasons. Now, the chickens have come home to roost!
It is no surprise that only one tweet by an outsider is now causing him and his government sleepless nights.
Instead of engaging the services of his notorious and chameleonic rabble rousers for the purpose of embarking on the usual name-calling, the President should be diplomatic in engaging with the appropriate authorities (internal and external) while simultaneously taking decisive and honest steps towards ensuring that the miscreants and their sponsors are kept out of circulation. The Yorubas would say: ‘Ẹni tó ń gbẹlẹ ló ń sìnkù, ẹni tó ń sọkún, aruwo lásán ló ń pa’! In other words, it’s time for action as opposed to a time for grammar spewing by the government’s duly appointed and self-appointed town criers. History (if not successfully removed from the nation’s educational curriculum) would record the current affairs against the name of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and not of his praise-singers!
The time to act is now.
A word is enough for the wise only.
Caleb Arogundade
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