 Published
March 23rd, 2010
Of all the multiple failings of
the Nigerian leaders, especially the political class, their refusal to bind
themselves to the dictates of the social forces that underpin their commitments
to the leadership cause, sticks out like a sore thumb. And so, whenever the
chips are down, rather than coming to terms with the dictates of leadership
challenges usually thrown up by the inherent social forces, our leaders are
wont to do either of two things: first, when they successfully surmounts the
challenge, they go ahead to acquire for themselves air of false omniscience
that predisposes them to think of themselves as indispensable to the
system. Second, otherwise, they resorts
to blame game and scapegoatism when leadership failure stares them in the face
in an atmosphere of leadership challenge. It is usually a far cry from our
leaders to take responsibility for leadership failure, learn from the
experience and move on.
And, like a chip off the old
block, Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau state behaved true to type, following his
utterances in the wake of the recent successive gruesome massacre of the Berom
tribe as a result of primordial quest for political dominance between the
Hausa-Fulani pastoralists and the sedentary Berom tribe of plateau state, an
attack that has turned the once peaceful serenity of plateau state to a
Golgotha with its own peculiar peace: the graveyard peace.
As the gory tales and video
footage of the brutal massacre of predominantly helpless children and old
people dominated the global air waves, particularly, the bloodcurdling jeremiad
of the woman who helplessly watched from afar as the invaders axed and
butchered her husband, and ripped open, with gruesome glee, the intestines of
her three under-aged kids, one lost all appetite ( no pun intended) for
Governor Jang’s bland blame game of putting the entire blame squarely at the
door step of the GOC, 3 rd Amoured
Division, Jos, Major General Maina whose negligence and bias, Jang would
insinuate, gave the invaders advantage over their victims. More disgusting is
the Governor’s statement that at about 9 pm of the fateful day of the attack,
he received a text message from someone in the village intimating him of the
suspicious movement of armed persons around the village, and all the Governor
could do in the circumstance was to cavalierly call the said GOC ( who has even
denied receiving any such call from the Governor) and thereafter, by the
Governor’s own admission, went back to sleep, snoring away till at about 3pm
when he was woken up by the cracking sound of firearms, signaling the
commencement of the massacre.
Now, pray, in a volatile state
as Plateau State that has been bedeviled by religious and ethnic violence for
close to fifteen years, does it not border on crass naivety or sheer
irresponsibility for a Governor to prefer the comfort and palatial deluxe of
the Government House and doing no more than making off-handed calls while the
blood of his people, whose mandate and taxes gave him the authority and comfort
he has ensconced himself with, gush out in ceaseless agonizing flow in the
hands of their assailants. I have refused to be taken in, like others, by the
usual excuse being bandied about by the Governor and shared by many of his
counter-parts, that they are chief Security officers in their states merely by
name as no security agency is responsible to them. One only gets to hear such
excuses when there is leadership failure, if not, from whom do the security
agencies, especially the police, take orders from to help rig elections in
favour of an incumbent Governor, as our experience has shown? What is the guarantee that if the security
apparatus in a state were to be under the control of the Governors, the
security will fare better and not become like any other institutions under the
Governors suffering from systemic decay?
The bottom line, Mr. Governor,
is charismatic leadership, the type that makes a good leader think proactively
and not necessarily relying on the obviously unworkable existing structures to
power his visions. If Governor Jang had exhibited a modicum of such charisma he
would have been able to take advantage of his position to sensitize and
influence his people to form vigilante groups (which is lawful in the eye of
law) with which he could easily have exchanged useful information when he
received the first text message informing him of the presence of armed persons
earlier in the day but who later turned out to be the murderous invaders. With
that, whoever that was in charge of the state security but looked the other way
when the invaders came would have been beaten to his own game. Methink it is
high time our leaders were made to face the law for such criminal negligence.
* CHRIS EDACHE AGBITI, ESQ.
A COMMENTATOR ON
NATIONAL ISSUES
,
PRACTISES LAW IN THE LAW FIRM OF OBLA & CO. 10, ZAMBEZI CRESCENT, MAITAMA, ABUJA |
