Cartelopia By Aisha Yolah
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Earlier this week I asked Malam Garba Shehu if really, the powers-that-be listen to any of the passionate commentary that Nigerian journalism has always been known for. Garba Shehu, one of this country’s most accomplished journalists, writes on the back page of the Wednesday edition of Peoples Daily every week.
His commentary as well as that of a number of other deeply knowledgeable commentators e.g. Dr.Hakeem Baba-Ahmed (Peoples Daily, Monday’s ) , have become especially valuable to those of us who know that this whole Boko Horror (BH) thing is a more complex matter than the awful and standard ‘Muslims-are-slaughtering-Christians’ charge. As things seem to go from bad to outright ridiculous, one wonders if anyone ‘important’ is listening.
Last week we looked at the damage to our ‘national’ credibility being done by the recurring impression that we are being lied to by those in positions of power. The view from another land nearby, South Africa’s Daily Maverick, was not flattering. This is not to say that governments and security forces the world over are always 100% transparent over every single issue. Real politick as we know from history has always involved a little smoke and mirrors. In times of war some, careful self-censorship on the part of a country’s press has been standard procedure amongst advanced democracies to say nothing about more opaque dictatorships.
Smoke and mirrors
The difference with us is that it’s smoke and mirrors all of the time. War or no. And it is neither careful nor successful on the part of either the government and or those members of the press who think they have something to gain by not telling the facts straight. As for our current circumstances of people dying on our streets, in markets and homes, by day or night, at the hands of ‘fellow’ citizens or nationals (whether the killers are security men or thugs/militant/terrorists) the purpose of such government propaganda is difficult to understand.
If the BH are minimising their casualties to boost their ‘terror factor’, are the security forces similarly trying to boost their PR? The question the government should ask is this: is it boosting the government’s PR? Clearly if you can hide casualties from us, bloody civilians, I do not think the same can be said about the comrades of those that have fallen.
But since we are not fighting another country why would we not want to know the real figure of our sacrifices- individually and collectively? As members of the police, army and other joint task forces sustain casualties it is very likely that their ranks will know very well what is really going on.
If they do not know then there is the likelihood that rumour and speculation will take hold. So this hiding of the names and numbers of those killed in the line of duty does not honour their sacrifice and furthermore allows for speculation that may be worse than the reality. Surely the ramifications on morale are unquantifiable.
Typical behaviour of our security forces is an urge to hide truth not for anything as reasonable as the need to ‘keep up morale’, but rather to hide colossal incompetence or duplicity. I stress the incompetence of the leadership, not of the lowly officer, soldier or policemen.
Scores of police corporals, sergeants and members of immigration, customs and prisons services – as well as bystanders (traders, artisans, people on the streets etc) are being gunned down though they had nothing to do with the killing of Mohammed Yusuf and his men back in 2009. As someone has rightly pointed out this so-called BH insurgency is really a war in which the poor are killing the poor!
The best way for government to boost its image and justify the billions being spent on security is to do the right thing. Like catering for the rank and file (mostly) of the security forces who are in the frontline - properly. The routine request for ‘pure water’ that I got even last night at one checkpoint is not only the result of years of bad training. Sometimes these poor men in uniform are really penniless, at least in this current crisis that has taken hold.
No money, no work
Mobile police units that were sent to Kano, from various parts of the country were despatched with no warning or preparation. Such emergency movement is in keeping with the requirements of the moment. But they were left in Kano for days on end without proper provision made for food, drink or accommodation. They slept rough for days, and may still be doing so not because their locations (city, not bush or desert) warrant it; Simply because some officer in charge of provisioning just has not done his job.
Weeks later from the persistence of stories about ‘levies’ being extracted despite the ‘revolutionary’ words of the new inspector general, my guess is they still have not been properly catered to. Why won’t they make mistakes, be even more trigger happy than we know them to be? Trigger-terrified. Hungry. And demoralised.
As for civilian casualties, hiding those figures surely has no justification –even in conventional war. Whose PR is at stake here? BH’s or Security’s? I wonder. The government and security services can hardly engender confidence or trust this way. I recommend the Peoples Daily editorial of last Friday on the Kano couple who were killed on the Tuesday following the Kano attacks of January 17th 2012. Even their bodies have not been produced. Where there are no bodies then there is no crime? Preposterous. And the government has not said a peep about this tragedy. Sadly, the killings, claims and counterclaims continued this week.
State sponsored spam
Add to this the state sponsored spam (SSS) reserved for certain newspapers about what suspects arrested are spewing out: how suicide bombers and cars are selected, and more allegations against unnamed traditional rulers, politicians...Northerners. None of this is ever denied, confirmed or discouraged by the secret police or the government of Goodluck.
But please note: not a word on where the BH leader maybe hiding! Our suspects haven’t got round to disgorging that info yet. As a former editor and colleague Abdulazeez Abdullahi has pointed out in his column (Peoples Daily, Tuesday) this ‘government mendacity’- big big lying- will have to stop at some point, as lessons from other lands indicate. I imagine it cannot be nice to have ‘honour’ forced down your throat. On this one – security and the casualties among our families – someone should please, do the right thing, and at least honour the dead.
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