It beats every sense of reasoning when the machinery of the Federal
Government like the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, bemused
the world with the statement that the former Adamawa State Governor,
Admiral Murtala Nyako (popularly called Baba Mai Mangoro) has escaped from
the country after he was impeached as governor. From other sources
Nigerians were informed that the once vocal and overconfident man from the
northern Nigeria could not be pinned down for arrest after he was impeached
and the immunity he enjoyed as governor dropped.
Nigerians are not sure of the face and the pride with which the Federal
Government would take to announce him wanted, since the speculation was
rife that it was under pressure to do just that, when it could not make an
arrest of such a significant figure, then your gaze is good as mine on its
fate for a petty criminal in the street.
The Federal Government has behaved like a toothless dog, only to bark that
it wanted the former governor arrested and put-on-trial over alleged
prowling of Adamawa State treasury and treason against Nigeria. It was also
spite on the security agents who reportedly curbed for Nyako from Yola, the
Adamawa State capital to Abuja, the federal seat of power, without a trace
of him. What the common Nigerians were told was that the security agents
were frustrated at last in this regard.
If truly the ex-governor committed any treason against the Federal
Government or fingered the treasury of his home state, he ought to have
been subjected to a house arrest immediately he was de-kitted of the
immunity he once enjoyed. It’s like a medicine after death the story that
Nyako’s security aides conversely whisked him out of Yola, thereby making
those that wanted to arrest him as soon as he was sacked from office inept
security agents.
Is Nyako in Sambisa Forest? While the Federal Government has said that the
man who has shown it how not to be a dull brain is on the run, Nyako’s
spokesman, Sajoh Ahmed was credited to have debunked such a lazy man’s
contention with the following lines: “Governor is not on the run. He left
Yola on the same day of the impeachment. I don’t know where he is at the
moment. I am now in my own house. It is wrong to say he is on the run.” In
some quarters there is a question of why is he on the run as if he is not a
human being who should know when danger lurks around. What the people with
this line of thought of why is he on the run should be asking is why the
security agents not trapped him as soon as he was impeached.
It is not certain that it is mainly in Nigeria that thunder strikes at the
same place twice. A man who was suspected to have caused heinous things
while in office was allowed to escape arrest at the glaring and wide-opened
eyes of the Federal Government and its agents. Nigerians can understand the
emptiness that their security agents have become and the parochial nature
they operate, not even as the man called Nyako was a serious suspect who
was tongue-lashing the entire country with his dubious memo in which he was
citing the entire population of the north against the Nigerian government.
Nayako could be said that he lacked political conventionality but what do
we make of the security agents. However, this has revealed that President
Goodluck Jonathan might not be after some politicians as the speculation
was everywhere. This is said because if he was, it would be a hollow on his
part that he allowed Nyako whom it was believed that wanted him out of
office, abscond without a trace of him. Could this be that there is
something fishy in the whole drama that the parties involved do not want
Nigerians to know about the whereabouts of Nyako?
George Washington as if he was advising the present day Nigerians, would
say: When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen. Be
courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried
before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow
growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is
entitled to the appellation.
He continued: Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own
government. Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder. There can
be no greater error than to expect, or calculate, upon real favors from
nation to nation. It is an illusion which experience must cure, which a
just pride ought to discard.
Washington said that he does not mean to exclude altogether the idea of
patriotism, even when he knows it exists, and he knows it has done much in
the present contest. But he will venture to assert, that a great and
lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be
aided by a prospect of interest, or some reward. To be prepared for war is
one of the most effectual means of preserving peace. He said that he hates
deception, even where the imagination only is concerned. Liberty, when it
begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.
How Nyako escaped beats every canal imagination and this may be connected
to the unfinished fight against corruption in Nigeria. The escape of Nyako
has further widened the security predicaments that the country is facing.
Do not say that the people and their government in power know how to shield
the likes of Nyako into the Sambisa to evade arrest and at the same time
would be the first to deafen the ears of Nigerians that such a man has
escaped.
The presidency should not inform us that it is ordering the Attorney
General of the Federation, AGF, to prepare charges against Nyako, when it
has woefully failed on its side to make an arrest before the situation
degenerated to this. He who goes to equity, they say, must go with clean
hands. Where are the clean hands of the Federal Government? Maybe, a
committee should be formed to fish out Nyako wherever he might be.
