Mr. President’s Profound Ineptitude

idiom. In the past three years, terrorists be it of the MEND or Boko

Harem hue, have fooled President Jonathan more than two dozen times

yet goes the same promise and platitude to catch them and deal with

into the diatribe of fools that have been on parade on the national

to say that we’ve had enough of this political naivety emanating

from Aso Rock mixed with gargantua sized ineptitude masquerading as

leadership. It seems that President Jonathan’s problem is not

particularly terrorism but lack of courage (perhaps in every other

areas i.e. Judiciary, or electric power or structural reforms to the

have a President who cannot lead himself talk less of leading others!

Here is a man when given opportunity to select a cabinet we can all

be proud of, only sought to recycle the same old garbage! Can you

imagine? His start studded cabinet had stars discovered by others,

spent materials and cousins of theirs! What a President we got our

man had goodwill beckoning on to him from day one when he took power

in very uncertain circumstances, but here is a man so adept at

frittering away his Goodluck one begins to wonder if his name is not

an oxymoron! Here is a man who can take Nigeria in a different

direction, yet have chosen to fiddle while the nation’s cities are

burned with bombings, kidnappings and armed robbery! Here is a man,

clearly out of his own league and cannot seem to find help in

discharge of his scared commission. Shame on us if strewn with this

inept and totally clueless leadership we wish to confront the many

of the matter is that ineptitude and corruption that begins from the

top are the root causes of the security problems Nigeria grapple with

today. The story of ineptitude is incomplete without that of

corruption so we’ll begin with the later. It did not begin with

President Jonathan, but if he wishes to be transformational he cannot

renders us collectively unsafe; for how much does it really cost to

smuggle a bomb on any plane or into any building in Nigeria? If it

takes twenty naira to drive without a license or incomplete

documentation on our roads, and one thousand multiples of that to fly

with an expired passport or with a banned item be it product or

artifacts (an orgy of corruption which we witness daily in our

international airports), then what does it take to smuggle an

corruption of the Nigerian kind is now a disease which is now looked

upon as a necessity than the enemy and here is the sad trend: it is

now coupled with misplaced priorities! Just recently, the Delta State

of her school in such utter state of disrepair that it puts Somali

schools to shame! This is a state that have earned over $4bn in just

five years under the current administration, yet the provision of

common amenities to educate the mind is lacking. Under the President

We and the media can look the other away as if everything is alright,

but it is not! We are ruled by criminals! When you sow wind, you reap

police men in Nigeria are armed robbers (aren’t they always armed?)

literally robbing citizens in broad daylight of their hard earned

money yet we claim them as the first layer of our internal security!

Can such policemen that will look the other way when they should

arrest a “big man” in four wheel SUVs be relied upon to protect

the nation’s assets from terrorists that will spare no resources to

is Mr. President to preach anti-corruption to the average policeman

when his net worth since his happy sojourn from civil servant to

deputy governor and now President is now up almost five thousand

times while the rest of the nation is thrice poorer? Of course, this

is with the full knowledge that his gross pay in these eleven years

while making him comfortable should never make him rival the likes of

our billionaire barons in wealth which he reportedly is according to

of ineptitude, it is only in Nigeria that successive bombings and

kidnappings have not resulted in mass resignation of leaders of the

security agencies and their political supervisors. But why should it?

Ineptitude is contagious and that starts with the lack of good ideas

from the President down to the motor park legislature that presides

of platitudes and usual braggadocio talk of dealing with the

culprits, or the insanely shortsighted decisions of shutting down

city roads and constituting a nuisance with AK-47 totting security

men, what we need from President Jonathan is a plan to revamp our

is very clear that the Nigeria Police, Civil Defense Corps, State

Security Service, Civilian and Military Intelligence Agencies

(including the Directorate of Military Intelligence and National

Intelligence Agency) are up and over their head when it comes to

tackling the core security challenges of Nigeria in 2011. For these

agencies, nothing but complete revamp will suffice. This is

can we have a policing force that is so detested, so disrespected, so

underpaid and ill-equipped, so out of touch and yet insanely

disruptive as the Nigeria Police and yet expect to secure the general

population? How can a police force so centralized and defective in

structure be capable of securing a multi-ethnic population in a large

swath of varying climatic and vegetation zones like Nigeria? How can

a Fulani officer be effective within the creeks of Niger Delta in

obtaining intelligence capable of securing that population from the

menace of piracy, bunkering and kidnapping? How can a Christian Igbo

policeman obtain good intelligence from the desert dwelling Muslim

Borno man in Maiduguri? The burden of the unitary military foisted

constitution on the effectiveness of our security apparatus has

inability of our policy makers to make bold decisions to reform, and

not stick to the inadequacy of a system evolved from the insecurities

and short sightedness of the post-civil war era under the regimen of

Generals is killing our people. The orthodoxy of a unitary security

system that undermines the ethos of grassroots community policing is

maddening! The current system where policemen are quartered away in

barracks, from general population like the colonial era when they

were occupiers rather than enforcers of community evolved standards

current system needs real examination by true reformists which should

lead to a complete system overhaul. The duplicity of functions where

everyone is responsible for everything and no one is responsible for

anything is fast making our country a joke. Why would we need a

then are the fundamental objectives or duties of the Nigerian state

when her citizens sleep with one eye open, afraid of the willful

intrusion on our peace by evil men sometimes state sponsored? If the

President lacks the courage to secure Nigerians, then he must resign