Now that the militants are back home
Finally the amnesty deadline has passed. The militants have handed over their weapons (or those they cannot hide) President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua must be having some sound sleep.
Let’s hope that in two months time, the power situation in Nigeria will improve; no more Nigerians and foreigners will be taken hostage.
Of course the oil export numbers should improve and the money available to spend should also increase very considerably.
For the militants? They can now move freely; chase the most beautiful girls on the streets of Abuja; but the most fashionable cars around and avail themselves of the choicest properties around. Of course for those who know they can have the best economic advisers to help them wash the money they stashed up blowing oil fields, extorting from oil companies, conniving with thieves of oil and largesse from government agents.
For us, the wretched of the earth, let us hope that the militants have truly repented and will no longer abduct people, even innocent kids. Let us pray that they will no longer have a reason to take up some of the arms they have hidden and let us pray that those arms don’t blow up in the face of innocent people. Above all, we need to pray that this handshake across the creeks does not encourage other dispossessed youths in other parts of the country to take up arms also. For they may just imagine that militancy maybe the easiest route to a presidential handshake.
However, it would be greatly appreciated if the repented militants would be given a facility tour of Nigeria to see how their oil has enriched places like Taraba, Jigawa, Sokoto, Plateau, Gombe, Adamawa and Borno states. When they go round and see that all parts of Nigeria are in dire need of development, they may just consider joining the fight for electoral reforms. For it is only when the people can select, discipline or remove their leaders that we can begin to consider issues of development.
Of course President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua knows very well that if the current state of anomie continues and the poverty sinks its teeth deeper into the skin of Nigerians, militancy will outlive his amnesty. In any case, militancy simply put is lawlessness, as defined by government. How lawful is the current government and its official… not simply about elections? Militants in a state that is failing like Nigeria, simply do by other means what government officials and even security agencies are doing. Thank God, at least Yar’Adua does not have the excuse not to give us 600 megawatts of power by December.
