BREAKING: Why Ribadu and Oluyede Must Be Sacked Now

The frustration of the everyday Nigerian over the lingering insecurity across the country is palpable and so thick you can literally slice it with a knife.

Whatever any comments anyone makes on these prolonged mayhem against a seemingly helpless nation is no longer new. Everything there is to be said has been said in the past. it’s almost getting to the point where the people of this country are praying for external help. This is more so because from every indication it is becoming obvious that we can not help ourselves.

It’s very obvious that there are more to these protracted killings, maiming, kidnapping for ransoms, displacement of communities by invaders, bombing of places of worship, especially churches, etc than meet the eyes.

However, what is becoming obvious every day is that the origin of these crises, their promoters and the willingness by the government to quell them are so convoluted that one begins to wonder if we are not all victims of a plot by some group of persons to continue to divert our attention from the real problems that confront us. It’s like we are pawns in some chessboard of some insidious characters who are benefiting from the ruins that our nation now is.

If we cannot rout these murderers can’t we also least, name for all to see, their sympathisers and sponsors?

If you can make any meaning from my opening remarks here, then I hail you, because one is so confused, frustrated, despondent with happenings in the country, that it looks like we are getting out of our minds as a people.

After eight years of a lacklustre Muhammadu Buhari reign, some of us shouted Uhuru thinking that with the exit of the sectarian Katsina general, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu government would check these killers since, as I thought, he has no dog in this fight.

How wrong. It is the same sloppy and half-hearted commitment to taking the fight to these men that we have to this day.

Buhari will, without any hesitation, deploy troops to quell any dispute, no matter how small, in the southern parts of the country, but will be making excuses and placating mass murderers and rationalising invasion and forceful occupation of people’s farms and homelands by his Fulani brothers, Boko Haram insurgents and bandits.

We are again under this dispensation daily being let down by some pronouncements, actions, and incoherent submissions by the same people on whose shoulders the president has placed the responsibilities of securing our lives and property.

Everything appears like nothing really changed from Buhari to Tinubu. Same rhetoric and rudderless excuses for non-performance and outright failures.

A minister of defence once told us that bandits and insurgents are in forests that cannot be reached by the military, even when it’s public knowledge that some self-appointed civilian mediators have been going in out of these so-called forests accompanied by military and government officials.

The statement by Nuhu Ribadu, National Security Adviser, advising that we negotiate with bandits because they are our brothers, is unbecoming of the office he occupies in the face of the atrocious conducts of these bandits, insurgents and killer herders.

No rational mind will insist on a non-kinetic approach to halting the unabated killings in the country.

How on earth can we keep placating murderers who, as recently as a few days ago, slaughtered a chief imam, worshipers, and abducted over a 100 women and children who had broken their fast in Ngoshe, Borno State?

Who apart from Ribadu will be proud to associate with these so-called brothers who have no qualms in recording the gruesome torture of innocent people, including generals, for no reason? What manner of brother would kidnap his brothers and sisters and be demanding billions of naira as ransom?

How does Ribadu as Chief security adviser to the president sleep at night after watching all the videos of hapless soldiers and civilians being killed on social media?

Just when you think you should have had enough of these shenanigans, then you are confronted by crazy comments attributed to the Chief of Defence Staff, General Olufemi Oluyede, and you wonder if there will ever be any relief for ordinary Nigerians.

Gen. Oluyede, it was reported, has likened terrorists killing and wreaking havoc in North-East Nigeria to the biblical prodigal son, stating that they deserve rehabilitation because they are citizens.

Mr. Oluyede spoke at the Armed Forces inaugural lecture for the newly established Joint Doctrine and Warfare Centre (JDWC) at the Nigerian Army Conference Centre in Abuja.

“Talking about Operation Safe Corridor, so many people have asked that question: why do we need to rehabilitate criminals? They all should be killed because they have killed people. Well, that may make sense,” Oluyede said.

Like the prodigal son, he argued, Nigerian terrorists deserve ‘rehabilitation’ not death.

Comparing terrorists to the prodigal son, who took his portion of inheritance from his father, left home, squandered it, and returned home to his father, Mr. Oluyede argued that it is important to allow terrorists to repent of their own volition rather than killing them.

Meanwhile, while waiting for them to repent, the mass killings, kidnapping for ransom remain unabated.

In a vain attempt at damage control, the Defence Headquarters, immediately dismissed as misleading the report that the Armed Forces of Nigeria are prioritising leniency for terrorists, following remarks by the CDS.

The DHQ clarified that Operation SAFE CORRIDOR “is not an amnesty programme but a carefully structured deradicalisation, rehabilitation and reintegration initiative targeted strictly at surrendered, screened and low-risk former combatants.”

The very same spurious and dubious safe corridors that the Buhari government used to let off murderers. The same deradicalisation, rehabilitation and reintegration initiatives that failed woefully under Buhari. The same escape route was open only for bandits, insurgents and killer herders that were never open to IPOB members and Nnamdi Kanu. The same route that the military has been accused of using to recruit murderers into the armed forces.

Gen Oluyede can save his sermon and spare us what is clearly an embarrassment to anybody with commonsense.

Under what guise can Gen Oluyede compare the prodigal son who spent the riches given to him by his father, to a group of soulless, bloodthirsty animals who have been killing thousands of defenceless innocent Nigerians? Oluyede should know, if he is a Christian, that no amount of material wealth can equate one human life. The General should also know that this strategy failed woefully under Buhari and will continue to fail. How can they reintegrate murderers who have been receiving billions of naira from the government and the people as ransom? What other occupation can be as rewarding? What nature of repentance does Oluyede expect from islamic jihadists whose only mission is to sack indigenous people and occupy their lands? What manner of genuine repentance does Oluyede expect from felons who have the blood of innocent people in their hands and who derive sadistic pleasure in watching their so-called brothers (no thanks to Ribadu) die and wail in agony?

Surely, these are not the men we need to rescue us from these evil men. Gen Oluyede and Ribadu, are not the right ones for these jobs. They clearly belong to the category of people who have continually explained away, condoned and tolerated murderers who are not the least sorry for their atrocities.

If President Tinubu is sincere about arresting the spate of killings across the country, these men and their likes are not the ones for the job.