Nigeria, presently, is like an unbelievable illusion; there is simply no logical sense to the direction this country is heading. It is especially worrying when surreal things begin to take shape and one now wonders if this is reality or what.
Just when everyone feels the Nigerian Army (NA) has its hands full in anti-terrorism operations at the Northeast, the NA surprises all by turning itself into a comical moral Sharia police, with scissors in hand, chasing young ones at Aba in Abia State who wear dreadlocks or who have their hair dyed blonde: to the NA this is a very serious “operation;” to everyone else, this is a strange and wasteful order of battle for an army that has so much to do to bring down the rag-tag Islamic terrorists in the shapes of Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen.
Apparently, the mentality in government is that Nigeria is now fully Islamic and Islamic “mores and values” must be enforced amongst the “unbelievers of the South” who dare to wear deadlocked and tinted hair styles; true to form, the federal government is enforcing a codex of the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) to which Nigeria is a card-carrying member. By and by, it is a shame when the NA refuses to engage Boko Haram with its full might and then turns to menace innocent showbiz youngsters in the South with tags of “Yahoo Yahoo Boys” and suchlike demeaning epithets.
Really, what kind of Nigeria is Muhammadu Buhari trying to build? Worse still is the attempt by the NA to deny the report by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) to the effect that 1,000 or more Nigerian Army soldiers were buried in secret graves at Borno State: a central reference point of the WSJ report was the anecdote of the widow of Corporal Adah Tamuno who related that the NA authority tried to con her by showing her an erstwhile unmarked grave with a hurriedly-arranged, quite undignified “tombstone” (name inscription on used plastic bottle) as belonging to her late husband.
Instead of owning up to its administrative and procedural lapses and then retiring its top honchos, the NA summarily put up a brand-new plywood “tombstone” on a yet unmarked grave and proceeded to photograph this so the “whole world will see” that the widow, Mrs. Tamuno, “lied.” This was the most childish PR and spin-job I have noticed in my lifetime.
Sunday Adole Jonah,
Department of Physics, Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State
