Tweets: the General Goofed!

698

In a statement published on Twitter @mbuhari addressing the question of insecurity earlier in the week, he dwelt on critical national infrastructures. He referred to the agitations for secession as examples of the widespread insecurity but refused to speak about the cases of banditry, kidnapping and herders-farmers clashes.

That is on one hand a deliberate attempt to ethnicize insecurity, which will see to its further degeneration. And on the other, it is an attempt to push the burden of the systemic failure of the regime, particularly on the suffering masses.

He thus missed the fact that it is this systemic failure that is manifested in poor health, poor wages and mass sack of workers, police brutality, unemployment, fuel hike, and epileptic electricity that inspire the various agitations. His threat is not a sign of seriousness to address the numerous crises bewildering the people rather it is a sign of unrepentance and repressive disposition which will compound the crises. We can’t forget comrades strong-spirited stance at the Lekki toll-gate and other barricades of the #EndSARS, and the state’s bloodied reaction.

That statement is not just disingenuous and insensitive, it also shows his class orientation all along, he and his likes put property and perhaps cattle, first and above the working people of Nigeria. And that is neither some honest mistake nor confusion, it is actually conscious action to defend their class interests.

It was at a meeting of the Inter-agency Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES) that the INEC Chair, Mr Mahmoud Yakubu first mentioned the attacks on critical national infrastructure in recent time. That was a prompt for the @mbuhari’s reactionary statement.

At the meeting the INEC chair made it known that 29 of the 41 cases of attacks on INEC infrastructures are non-electoral, but he failed to address the assaults due to spillover from elections. It is also significant for us to point out that the same security apparatus work for the bosses organized in either PDP/APC etc. during elections.

How many of these elements have been prosecuted? Those are the original culprits which inspire and motivate more reactions. For instance, we must recall the case of the Offa robbery and how those culprits were connected to the then serving Senate President, Bukola Saraki.

There are records of state agents collaborating with bandits and other criminal elements.  This raises questions on the roles of these state machinery which are thus implicated in organizing the rising insecurity. Security personnel have perpetrated the most hideous of criminal violations of citizens’ fundamental rights.

A serious approach to ending insecurity and several crises which partly lend credence to the liberalist agitation for secession or political restructuring is to address the socio-economic root of the crises. But the Maj. Gen. (RTED) Mohammad Buhari-led regime has time and again demonstrated its lack of capacity to put the working masses first. Obviously, those that create the problems and that benefit from the crises cannot want it to go away. That explains the regime’s relentless commitment to introducing anti-people policies, the most recent demonstration of such is the plan to the concession of 4 airports.

It is thus on us – the working people of all “tribes” and tongues – to organize beyond their limitation and unite our forces to change the system of oppression. In the statement, it was made clear that the bosses which are organised across all ethnicity will do everything to defend their class interest and properties at the detriment of the poor and working people.

The online uproar that led to the removal of the outrageous tweet is very welcome. But It is more important we unite to fight for a new Nigeria and by extension new world that works for the majority and not the minority. Let us demonstrate to the vagabonds in power that it is the people that own the land on #June12Protest.

by Lai BROWN

Comments

comments

Previous articleWorkers Take Action Against Mass Sack, Casualisation and Insecurity in Kaduna
Next article#June12 Protest Rocks Nigeria – “This is not a Moment. This is a Movement”