Where Is The Ceasefire With Boko Haram?

Like other Nigerians, I was taken by surprise when news broke last
week that the Nigerian government had reached a ceasefire agreement
with Boko Haram. The announcement was swiftly followed by the Chief of
Defence Staff's directive to all troops to stop engagement with Boko
Haram.

It became even more curious when I heard the interview that President
Goodluck Jonathan's Private Secretary and Chief Negotiator, Hassan
Tukur, gave to the BBC's FOCUS ON AFRICA programme. Tukur sounded
optimistic that they had achieved a breakthrough, underlining that by
saying the people he negotiated with had forewarned about the releases
of the hostages freed in Cameroun early last week; therefore the
government had no reason to disbelieve their negotiation counterparts.

The most important element of the riddle was that Boko Haram had
allegedly agreed to release the Chibok Girls who have stayed six
months in captivity. That delighted me as every other Nigerian. Yet, I
was as apprehensive as every other person. What if the government had
been conned? And too many forces have "invested" heavily and reaped
abundantly from the five-year old insurgency!

Twenty four hours later we received a riposte as Boko Haram elements
continued their spates of killings in Borno. To underline the gloom,
Borno Elders came out publicly to say that they didn't believe that
the government team negotiated with the right people. As I write these
lines, Nigerian soldiers are continuing engagements with Boko Haram,
thus putting to naught the ceasefire announced by the Chief of Defense
Staff, Alex Barde.

It is also instructive that the Federal Government has continued its
"negotiation process", without involving the governments of Borno and
Yobe states. Yet President Jonathan needs to deliver on his ceasefire
(or what Adamu Adamu once called "seize" fire, in the different
setting of conflict in the Gaza Strip), because inability to achieve
freedom for the 219 Chibok Girls, will cast a dangerous political pall
on his 2015 re-election campaign. And for President Goodluck Jonathan
and his handlers, the most important issue at hand is to hit the
campaign trail for 2015.

Yes, the Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN), blessed with the
ample presence of Anyim Pius Anyim and other Jonathan hangers-on are
doing a good job campaigning and keep President Jonathan in the minds
of the Nigerian electorate. The truth however is that the momentum
will gather pace if President Jonathan can deliver an effective
ceasefire and freedom for the Chibok Girls.

The cynical exploitation of freedom for the Chibok Girls is a central
plank of the political agenda of the Goodluck campaign. In the
euphoria that is expected to follow such a release, President Jonathan
will be painted as the ultimate patriot who got the job done! The
prevarications and irresponsible denial following the kidnap of the
girls will hopefully have been forgotten, by a Nigeria that seems ever
shallow in its ability to recollect or make the necessary
interconnectedness in social and political phenomena.

That is why the apparent unraveling of the process that Marshal Alex
Barde and Hassan Tukur so effusively announced a week ago, is not very
good for the Goodluck Jonathan Campaign. Mister President, what
happened to the ceasefire (who "seized" your fire please?) and may you
please hasten to #FREEOURGIRLS? This is their sixth month in captivity
Mister President, Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria's Armed Forces,
Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan. And political time is running out!

General Yakubu Gowon: Officer and gentleman @80

I MET General Yakubu Gowon for the first time in 2005. The setting was
Bamako, the Malian capital. I was covering the meeting of the African
Statesmen Initiative, a forum of ex-African Heads of State, which
brought several old African leaders together in the setting of a
lovely hotel close to the River Niger.

When I told him I was a reporter from Nigeria, his face lit up in
delight and throughout the conference he was readily available for a
conversation, in his typically polite and friendly manner. The Darfur
crisis was on the front burner and I was very much interested in
getting the former Sudanese Prime Minister, Sadig El-Mahdi to give me
an interview on that hot subject; but he was not keen and all
entreaties for a couple of minutes away from the Bamako initiative
failed to impress him.
--Vanguard