WE ARE KILLING OUR ARMY - Abiodun Ladepo

...In this day and age, nations don’t send soldiers chasing after their own civilian citizens. Responsible nations spend too much money on the training and welfare of their soldiers for them to be deployed on such trite mission as “show of force” on the street of a rabble-rouser. That is so Hitlerian; so tyrannical and so out-of-date. The blame lies squarely at the doorstep of President Buhari. And as the saying goes, the buck stops at his desk.

I understand that section 217(2) of our Constitution authorizes the president to deploy troops to any part of the country to support the efforts of other law enforcement agencies in order to help suppress “insurrection.”  This is akin to what the U.S. National Guard, which is under the command of individual state governors, does in the U.S. But where is the insurrection in Abia State?

One definition of insurrection is: “an act or an instance of rising in revolt, rebellion, or resistance against civil or an established government.”  Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), who, obviously, was the target of the military deployment, had threatened all of the key elements that define insurrection; “threatened”… but not yet carried them out. He has promised to burn down Nigeria more than once. He has promised to prevent elections from taking place in Anambra more than once. He has promised to carve out Biafra from Nigeria more than once. But he has yet to actualize any of those threats.

What he has done is flagrantly violate some of the conditions for his bail. In April of this year, when virtually all the elders from the east pleaded for his release from detention, ostensibly because his health was failing and he was at the point of death, Justice Binta Nyako offered Kanu 12 conditions for his release, and the continued enjoyment of the temporary freedom. Those conditions included, but were not limited to, the following: he must not be in a crowd of more than 10; he must not hold rallies; and he must not grant interviews. But what did he do as soon as he was released? He not only got in a crowd of more than 10, he held rallies. Apparently, his health got better as soon as he exited the court premises in Abuja. He not only granted interviews; he threatened to burn down Nigeria.  For those alone, all that government needed was a court order to re-arrest him. And because of his notoriety - the touts and the hoodlums with whom he has surrounded himself and the nature of his threats against Nigeria, the government probably needed a hefty dose of a combined police/DSS operation. No reasonable person would have argued against that because it would have been lawful. That would have been an appropriate show of force...



Excerpts from Sahara Reporters