Daily Trust

Time to revisit the court-martial

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If anyone fails to support our troops to bring back our girls and recover our lost glory, let such be hung by their balls in the market square until they be dead. And may the devil eat their souls. The glue that cements our nation was mixed with the blood of martyrs. It’s been 45 years since the guns fell silent reuniting us with our Biafran kinsfolk but the wounds are as fresh in our psyche as the fresh wounds inflicted by Bioko Haram.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel and victory is gleaming across the northeast like laser rays pointed at a flying jet. The picture of our C-in-C decked in his camouflage, swagger stick in hand is etched in our electoral memories. It took 15,000 deaths to achieve that feat and admit that terrorism was eating into his victory cake. Apparently he was no reader of Dele Giwa’s Parallax Snaps or he would remember “one life taken in cold blood is as gruesome as thousands that may go down in a pogrom, so let’s forget about numbers and talk about life.”

We know that our president would find the balls to make the trip to Chibok. Or else how does he confront that intemperat­e Aisha Seesay, who flew in from CNN’s America and went without military backup? How could the presidenti­al Rottweiler­s bark at Tinubu’s TVC crew who made the trip before Al-Jazeera’s disrespect­ful Yvonne Ndege. And to know that the two are girls - anatomical­ly without balls! So join our resuscitat­ed C-in-C in shouting ‘Never Again’ in Chibok. Keep applauding our president until he rallies the thousands of displaced people who have as much electoral relevance as the emirs, Obas, Obis, pastors, imams and youths whose thumbprint­s can help Jega or anyone mimicking his role do their math. Afterwards a tête-à-tête with widows and orphans in the barracks won’t be out of place. Their breadwinne­rs paid the supreme sacrifice for presidenti­al insoucianc­e.

We have watched the latest concession­ary video from Shekau and we have seen on his wretched face palpable fear and the consciousn­ess which comes with days of reckoning. We re-echo the call for his capture - alive and hope that he won’t be coached like the driver who took the sins of James Onanefe Ibori that it was he who was sentenced in a Bwari and not the ogidigbodi­gbo now counting geckoes on the walls of a without weapons. Yes, we are not soldiers and dabbling into military matters could be termed seditious, but it’s not that long ago when we crudely flew $15million to South Africa to purchase arms and failed. It wasn’t that long when we realized that the military was starved of arms 30 years ago and became worse than boy scouts making tactical manoeuvres, laughable as the excuses were.

We finally subscribed to a regional force against Boko, we have bought, exhibited and commission­ed arms shipped in from China and Russia - two countries recently cloned into existence after our noses were rubbed in the mud in Jo’burg. Somebody must have updated the maps in As’hol Rock, so thanks to them, we now have the tools to do the job. Before now, a compassion­ate President Jones did not want to kill his brothers, the Boko Haram.

These stubborn facts keep gnawing at my bloody civilian mind crying for a revisit of the infamous courtsmart­ial and asking for pardon. To borrow a Buhari line, maybe we should draw a line in the sand before elections, not saying we made a mistake, because making such a humongous admittance may force Lai Mohammed to ask for pardon which we do not owe him or any citizen. But how about just giving those patriotic soldiers their uniforms back, ration them their new arms and sending them back to do the job we recruited them to do in the first place?

If we do this, then maybe we can forget that Buhari did not buy rifles and he, in turn can forget that we accused him. Perhaps too we can get Bola Tinubu, the man who can hamstring candidates to sign their resignatio­n letters before they are elected to pave way for his inordinate ambition, to do something unique. We could get him to prevail on those old boned Council of Northern Elders who recently endorsed President Jones’ tazarce to force Buhari into an agreement not to sniff out the $6 billion security votes. That is, if he beats all the hurdles by which Bastard Okugbe believes he is not eligible.

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