Is Nyako Hiding In The Sambisa Forest?
It beats every sense of reason when the machinery of the Federal Government like the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, bemused the world with the statement that the former Adamawa State Governor, Admiral Murtala Nyako (popularly called Baba Mai Mangoro) has escaped from the country after he was impeached as governor. From other sources Nigerians were informed that the once vocal and overconfident man from the northern Nigeria could not be pinned down for arrest after he was impeached and the immunity he enjoyed as governor dropped.
Nigerians are not sure of the face and the pride with which the Federal Government would take to announce him wanted, since the speculation was rife that it was under pressure to do just that, when it could not make an arrest of such a significant figure, then your gaze is good as mine on its fate for a petty criminal in the street.
The Federal Government has behaved like a toothless dog, only to bark that it wanted the former governor arrested and put-on-trial over alleged prowling of Adamawa State treasury and treason against Nigeria. It was also spite on the security agents who reportedly curbed for Nyako from Yola, the Adamawa State capital to Abuja, the federal seat of power, without a trace of him. What the common Nigerians were told was that the security agents were frustrated at last in this regard.
If truly the ex-governor committed any treason against the Federal Government or fingered the treasury of his home state, he ought to have been subjected to a house arrest immediately he was de-kitted of the immunity he once enjoyed. It's like a medicine after death the story that Nyako's security aides conversely whisked him out of Yola, thereby making those that wanted to arrest him as soon as he was sacked from office inept security agents.
Is Nyako in Sambisa Forest? While the Federal Government has said that the man who has shown it how not to be a dull brain is on the run, Nyako's spokesman, Sajoh Ahmed was credited to have debunked such a lazy man's contention with the following lines: 'Governor is not on the run. He left Yola on the same day of the impeachment. I don't know where he is at the moment. I am now in my own house. It is wrong to say he is on the run.' In some quarters there is a question of why is he on the run as if he is not a human being who should know when danger lurks around. What the people with this line of thought of why is he on the run should be asking is why the security agents not trapped him as soon as he was impeached.
It is not certain that it is mainly in Nigeria that thunder strikes at the same place twice. A man who was suspected to have caused heinous things while in office was allowed to escape arrest at the glaring and wide-opened eyes of the Federal Government and its agents. Nigerians can understand the emptiness that their security agents have become and the parochial nature they operate, not even as the man called Nyako was a serious suspect who was tongue-lashing the entire country with his dubious memo in which he was citing the entire population of the north against the Nigerian government.
Nayako could be said that he lacked political conventionality but what do we make of the security agents. However, this has revealed that President Goodluck Jonathan might not be after some politicians as the speculation was everywhere. This is said because if he was, it would be a hollow on his part that he allowed Nyako whom it was believed that wanted him out of office, abscond without a trace of him. Could this be that there is something fishy in the whole drama that the parties involved do not want Nigerians to know about the whereabouts of Nyako?
George Washington as if he was advising the present day Nigerians, would say: When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen. Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.
He continued: Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government. Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder. There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate, upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.
Washington said that he does not mean to exclude altogether the idea of patriotism, even when he knows it exists, and he knows it has done much in the present contest. But he will venture to assert, that a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be aided by a prospect of interest, or some reward. To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace. He said that he hates deception, even where the imagination only is concerned. Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.
How Nyako escaped beats every canal imagination and this may be connected to the unfinished fight against corruption in Nigeria. The escape of Nyako has further widened the security predicaments that the country is facing. Do not say that the people and their government in power know how to shield the likes of Nyako into the Sambisa to evade arrest and at the same time would be the first to deafen the ears of Nigerians that such a man has escaped.
The presidency should not inform us that it is ordering the Attorney General of the Federation, AGF, to prepare charges against Nyako, when it has woefully failed on its side to make an arrest before the situation degenerated to this. He who goes to equity, they say, must go with clean hands. Where are the clean hands of the Federal Government? Maybe, a committee should be formed to fish out Nyako wherever he might be.
Odimegwu Onwumereis the Coordinator, Concerned Non-Indigenes In Rivers State (CONIRIV). Mobile: +2348032552855. [email protected]