By Bukar Raheem
Unpatriotic forces hatch fresh trouble for Nigeria every day. The battle from paid moles, morphing into forlorn dissenting elements and veiled agents of destabilization of the country are waxing stronger than combats in the trenches. A resentful character identified as Dr. Idris Ahmed, ostensibly oozing with the putrefying stench of a pigsty is the latest entrant into these organized plots.
In spiraling artificial lies and familiar falsehoods, he first protected himself with the tags of “patriotism,” and as someone given to “probity.” He endlessly delighted in the delusion of fouling the air by scripting obscenities and inanities against the Nigerian Military.
Meaningless hallucinations are unprofitable anywhere. Therefore, it is not enough to resurrect senses caged by the demons of Lucifer to shout on rooftops, fluid and unverified claims alluding to alleged corruption in the Nigerian Military, including the Nigerian Army as publicized by Ahmed’s group, Citizens United For Peace and Stability (CUPS).
CUPS spitefully submitted, “The fact remains true that there is still malignant corruption in the Nigerian military (Army, Navy and Air force).” While resisting the temptation to hold briefs for the sister arms of the Military, it is foolish or idle campaigns to attempt to smear the integrity and character of the Nigerian Army with merely prosaic and infantile opinions.
Months earlier, Transparency International (TI) committed such blunder against the current military leadership, by alleging corruption in the award of Defence procurement contracts, like Ahmed’s CUPS has elected to do. While the statement whirled emptily to unwilling ears, TI’s Country Representative, Mr. Auwal Rafsanjani repudiated his organization by refuting the allegation voluntarily, as a gaffe, pleading misplacement of time-frame.
Truth is irresistible as Ahmed himself confessed in the satanic attacks on the Nigerian Army that “… things are admittedly much better than what they were just a couple of years ago….” It’s doubtful whether the CUPS leader knows the strength of his confession before proceeding to vaguely, disgracefully and nonsensically allege, “…billions of Naira is still being siphoned off through inflated and bogus contracts.”
True patriots are known by patriotic actions. They do not parrot like demented souls, as Ahmed has depicted himself. He has failed to take legal action upon the discovery of the criminal sabotage of his country, by the anonymous officer; he claimed to have stealthily investigated. A petition, with the necessary proofs of the sleaze to the anti-graft agencies (EFCC or ICPC) for appropriate action would have been an exemplary patriotic action.
CUPS claimed, a soldier in the battlefront, Private Abdulrauf Aliyu who sustained severe injuries during soldiers encounter with Boko Haram terrorists was abandoned to his fate after the initial first aid treatment. It is blankly, a very callous and empty presumed negative profiling of the Nigerian Army. Imagine the dozens of soldiers injured in the warfront since the war on terrorism intensified under the regime of President Muhemmedu Buhari.
It is unconvincing that an army that humanely evacuates wounded Boko Haram insurgents, its arch enemies, for treatment in military hospitals’ would abandon its own soldier in distress and need of healing.
Nothing has ever been so inconsistent and proclaims itself in stupefying falsity like the CUPS’s conjectures. Where are the referrals from the multiple public hospitals in Maiduguri to a specialist facility in Sokoto at the instance of Private Aliyu’s family? It is altogether nonsensical for anybody to reason that the Nigerian Army would consent, with written approval, the transfer of an injured soldier in active service to his family for treatment. Solders are not Nigerian footballers.
And most profoundly, “his salary and allowances were callously cut off, “ which implies what? The “cut-off” of his salaries and allowances means suspended since he was declared an AWOL or paid in half? It is puerile argument and contradictory for CUPS to expect that Private Aliyu would have been paid allowances the organization in a disguised letter to Mr. President claimed are pending for months?
All through his vexatious diatribes, Ahmed assumed the toga of the victim, the complainant and the wailer groveling at the temple of justice, never allowing the real victim to speak to the world about the alleged injustice. Even Private Aliyu’s alleged mails, possessed by CUPS are shielded from public view. And the simple reason is that Ahmed is the manifest author of the plots or imaginations he scripts and allocates nomenclatures to give it semblance of reality.
At the risk of flattery, Nigerians have always excitedly proclaimed the faultless operations and sanctity of the Nigerian Army today under the leadership of Lt.Gen. Tukur Yusufu Buratai, the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) and leader of the counter-insurgency campaigns in Nigeria. He exudes profound transparency, accountability, probity, professionalism, discipline and an unusual humaneness in leadership. Undoubtedly, as attested nationally and internationally, with the array of accolades’ and awards on the Nigerian Army, Gen. Buratai has indubitably already raised “A military, befitting of the most powerful Black nation on earth.”
Even the critical-minded Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka on BBC Hausa Service recently also added his voice to the list of world leaders and personalities in undiluted appreciation of the Nigerian Army for its courage in tackling terrorism in Nigeria. So, if the tantrums of Ahmed are animated by the instincts of rubbishing this heritage, such power belongs to God and not him, least of all, the deployment of uncouth diction.
And obviously, CUPS has kept rambling and tumbling in the bid to confer credibility on implausible arguments. It states albeit idiotically that corruption and impunity in the military cannot be tolerated based on the challenges the Nigerian military is facing on insurgencies.
By self-admission, Ahmed and his gang of bizarre “patriots” believe payment of salaries and allowances of soldiers, in the warfront is antidote to their effective performance in the operations of the special assignments, whether in North or Southern Nigeria. Ahmed seems to postulate that failure to pay these legitimate entitlements to soldiers stimulates a dampening morale to perform. But how can he possibly explain the decimation and defeat of Boko Haram terrorists by the same soldiers? Or, what spirit, tonic and energy gave them the impetus to quash the other suffocating armed local conflicts in Nigeria?
The letter to Mr. President, which Ahmed cleverly disguised to author with the vague identity of “Patriotic Soldier,” also infinitely celebrates his mercantilism in the guise of activism. What intelligence informed his clique, President Buhari acts on ghost mails is surprising. But the epistle complained about every aspect of welfare of soldiers in “Operation Lafiya Dole.” It ranges from the claim of unpaid operation allowances to poor quality of food, yet there is only a lone protester from the supposed large number.
A mischievous person like Ahmed can snap a poor plate of food or distort its contents to propagate an evil agenda, so, the “Patriotic Soldier,” wailed about food devoid of meat or fish and estimated its cost at N200.
He proceeded to calculate the value of what government feeds every prisoner as higher than soldiers, by pegging the amount at N14, 000. Whether it is per day or week or month, this vital detail was wittingly omitted to fire the mischief. Assuming this is correct, but in simple arithmetic, N600 per day for a soldier sums up to N18, 000 a month; four thousand naira higher than the monthly feeding sum of each prisoner.
Precisely, Dr. Idris Ahmed hides in London to manufacture imaginations and authors’ letters to Mr. President impersonating names of purported complainants. From Ahmed’s antecedents, it’s obvious he is the latest don recruited by foreign forces to rattle the military and its leadership, while clandestinely co-ordinating the resurgence of Boko Haram Terrorism in Nigeria.
The plot is to exploit the anti-corruption badge of President Buhari to dismantle the performing military leadership under the mask of activism; whilst terrorists overrun the country. If this is how Ahmed and his allies have been trained to expose corruption, phew!
Raheeem writes from Kaduna, Kaduna State.
