As President Jonathan Dances: Nigeria on Autopilot By Peregrini Brimah

The things happening in Nigeria now are above Jonathan. There is little question about this. It would be very unlikely the president was behind the attempted assassinations of ex-head of state General Buhari and Sheikh Dahiru Bauchi. Nigeria’s president does not appear to be such a dangerous and desperate risk taker. The coordinated assassinations of three of Sheikh Zakzaky’s sons in the same Kaduna the same week, aimed to provoke a Muslim revolt, also do not seem to have been ordered by the president. The cards are stacked up against him, but not yet to push him to these very dangerous methods. He still enjoys dancing. Someone else has now taken over of the Nigerian military and the Boko Haram franchise and is set on leading Nigeria off the cliff.

Some suspect the president’s wife. There is precedence here. Patience Jonathan is known for her crude and cold recklessness. Analysts say she could have felt so bitter about the person of Buhari, a most prominent and respected opposition figure and decided to order his elimination. They say she could order the new trends in military brutality inflicted on the Islamic movement in Kaduna and to the newspapers recently when they were impeded and the presidency dissociated itself from the military action. The role of the president of Nigeria’s wife in the current events cannot however be independently verified.

It could also be foreign elements who have finally and fully taken control of the vacuum in power. Sheikh Zakzaky unambiguously laid the blame on foreign elements in the deliberate assassination of his three sons. It is important at this time to appreciate the extreme patient nature of his millions of members Muslim movement. They are globally known for extreme patience and tolerance in the face of persecution; had it been any other religious or ethnic group that witnessed three of its leader’s sons murdered extra-judicially, the chaos would have already started.

What is clear in Nigeria today is that things are now completely out of hand. Boko Haram is having a field day as the military is not serious – as US hearing noted – in defeating the terrorist group. Boko Haram continues to obtain its vehicles and arsenal from the military. The military has set on a full scale assault on the masses and civil groups. Political Boko Haram has totally gone out of hand and is bent on creating tensions between Nigeria’s ethnic and religious groups and instigating a full scale national conflict and anarchy. Jonathan is no longer in control of the military and has no handle on the state of insecurity. The nation is now on autopilot and headed to the ditches.

As a people, our sheepishness and crap-tolerance – or better put, crap-exuberance, some waiting and hoping to survive till 2015 believing in a political salvation and a peaceful transition or continuation of whatever the result is, and others simply accepting this destiny, not realizing that a leadership entrenched and absorbed in only one thing – embezzling billions of available petrodollars – is bound for total disastrous collapse, has led us to the end of the road.

The good news is – Cameroon is now involved. With Cameroon being personally affected and under direct threat of Boko Haram, there will be some direct regional pressure on the Nigerian ‘leadership,’ to finally stop tolerating and facilitating Boko Haram terror and take actual steps to contain the menace.