Politics of prisoner-hostage swap

….also published in Daily Trust

On many occasions since the outbreak of the ongoing Boko Haram crisis in Nigeria, the terrorists have done what has always proved their links with some much more sophisticated terrorist groups elsewhere from which they apparently not only learn combat strategies but also learn the politics of negotiations with constituted authorities.

Being a local terror group composed of grossly misinformed gang leaders and ridiculously ill-informed foot soldiers, the way it engages the federal government in the intermittent rounds of negotiations over the abducted Chibok girls, for instance, further confirms the existence of such links.

Besides, the terrorists realize that, contrary to what obtains elsewhere, the life of a Nigerian hostage, whether a police officer or soldier abducted at battlefront, or any other Nigerian for that matter, isn’t important enough to prompt the government to engage in serious efforts to rescue or get him released. Instead, the value of his life, as far as the successive Nigerian governments are concerned, is determined by the amount of local and international outcry his abduction provokes. That’s why whenever they manage to capture a soldier or police officer, for instance, they never bother to offer him for a swap deal to retrieve their fellow terrorists captured by government forces, instead, they would simply slaughter him or blow his brains out him in front of a video camera and release the video clip.

Coming to terms with President’s illness

…also published in Daily Trust

Admittedly, until doubts were raised over the story about the meetings that the Group Managing Director of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, Maikanti Baru, and Attorney General Abubakar Malami claimed to have had with President Buhari respectively last Tuesday, I never doubted the story. In fact, like many other Nigerians, I gladly concluded that the President had got well enough to resume work expecting him also to preside over the weekly Federal Executive Council meeting the next day.

Besides, it was perhaps out of excitement that I never bothered to wonder why there were no pictures of him before, during or after the purported meetings. It was only when those doubts were raised against the backdrop of the reports indicating that the President couldn’t attend the meeting, that I tooked at them (i.e. doubts) seriously.

 President Muhammadu Buhari

In any case, it’s obvious that President Buhari’s intermittently fluctuating health condition is increasingly assuming an interesting political dimension and generating (so far) largely discreet inter- and intra-party political manoeuvrings among some powerful vested interests and top politicians, in anticipation of any dramatic turn of events.