by Cheta Nwanze
One big issue with the current government is that they are consistent in only one thing — being inconsistent. What they fail to realise is that this habit of speaking from different sides of the mouth, or more accurately, different government officials saying whatever the fuck comes to their heads, has a way of coming back to bite them in their butts!
Consider this fiasco over the deployment to The Gambia. Personally, I think that for once Nigeria should take a backseat in this and let another West African nation, preferably Senegal, take the lead on this. I am also worried that within the context of Nigeria, that we are on shaky legal ground with regards to the Constitution and the need for the President to get the approval of the Senate before deploying our soldiers abroad.
However, I admit that there is a loophole which can be exploited, despite the fact that there’s 3,000 odd km, between Banjul and any point in Nigeria. Let them exploit the loophole if it is what makes them happy. However, exploiting the loophole five countries away while fires are increasingly being lit in ours is plain daft.
In any event, what has happened, appears to have happened, and a ship has set sail, for Banjul. Or has it?
Here is a quick rundown of the litany of inconsistencies in this small incident: Six days ago, Premium Times, one of our best news organisations, broke a story about troops being readied to deploy to The Gambia. The next day, the Army denied preparing troops for The Gambia. What was so irritating, was that our friends for the social media defence league immediately went all out on Premium Times, but that’s by the wayside.
The same day the Army denied Premium Times’ story, the Associated Press saw a military memo to that effect. There was a) no denying AP’s story; b) no name calling of AP; and c) no apology to Premium Times.
Then yesterday, the BBC said that the NNS Unity was on the way to The Gambia.
Then this morning, the Foreign Minister told a foreign journalist, they don’t talk to us around here, that it was not true. Of course, there was a nice case of spin around it by one of the social media boo boys. And now, the President’s SA on Foreign Relations has confirmed that indeed the ship is headed to The Gambia.
Can we now extrapolate this inconsistent behaviour to everything else? Such as the inability to write a blooming plan that would allow you implement your so called economic blueprint. What a load of pillocks!
Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija
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