by Isi Esene
Human rights activist, Femi Falana seems to think differently about President Goodluck Jonathan’s decision not to visit Chibok, Borno state.
The dusty town of Chibok suddenly drew media attention when about 276 schoolgirls were on April 14 abducted from their dormitories by members of the Boko Haram Islamic sect.
Many have called on President Goodluck Jonathan to visit the town in a show of solidarity but the president has made it clear that he has no plans to visit Borno as this will “not solve any problem.”
Meanwhile, Femi Falana has chipped in his theory saying President Jonathan is not open to the idea of a Chibok visit due to the current unpleasant mood of the military who on Wednesday staged a mutiny after seeing bodies of their dead colleagues ambushed by Boko Haram members reportedly armed with superior ammunition.
[READ: Tunde Leye: We must take the mutineers’ complaints more seriously]
The soldiers stationed at the 7 Infantry Division of the Nigerian Army in Maiduguri reportedly got angry shooting at the convoy of the GOC, Major General Abubakar Mohammed who was scheduled to address them.
According to Falana, “Why did President Goodluck Jonathan cancel his visit to Chibok? Is he afraid of Boko Haram? No. He is afraid of the soldiers, his army. The mutiny that occurred in Chibok was a reaction against the way the authority is treating the soldiers. They are not happy. Even Jonathan admitted to these soldiers being ill-equipped during his last media chat. What happened to the trillions of naira budgeted for the army in the last three years?”
He added that Nigerian soldiers fighting Boko Haram were demoralised and not motivated.
“These soldiers are not motivated. For instance, for every soldier killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, the US Secretary of State sends a handwritten and signed letter to each family of the killed soldiers. The American government pays all their entitlements within two, three weeks or one month. The Americans care for their soldiers. They give the dead soldiers a hero’s burial.
“Here, we don’t even get to know the names of the fallen soldiers. Their families are not usually cared for. One thousand soldiers died and we don’t know them; we don’t have their names. The press is just reporting about Boko Haram and the number of people killed. No one is talking about the soldiers, the number and names of those killed and their families,” the human rights lawyer observed.
He also alleged that the soldiers were thrown into battle terrains they were not familiar with.
Falana continued saying, “The military authority commanded these valiant soldiers to go to terrains they don’t understand. It’s too easy for them to be ambushed by the insurgents. These are fantastic men who had done well in peacekeeping missions in Sierra Leone and Liberia. The Amnesty International’s report is true. The security operatives were given advance information about Boko Haram; but they claimed they had too many pieces of information they were working with.”
