Populism Isn't The Problem

Populism Isn't The Problem: The charge of populism says at least as much about those making it as it does about their opponents.

Check out @mitsmr's Tweet: https://twitter.com/mitsmr/status/888625920457805824?s=09

Querying the Chibok narrative

THE #CHIBOKGIRLS  SAGA AND THE UNANSWERED QUESTIONS.

By Charles Ogbu.

Make no mistake, it is a very big slap on our face as a people and a bottom-less mockery of our collective intelligence that three years after about 276 girls were reportedly taken from a school in Chibok community, Borno state, no Nigerian has been able to break through the demonic web of embellished lies surrounding the unfortunate incident to gift the world with the unadulterated version of what really happened in Chibok on the night of April 14, 2014.

This is a grave indictment, not just on the journalism profession, but equally on the rest of us.

Under the APC govt of Muhammadu Buhari, the incoherencies, contradictions and outright lies in the Chibok story have become so worrisome that for one to believe the Chiboksaga, such a person must authorize his brain to secede from the rest of his body. The Buhari govt has left no one in doubt that the Chibok affair was one of the biggest organised scam in human history.

President Goodluck Jonathan had all the wherewithal to get to the root of this incident. His failure to use the instrumentalities of state to unravel this mystery and tell us the true story of what really happened remains inexcusable. This much is not debatable

Just so we are clear, I believe that some girls were taken from Chibok, Borno state. Denying this is as silly as claiming that the boko boys have never abducted or killed anyone in the NorthEast.

For me, this is not a question of whether or not, girls were taken from Chibok.

This is a question of who took those girls, who aided and abetted the 'abduction', where were those girls kept for all those years and for what purpose?

Those 82 girls whose pictures were flying all over social media purported to be the Chibokgirls, do they look like people who spent three years in company of heartless terrorists in the dreaded Sambisa forest?  Do they? A betting man would bet that those girls were housed in a cozy apartment and treated like royalties. And their "Captors" are certainly not Boko haram.

What sort of Vehicle did Boko haram terrorists use in carrying almost 300 girls?? How many vehicles were in that convoy and how did such a long convoy manage to drive from Chibok all the way to Sambisa despite the number-less military checkpoints on the road, then??

Considering the logistics involved in taking care of 276 noisy teenagers and moving them from one location to another while still under constant bombardment for 3 years, how could a technically defeated terror group have achieved this near-impossible feat in the same Sambisa forest that have repeatedly been cleared by our military on different occasion and even the BBOG's Oby Ezekwesili taken round the forest?

The same Sambisa forest where the Americans Queen Eliza boys and Children of Kremelim  combed with their superior equipment in search of the girls and left without finding anything?

In an educationally-disadvantaged region, you have almost 300 girls sitting for a core science subject like Physics and none of these girls could speak English even when the physics exam was to be written in English. Doesn't this seem very odd?

Who asked such a large number of girls to converge in the hostel that night?

Why did the Chibok school principal, one Hadija Asabe Kwambura, defy instruction from the then education minister and the security agency to relocate the exam centre from Chibok to Maiduguri for safety reasons?? Why did this woman give two contradictory account of the incident which placed her in Abuja and Borno state the night of the incident?  And why was this same woman reportedly made a commissioner by governor Shettima of Borno state, after the Chiboksaga-- the same Shettima, the woman principal claimed, asked her to ignore the security directive of the then FG and conduct the exam in Chibok with the assurance of providing security?

The Principal's daughter was not among the abducted girls even when she was at the school the night of the abduction. How convenient!

In early 2016, we saw some of the girls who reportedly claimed they escaped from the Sambisa and found their way out of the forest. So now I'm supposed to ridicule common-sense by  believing that some naive teenagers simply escaped from a group once rated the world deadliest terror group and even technically manoeuvred their way out of the mine-infested Sambisa forest which the army told us is bigger in size than Enugu state??  How?

Where were those girls when our soldiers recovered Shekau's holy flag and holy Koran and turned Sambisa forest into an amusement park??

How come this invincible Shekau always kill our soldiers first and threaten to send us into extinction only to do a 360 degree U-turn 24 hours after, to release some of those girls. Last year, he killed 12 soldiers and gifted us with 2 suicide bombers only to release dozens of the girls 24 hours later. This year, he killed not less than nine soldiers and hauled invectives at the President only to release 82 girls to the same govt 24 hours later. Is this how they use to do in the Boko haram kingdom??

Since, we are told its a prisoner swap deal, how come these girls are always released in batches and at a time when this govt is in dire need of something to celebrate? And why always in May?

Why were the previously "rescued"/ released girls still being shielded from their parents and the media several months after?

Why the secrecy??

Assuming they are still being debriefed, does debriefing take months?? And why haven't the security agencies used the results of the debriefing to free the rest of the girls?

Quite frankly, the demonic web of embellished lies and earthquakic propaganda surrounding this Chibok incident is too big for anyone to ignore just so as not to be thought insensitive.

There can be no argument that there are too many contradictions, incoherencies and outright lies in the Chibok saga.

Buying the Chibok abduction story without asking question is tantamount to helping the govt get away with her satanic business of subjecting our intelligence to ridicule.

Those who are busy trying to emotionally blackmail others into swallowing this story hook, line and sinker are not exactly helping matters here. It is beyond argument that some people played dirty politics with those naive girls. And those darkhearted people deserve to pay heavily for this.

The entire country, not just the Chibok community deserve some form of closure on this. That closure will not come by having all the girls returned to their parents. It can only come by having answers for the number-less unanswered questions surrounding this incident.

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"Amoses" without voice or fire

One of the readings for last Sunday was taken from the book of Amos.  The prophet Amos needs no introduction. He was a fierce social critic of all forms of injustice and misrule. He was not one to equivocate. He was the speaker and voice of the poor, the oppressed and all who were victims of all forms of mis-governance. In the times of Amos,  the poor were sold for less than the price of a pair of sandals. Amos condemned this. The poor in today's Nigeria are sold for far less.  Yet you hear no strong voices of our modern day shepherds, these pastors who are supposed to be successors of Amos. Our modern day Amoses have lost their voices and their fire.  By their strategic silence and deliberate equivocation,  our modern day Amoses are progressively becoming complicit in the suffering of their flock,  and that is a big pity.