Plateau, Tsiga and Trump, By Reuben Abati

“My brother, you do not look cheerful at all.”

“I am just overwhelmed by everything.”

“Any personal issues? I hope there is no trouble in paradise and that Madam is still tolerating you.”

“Does she have an option? After many years together, where would she go? It is not even that. I am just wondering how we ended up where we are in this country. Who did we offend as a people? We never seem to get anything right.”

“Professor Chinua Achebe said it long ago, in 1984, I think if my memory serves me right, that leadership is the problem with Nigeria.”

“I have been hearing that for decades, I beg. And nobody can find any solution to this same problem. I think the people are a bigger part of the problem.”

“Bad leaders set bad examples, the followers will soon start behaving like their leaders and then you have bad followers, and all things equal you get a bad society. What we need is a complete moral re-armament, an ethical revolution from bottom up, a rediscovery of the values of old, and a proper definition of what it means to be a Nigerian.”

“Right now, I don’t even know what it means to be a Nigerian.”

“You have a national anthem that talks about who we are.”

“That ‘Nigeria We Hail Thee’ actually says precisely what Nigeria is not. A banner without stain. Go and say that to all the families who have lost their loved ones just because they happen to be Nigerians. In brotherhood we stand. Which brotherhood. You and who? A nation where no man is oppressed. For where? Go and say that to the people of Rivers State, Southern Kaduna, Benue, or Plateau State, and watch the kind of side eye people will give you.”

“The story from Plateau is particularly sad, unfortunate and regrettable.”

“That is the standard line from the Nigerian government. Sad. Unfortunate. Regrettable. But there is no guarantee that more people will not be killed again or that the state will be able to apprehend the criminals. Or that we will not wake up and not hear about another tragedy in any part of Nigeria. Was it not the other day that 16 persons were killed in Uromi, Delta State? Now the killing machine has moved to the Plateau. The Nigerian State is in retreat. It is not serving its purpose. Terrorists and kidnappers do as they wish. People cannot sleep with their two eyes closed.”

“Certainly not in Plateau State. Just imagine what happened. The terrorists attacked villages in Bokkos Local Government Area on 28 March, set homes ablaze and disrupted communal life. They were so bold that they returned on 2 April to wreak more havoc. Between 28 March and the second attack, the State could not anticipate that the terrorists would return. The State did not provide the affected communities with security. The people were left on their own, at the mercy of the terrorists. Now the people are wailing and counting their losses in Ruwi, Hurti, Tadai, Gwande, Manguna and Dafo.”

“Are those people even terrorists? I read that they made away with bags of potatoes from the houses that they attacked, and fled on the back of motorcycles. Terrorists who steal bags of potatoes!”

“There is hunger in the land. There are Nigerians who will kill because of a pot of soup. In some local communities, you have to padlock your pot of soup, otherwise it could be stolen overnight! Serious hunger crisis. That is how bad Nigeria has become.”

“And look at how the State has responded. The president has condemned the killings. He has directed the National Security Adviser to visit Plateau. He, the NSA, says the perpetrators will be severely punished. The state government has expressed its condolences. Relief materials have been promptly provided for the affected communities. Press statements. Photo ops. television cameras. In one week, everyone will move on, until the terrorists strike in another community and state officials make the same statements and we move on. Nigerians are used to tragic melodramas.”

“If I may play the devil’s advocate though, I think it was good optics that the NSA and the governor empathised with the people.”

“Will that bring back the dead? Will that stop terrorism, banditry and kidnapping? The people of the Plateau have not known peace for more than two decades. What difference will the routine visit of state officials make? In fact, very soon, these government officials would become so overwhelmed, they would not even visit any place where there is an attack, be it in Rivers, Southern Kaduna, Ondo or the Niger Delta.”

“To buttress your point, look at what nearly happened to the Secretary to the Plateau State Government, Samuel Jatau, over the weekend, on Sunday. He was on a visit to Bokkos, when the same terrorists laid ambush for him around Hurti community and opened fire on his convoy. He had gone to the community on Governor Caleb Mutfwang’s instruction to deliver relief materials.”

“Mark my words, when next Jatau is sent on that kind of assignment, he will find a diplomatic way of advising his boss, the governor, to send another state official, because he has been having a cocktail of chest pain, food poisoning and diarrhoea and his doctor has advised him to go on bed rest! These terrorists and bandits in Nigeria have no respect for anybody.”

“You know they even go to people’s homes and abduct them. Brigadier-General Maharazu Tsiga (rtd) was in his house in his home town in Katsina when kidnappers visited him on 5 February, and took him away. He and 18 other victims spent 56 days in the kidnappers’ den. They saw hell and hyena!”

“I have read General Tsiga’s story – an interview that he granted. This is the point. Not even a soldier is considered a man of war by training who could return fire for fire. If kidnappers could pick up a soldier who had served his country just like that, tell me who that ordinary Nigerian is, that criminals can’t pick up.”

“I have also read that the General and other captives were rescued by Nigerian soldiers of Operation Safe Haven and were handed over to their families personally by NSA Ribadu. But I don’t believe that our soldiers rescued them. The kidnappers, for example, placed a ransom of N400 million on General Tsiga’s head. His friends, family, former colleagues, serving and retired Generals, had to contribute the N400 million. They even created a WhatsApp group named TSIGA. When he regained his freedom, nobody talked about ransom being paid.”

“The Nigerian Government can never admit publicly that it was involved at any time in the payment of ransom to non-state actors, who have chosen to act as criminals. We have a law: the Terrorism Prevention and Prohibition Act of 2011, for example. Mallam Ribadu says over 2,000 persons have been prosecuted under that law. I think the state is making an effort. You will recall that when he was in the kidnappers’ den, General Tsiga observed that his abductors did not fear God, but they became apprehensive whenever a military aircraft hovered overhead and they used them as human shield. That should say something about the efforts of the Nigerian security system.”

“That security system must be overhauled. There must be a re-thinking of the country’s security architecture.”

“Should there be the declaration of a state of emergency in Plateau state, then after all the people of Rivers State are saying that what is good for the goose is also good for the gander. They argue that Rivers is far more peaceful than Plateau, and Benue where criminals, enemies of the people of Agatu, have just rustled over 200 cows. In fact, the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) has called for a state of emergency in Plateau, Benue and other terror-prone states.”

“No. No. No. What is going on in Rivers State is problematic enough, let us not mouth ideas that could further complicate the situation. Many Nigerians do not even know what a state of emergency means.”

“But do you agree that nobody needs to quote any law in this matter? In simple straightforward language, it is obvious that the challenges of insecurity, hunger and poverty deserve to be treated as national emergencies. Government must invest in social infrastructure, secure lives and property, rebuild public confidence and trust, and restore hope, not by distributing palliatives, but by giving the average Nigerian an opportunity to have every reason to be proud.”

“One thing you can say in favour of the Tinubu administration though is that they have never toyed with that nonsense idea of buying Aso Ebi for terrorists, and giving them pepper soup, jollof rice and ice cream in the name of rehabilitation.”

“The kind of things we have seen in this country. You know that there was a time some state Governors were before our very eyes exchanging diplomatic niceties with terrorists and bandits. No. This President Tinubu will never do that. I may be speculating but I am convinced he is a much more capable and attentive President than his predecessor.”

“Except that he is also going up and down, and he spends too much time in France. Does he have French citizenship? Does he speak French? What Dubai is to some people, France is to Tinubu.”

“I don’t know what languages he speaks, but it is just that he comes across as an improvement on the man from Katsina, whatever the skeptics may say.”

“Let him respect our rights as citizens.”

“How?”

“Our right to speak. Our right to assemble and protest, on any subject of our choice.”

“I don’t think that has been a big issue.”

“It is for me. Where are you? Yesterday, the police tear-gassed protesters in Rivers and in Abuja. The youths of Rivers State raised their voice against the declaration of a state of emergency, with a retired soldier, acting as sole administrator now controlling the resources of the people. This is supposed to be a temporary appointment. But you and I know this country. When people get a temporary appointment, they will start praying that it shall become permanent! You should know the song: It shall be permanent…it shall be permanent…what the Lord has done… The only thing that can be permanent is the rule of law and democracy, not dictatorship. In Abuja, angry, Take-It-Back youths trooped out too. They were tear-gassed! The police are too fond of telling people not to protest. What is that? Their job is to provide protection for whoever wants to protest, not to stop them. That is a settled matter of law. ANPP v. IGP.”

“Bros., take it easy. Rule of law. Democracy. This is Nigeria oh. This is not America. You do anyhow, you collect wotowoto.”

“Oh, that reminds me. I am sure you saw the protests in the United States across the country against President Trump and Elon Musk. Millions of pro-democracy protesters trooped out to complain about the Trump administration’s hostile takeover of American democracy, and attack on American rights and freedoms. They want an end to the billionaire take-over of the US. Democracy not oligarchy. Hands off, they told President Trump. There were protests also in London and Paris. Trump has launched an assault against every fundamental thing that America is known for. Freedom. Rights. Free trade.”

“Just be careful. Let the Americans who voted for him be the ones to condemn him. In case you do not know, the Trump administration has been cancelling people’s visas to the US. You talk carelessly, you can even be banned from entering the United States.”

“America was known as the land of freedom, until Trump’s second coming.”

“Just watch your mouth. Oscar Arias, a Nobel Laureate and former president of Costa Rica, has had his visa revoked for daring to call President Trump a Roman Emperor. South African Ambassador to the US, Ebrahim Rasool, criticised Trump’s crackdown on diversity and equity programmes. He was declared a persona non grata and advised to leave the United States. All US visas for the South Sudanese have also been revoked because South Sudan tried to reject its nationals who were expelled from the US. You are just an ordinary Nigerian, you talk anyhow, your entire generation may be banned from ever going near the US.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. President Trump has upended the global trade order. Trump tantrums, and his disruptions go beyond the United States. Across the world, investors are selling off stocks to avoid risks. Global markets are roiling. Wall Street is in bear territory. Trade wars have started. Inside America, there is the threat of recession and rise in consumer prices. The tariffs that Trump has imposed, both baseline and reciprocal tariffs will spread the cancer of recession throughout the world. Even Nigeria got 14 per cent, and with oil prices down by more than 3 per cent, we are in trouble with our 2025 budget benchmark, SMEs will suffer, AGOA has been thrown under the table. And you say we should not talk?”

“I am just looking out for you. Let the Nigerian government handle the matter. The Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment has already issued a position paper to say that Nigeria is talking to our valued trade partner, the United States and the WTO to identify what is pragmatic and mutually beneficial. Besides, Trump himself has said this is a necessary medicine that he has applied to global trade.”

“Meaning what? Medicine that is already making the patient worse off. And which counterparts is Nigeria talking about? Is the US ready to negotiate as equals with anybody?”

“I try to look at the positive side of things. One of my financial advisers has told me that this is the best time to buy stocks and crypto. While you are concentrating on crisis and tantrums, I am looking at what can be gained.”

“Nobody has ever won tariff wars. Tariff shock has already wiped out US$5.3 trillion of the S&P 500 Index in just two days. Nasdaq Composite is down 5.8 per cent, Dow Jones Industrial Average – 5.5 per cent.”

“Stop worrying yourself. Let the Americans speak with their votes during the mid-term elections.”

“That is still far away. November 2026.”

“Their problem, not ours. For all I care, they deserve their Trump, and his Elon Musk. The beauty of democracy is that voters are also free to make mistakes, and either live with their mistakes or correct them.”

Reuben Abati, a former presidential spokesperson, writes from Lagos.