Apart from pledging to fight corruption to standstill, the next important promise made by the General Muhammadu Buhari campaign team in 2015, was to end insecurity in the country.
By then, the Boko Haram menace was in ascendance and many Nigerians, judging by what they believed was the antecedence of Muhammadu Buhari as a non nonsense former military leader, thinking that he was going to deliver the goods this time around, decided to give him their votes.
But three years down the line, these expectations were yet to be fulfilled. Corruption has continued to eat very deep into the fabrics of Nigerian society, while insecurity is no longer limited to Boko Haram menace, but now includes the Fulani herdsmen attacks, which seem to have claimed more lives than Boko Haram.
While it has become clear that the Buhari administration cannot deliver on its campaign promises, the administration has equally left Nigerians in the dark regarding the fate of some citizens of the country whose whereabouts are still unknown.
Prominent among these missing Nigerians are the over one hundred Chibok Girls still in Boko Haram’s den since 2014, after some of their colleagues were released in 2017; the Dapchi girl, Leagh Sharibu, who, the Boko Haram members have refused to release along with her other kidnapped girls in 2017, simply because Leagh had refused to renounce her Christian faith; and the biggest of them all, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).
When Buhari was asking for our votes in 2015, he categorically told us that as soon as he was elected, he would personally lead the war against Boko Haram, clear the Sambisa Forest where the group was holding, and then rescue the kidnapped Chibok Girls in matter of weeks, if not days. We trusted him and gave him our votes.
But three years after mounting the saddle, Buhari could not defeat Boko Haram, while over one hundred Chibok Girls are still in their captive, including the Dapchi girl, Leagh Sharibu, yet they had told us that Boko Haram was no longer an issue in Nigeria, and that the group had been “technically decimated”.
But we are aware that millions of Nigerians are still living in various Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps spread across the North East zone of the country, and that these Nigerians cannot access their ancestral homes because Boko Haram is still occupying them.
Every now and then, we also hear of the so so number of people killed by Boko Haram. The other day, they told us that 23 Nigerian soldiers were missing following a Boko Haram attack. Even though the military high command was trying to deny the story, but this did not hold much water following the alleged video clips of some of the victims of the attack.
And now how about Nnamdi Kanu? The man had neither knife nor gun, yet they told us that he was a terrorist. His house was invaded by heavily armed soldiers, and the man whisked away and taken to unknown destination.
As 2019 fast draws nearer, we wonder how President Muhammadu Buhari is going to mount the podium to tell us what he knows about the fate of these missing Nigerians.
What will Buhari tell us about his inability or failure to rescue the remaing Chibok Girls, who he had promised to rescue in a matter of weeks in 2015, if elected?
What will Muhammadu Buhari tell us about Leagh Sharibu, the only Christian among the kidnapped Dapchi girls, who is still under the captivity of Boko Haram, after he had negotiated for the release of her Muslim colleagues?
What will Buhari tell us about Nnamdi Kanu, where is he now, and what offence did he commit?
We wait to hear from him.
