IT is amazing to observe that a majority of Nigerians feel less concerned about the happenings in the Northeast, especially why the insurgency has remained despite the Federal Government’s efforts. 

  All we do is pay lipservice, persons and groups paid to carry out placards to paint a situation they have not taken time to study just only to discredit the ruling party and president. The Movement for Democratic Principles is not totally blind to Boko Haram’s operations. Sometime in 2013, we drew the attention of Nigerians to the likelihood that the body is sponsored by one of the present presidential aspirants and his cohorts. Our reason then was borne out of his outburst before and after the general elections of 2011, in which he categorically vowed to make the nation ungovernable for Dr. Goodluck Jonathan who had overwhelmingly won the polls. 

  Shortly after the results were announced there were violent protests from the same north-east the base of Boko Haram and his North west.

  Nigerians had thought at the time that it was the normal protest after elections until it was intensified by Boko Haram. In one of our contributions to create awareness among the electorate, we referred to this aspirant’s ability at covering his tracks each time he commits a fraud while in office as well as under the regimes of Obasanjo or Abacha, hoodwinking Nigerians that he is a saint. The same ability he has used to make Nigerians believe that he has no hand in Boko Haram insurgency.   Much as many Nigerians were deceived by the arranged attack on him in Kaduna, we were not as we asked why the much ado about the incident. We also questioned the rationale behind the call for the probe of the attack when so many Nigerians have been killed by the same terrorists yet no investigation had taken place.

  Events in the past few months have given us reasons to affirm the fact that the Boko Haram insurgency today is sponsored to seek cheap political sympathy. Our reasons are not far- fetched. 

  Firstly, we considered the attacked on him in Kaduna as diversionary, meant to take the minds of Nigerians away from him as having any link to the insurgents as the elections drew closer. Secondly, this “poor” standard bearer of a political party who had to take a bank loan to enable him purchase the nomination form was quick to donate N20 million for the reconstruction of a mosque that was bombed in Kano by his supporters. This also was diversionary and an act of segregation. Remember this man just borrowed money from the bank probably without a collateral. 

   How do Nigerians explain that before this single attack on the mosque in Kano, several churches had been attacked and destroyed by this same terror group and at no time did the anti-graft saint condemn the acts. 

  We consider his campaign promise of stopping Boko Haram insurgency in two weeks/months if voted into power as the main reason that the group was formed, to make the government actually ungovernable for Jonathan and therefore use it to score a political point.

   Now if you review the activities of the terror group in the past one year you will observe that they were deliberately heightened, deadlier and more daring as the polls drew closer. Barely a few weeks to the election, the sect destroyed lives and property that the world acknowledged as their highest attacks ever.

 Must things be taken to the extreme just because of selfish interest? Is the contest for the presidency a do-or-die affair? Is it really the interest of the people that is behind the aspirant’s obsession0?

To be continued

• Ugbovoro and Izomor are National Coordinator and National Secretary, Movement for Democratic Principle), [email protected]