The Department of State Services (DSS) must think of us, ordinary Nigerians mired into the ground under the iron heel of a thieving regime, as idiotic buffoons who think with their bums. It is either that or all of them, without exception, have the intelligence of a mule. ‘The Tales by Moonlight’ they spawned to explain last Sunday’s serious security breach at their detention centre must have engendered incredible disbelief even in their ‘intelligence’ community worldwide where it is routine for an elephant to pass through the eye of the needle than for a state spook to be upright.
The sheer audacity of the bizarre tale left some of us still gawking and wondering nearly a week later whether these guys truly have any ‘intelligence’ in whirling true lies.
By now, all Nigerians old enough to know the difference between good luck (silly, not Jonathan) and bad luck are familiar with the cock and bull story of a failed jailbreak attempted by a lone heroically foolish bad guy.
According to this ‘stranger than fiction’ ‘tale of the unexpected’, this bad guy, a representative of the bad guys of all time, Boko Haram, casually overpowered an operative who was taking meals to the detainees, disarmed the ‘operative’, took his firearm and started firing. Incredibly, the bad guy was in handcuffs!
Another version had more razzmatazz. The daring suspect actually ‘played’ the operative by feigning to use the loo from whence he got his assault facility in the form of forcibly uprooted toilet seat and knocked the operative silly on the head before taking over his gun.
In both versions, a ‘fact’ is constant namely- a lone suspect attempting jailbreak by seizing the gun of one of the guards. This much Marilyn Ogar, the mouthpiece of the gang of snoops, admitted. Ogar is not your ordinary spokesperson. She is unabashedly glib. She says it as it isn’t. She and Metuh, the ruling (ruining?) party mouthpiece would make an amazing couple.
I recall the time she sat before television cameras and flashbulbs and lied through her teeth explaining the cold blooded murder of nine economic migrants wasted by operatives of her agency sometime last year.
Towards the tail end of last year, the DSS, acting on a ‘tip off,’ stormed an uncompleted building in Apo and casually killed these unlucky fellows trapped in the snare of an underperforming regime.
Then Ogar told a disbelieving bunch of reporters that those so callously wasted were suspected insurgents in a sleeper cell of the murderous Boko Haram waiting to strike at the appointed time. It was, of course, bunkum.
Then I wrote on this page that “I am not a fan of this bunch of misguided youth. But their misadventure has given franchise to all manner of crooks operating in their fearful guise. Petty criminals, doggy politicians, leeching security top guns have all, at various times, sought to make Boko Haram the fall guy of their own crooked ways. The bank robber, the underperforming politician in office and the Generals feeding fat on security votes may have be united in a morbid desire for Boko Haram to last forever.”
The failed jailbreak falls under this category. Ogar’s lame explanation makes conspiracy theories an attractive refuge. One, the Sunday security glitch was well designed, carefully orchestrated and mercilessly executed ploy to dazzle a naïve president. The idea is to ‘influence’ the President ‘play’ ball. The flip side is that, as usual, DSS has been economical with the truth. The discernible are asking why air and military support had to be sought to ‘tackle’ a lone gunman gone gaga? And how come the heavy casualty figures on the side of the bad guys and none from the side of the good guys?
The Boko Haram challenge has truly confounded the president. Either by design or by default, the president has singularly compounded the mayhem. He has blown hot and cold almost in the same breathe. For example, soon after he inaugurated a dialogue committee to jaw jaw with the rebels, he declared a state of emergency. Every now and again, he or some of his overzealous aides probably taking the cue from their master, politicize the national embarrassment that is the insanity called Boko Haram.
A couple of days ago, the National Security Adviser (NSA)unveiled a ‘soft approach’ to counter terrorism. On paper, it looked so appealing and mouth watering. Most were sold that the de radicalization of the restive youth and obliterating the factors that cause militancy will hasten the death of the insurrection.
Almost immediately, the President who, I dare say, demonstrates remarkable lack of tact, countered in a foreign land, that his government would no longer treat the insurgents with ‘kids’ glove. He implied that force alone was the best option. Even at that, Jonathan’s Military is ill equipped to fight the defiant youths.
In past encounters, Boko Haram has given the Military a bloody nose not so much because they are better trained but because they are better equipped.
In December last year, they sauntered into Maiduguri and bloodied the nose of the Military. They levelled the33 Artillery Regiment. Torched the 79 Composite Group of the Air Force. Devastated the Bulumkutu Divisional Police Headquarters. Over 100 vehicles burnt and five air force jets ‘incapacitated.’
20 days ago, these bad guys the military high command loves to dismiss as rascally inclined youths, launched and successfully freed their members held in the heavily fortified Giwa Barracks.
In all these, I didn’t see the ‘force’ of the once mighty and fearful Nigerian Military. Once upon a time, the nation’s Armed Forces were seen as a sub-regional super power. In sundry Peace Keeping operations, they had excelled abroad. They have helped restore and secure peace in restive nations especially in West Africa. Under Jonathan, they have become a ‘whimpering’ and even ‘scampering’ bunch under the heavy artillery of a rag tag army.
With a rancid record of half-truths and true lies, it is easy to disbelief this mirthless cock and bull story. This is for free. Get real DSS. Wake up. Start by telling plausible tales. If truly, Sunday, was a ‘sting’ operation, it may have backfired. Rather to make the President playball, it has exposed your underbelly as ‘intelligence’ community lacking in intelligence!
