Lekan Sote
Immediately after Governor Charles Soludo of Anambra State was sworn-in and after he read his maiden speech, the Master of Ceremony pronounced him a philosopher-king that combined political skills with deep philosophical knowledge.
Italian Cesare Borgia, a Cardinal, was the skilled statesman that inspired “The Prince,” Nicollo Machiavelli’s treatise on the acquisition and use of political power. Francois Leclerc Tremblay, a friar, was counsellor to Armand Jean du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu, better known as (Catholic) Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister to the infant King Louis XIII of France.
Mordecai, who some believed is Prophet Malachi, was a counsellor to his niece, Hadassah, better known as Queen Esther. He succeeded his traducer, Haman, as vizier to Esther’s husband, King Ahasuerus, otherwise known as King Xerxes 1, ruler of more than one hundred Persian provinces.
Pastor E.A. Adeboye, General Overseer of The Redeemed Christian Church of God, recently displayed the attributes of a man of God, who is also a man of war, showing that he knew more than worshipping God.
Though he may not have been appointed a prophet to the Nigerian nation, many view him as Nigeria’s national prophet. There is hardly any clergyman, in any of the prominent religions of Nigeria, with his stature and following.
There is no doubt that Pastor Adeboye, a man of muscular faith and leader in Christendom, is one of God’s greatest generals of all time.
These military facilities include Nigeria’s most prestigious military school, Nigeria Defence Academy, from where a Major of the Nigerian Army was recently abducted and others were killed.
Some other military facilities in Kaduna State are Nigeria Air Force Training School, Nigeria Police College, Nigeria Navy School of Armament, a Nigeria Army operational base, a Nigeria Army depot, Nigeria Army School of Artillery and Armed Forces Command and Staff College.
Kaduna State has recently witnessed severe assaults against its security: The major transportation nodes of the state (the Abuja-Kaduna highway, Abuja-Kaduna railway line and Kaduna Airport) were attacked in recent times.
Fear is on the faces of practically all residents of the state, including their Governor, Nasir el Rufai, as rising terrorism caused Global Terror Index to designate Nigeria as the third most terrorised country in the world, after Afghanistan and Iraq.
Pastor Adeboye lamented, “You can’t go to Kaduna (State) by train. You can’t go to Kaduna by air. They can attack you at the airport,” he then asked, “Why Kaduna (State)? Who is trying to isolate Kaduna? Why? After Kaduna, which (state) is next?”
You may agree that Pastor Adeboye is asking strategic military questions that, in turn, lead to many ifs: If an enemy seizes the entire Kaduna State with its military arsenal, wouldn’t you say that such an enemy has taken over the Nigerian state and can enslave all citizens of Nigeria? That would mean disaster for the nation’s sovereignty.
If Kaduna State is seized by non-state actors that were not voted into office by the electorate in a constitutionally conducted election, could Nigeria’s entire security infrastructure be in the hands of enemies of the people of Nigeria who could use such power for inimical purposes?
It could be worse if the insurrectionists are foreigners from across the West African sub-region as some security experts are already insinuating. That means Nigeria could fall into the hands of renegade foreign soldiers of fortune.
You must realise and understand that if anyone acquires the military hardware of Nigeria by any action of stealth, what he has achieved will be more than a gunboat hold on the entire territory called Nigeria. That would amount to a surrender of the richest and most populated country in Africa to anarchy.
If you go by the classic definition of a state as the supreme, final, absolute coercive power in a political realm, you can imagine the potential danger to the Nigerian political wellbeing if military power falls into the hands of the wrong people.
If those who run Nigeria’s military infrastructure—the men, the materials and the logistics—are in cahoots and share the same principles, ideologies and sympathies with insurgents and terrorists, Nigeria’s future is endangered.
You may recall that after the United States of America, led by President Joe Biden, withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, the dreaded Taliban, assisted by their friends, overran the capital city, Kabul, and seized the Afghanistan government.
Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, is already thinking that if care is not taken, renegades from across the Sahel may soon take over some Nigerian state houses.
How do you explain discrimination against women’s education, minority rights and the destruction of android telephones, if not that Afghanistan has boarded a time machine and returned to the Dark Ages, a time before the Stone Age?
The next point that Pastor Adeboye raised is that more than 70 per cent of Nigeria’s revenue from petroleum is stolen, whereas the Federal Government is perennially borrowing money to sustain governance. He added that reports indicate that more than 90 per cent of the revenue earned is used to service debt!
If pilfering of Nigeria’s commonwealth is not military action against the sovereignty of Nigeria, what else could it be? Those diverting Nigeria’s commonwealth into private coffers (or using most of Nigeria’s revenue to service debts) are doing two very dangerous damages to the country.
Nigerians should be concerned that after the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo got Nigeria’s debt written off by its creditors, subsequent governments are stockpiling debt up to N38 trillion as of September 2021.
Firstly, they are diverting money that Nigeria could use to finance its development programmes and buy arms and ammunition to equip its military against insurgents, terrorists and other criminals elements.
The Bible says that money is a defence and it answers all things. When an individual, organisation or country amasses a huge cache of money, it is sometimes said to have acquired a war chest. That gives you an idea of the magnitude of strategic potency that the Nigerian state is losing.
Secondly, Nigeria’s enemies may be using Nigeria’s stolen commonwealth to acquire arms to fight the Nigerian state. As you know, ransoms paid to kidnappers are used to buy weapons and logistics equipment to continue the siege against Nigeria.
Don’t you think that the €35 billion that European Union countries admit to having paid to import gas from Russia may have gone into funding Russia’s war against Ukraine?
You should want to know where the 400 suspects that the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, claimed are sponsoring Boko Haram are getting their money from.
Visuals and video footage of insurgents, terrorists, bandits and kidnappers wielding sophisticated rifles and driving expensive vehicles demonstrate how money can translate into dangerous weapons.
– Twitter: @lekansote1
