From President Goodluck Jonathan came a stunning revelation yesterday: members of Islamic fundamentalist group, have infiltrated the three arms of government and the military.
Jonathan spoke during the inter-denominational service to mark the 2012 Armed Forces Remembrance Day at the National Christian Centre.
He described the sect’s mode of operation as worse than the Nigerian civil war because it was difficult to finger where the enemy is coming from. The President confessed that it has become more difficult to address the nation’s security challenges.
He said: “This is a particular time when the country has major security challenges. There are explosions everyday. People are dying and are being killed daily without any reason.
“It is a period we also call on the armed forces, including those that have retired, to join hands with their colleagues that are still in service and government, to see how collectively we can protect our nation.
“I believe we will overcome our immediate challenges. The situation we have in our hands is even worse than the civil war that we fought.
“During the civil war, we knew and we could even predict where the enemy was coming from, you even knew the route they were coming from, you could even know the calibre of weapons they would use and so on.
“But the challenge we have today is more complicated. I remember when I held a meeting with elders from the Northeast and some parts of the Northwest where the Boko Haram phenomenon is more prevalent, somebody said the situation is so bad that even if one’s son is a member, one will not even know.
“That means that if the person will plant a bomb behind your house, you won’t know.
“Some of them (Boko Haram) are in the executive arm of government, some of them are in the parliamentary/legislative arm of government while some of them are even in the judiciary.
“Some are also in the armed forces, the police and other security agencies. Some continue to dip their hands and eat with you and you won’t even know the person who will point a gun at you or plant a bomb behind your house.
“That is how complex the situation is. Our security services are trying because as the President, I know what they are doing. Nigerians may not appreciate their efforts especially when you know that we are under policed. We have a police force that is about 300,000 in number.
“Countries that have the kind of challenge that we have today who have about 20 per cent of our population have five times more than that number. That number would have been okay some years back but definitely not the number that can cope with the security challenges we have now.
“I assure Nigerians that we shall get over it. We are meeting everyday and we are planning. We are going to increase the strength and the capacity of the security services to confront the modern challenges we face.”
Jonathan identified greed and selfishness as the twin evil facing the country. He described corruption as only a symptom of the two.
He pointed out that a combination of greed and selfishness would make a marketer to smuggle government’s subsidised petrol to neighbouring countries, adding that the two evils are not limited to government functionaries only.
He reiterated his position that though Nigerians might suffer a little, the nation would get to the promised land.
In his sermon titled “Patriotism at its height”, Primate of the Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion, Most Rev. Nicholas Okoh, said though the nation is passing through trying times, the total loyalty of members of the armed forces remained the only asset available for the President.
Okoh, who decried the lack of patriotism in the country, linked the prevalence of corruption and insecurity to lack of patriotic zeal.
To tackle the problem, he urged the Federal Government to give the mandatory one year youth service a major overhaul by adding full military training for three years.
He argued that a full military training of less not than three years would go a long way in firing up sense of patriotism in the youth.
Okoh who regretted the role some Nigerians were playing with their inflammatory remark, urged them, especially politicians, to desist from causing confusion in the polity through their utterances and actions.
Okoh said when there is peace, the job of the military becomes less hazardous.
“The Nigerian civil war ended 41 years ago, so we now have some professors, judges, national assembly members, prominent people who are post-civil war children. Some of them tend to romanticise with war, war is extreme madness and a great social evil.
“Patriotism demands that we all speak, work and pray for peace in our country. It is therefore very important for men, women, innocent civilians, military and all to work for peace.
On the recent killings of Christians inside churches in the Northern part of the country, the Bishop said the killings were not only unpatriotic but also sinful acts.
“The next thing is that it is an unpatriotic act, a religion sin to spray fellow citizens, innocent people with bullets in the church in order to express one’s grievances. It is not the behaviour of decent people anywhere in the world.
“Those politicians who justify killings in order to gain cheap political points, are unpatriotic to that extent. If anybody has anything to say, he should say it in a way that he will be listened to and his grievances will be addressed.
Okoh observed that it was becoming more difficult to govern the country because of lack of confidence and scepticism which corruption had caused.
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