Nigeria Content Online

No number of photo opportunities
between President Goodluck Jonathan and militant leaders from the Niger
Delta can persuade Nigerians that the Movement for the Emancipation of
the Niger Delta (MEND) had no hand in the killings that occurred in
Abuja on Independence Day. It does not really matter if Dokubo Asari
and his fellow militants shake the president’s hand thousands of times
for the cameras. The limited information available to Nigerians,
including the claim of responsibility for the bombings, points to MEND
as the perpetrators.

Prior to the tragic events in Abuja,
MEND was the only organisation in the country that had resorted to
bombings in this way, including in Warri a few months ago at an amnesty
conference organized by Vanguard newspaper. A few hours before
explosions rocked the venue, they issued an advance warning to the
public and accepted responsibility once the bombs had gone off. This
was the same scenario that played itself out in Abuja Oct. 1, with one
important difference – our security services bungled badly, and 16
people paid with their lives for that negligence.

Mr. Jonathan only made things worse
with his hasty and ill-advised decision to exonerate MEND for the crime
committed in Abuja. The perception of the president was too quick on
the draw has not been helped by the accusation made by Henry Okah, a
reputed arms dealer and prominent MEND leader, who claims an aide of
the president wanted him to blame northern politicians for the carnage.
The deep distrust that already exists between the different regions in
this country was further fuelled by Okah’s claims.

Taken together, the statements by both
Mr. Jonathan and Mr. Okah have provoked northern political leaders into
trenchant, at times unrestrained, lambasting of the president. Some
have called for his resignation. Others have gone so far as to threaten
him with impeachment.

The president’s defenders have argued,
weakly, that he didn’t do anything wrong. His aides and political
associates have made vague claims that, by virtue of his position, the
president surely was privy to information that led him to preemptively
proclaim MEND not guilty of the cold-blooded murder of innocents.

And this is the crux of the matter. If
the president does indeed have this sort of information, he has a
responsibility to share it with the rest of us.

We are disappointed, to say the least,
that the president inserted himself so publicly into a criminal
incident before law enforcement authorities even had a chance to
conduct investigations. It is not the president’s place to pronounce on
the guilt or innocence of anyone. That is why we have police, the State
Security Service, and a plethora of other agencies charged with
preventing crime and enforcing the law. All that we require of our
president, in the immediate aftermath of such traumatic events as the
bloody bombings in Abuja on Oct. 1, are words of comfort to the
survivors and their families, reassurance for an anxious public, and a
promise to ensure that law enforcement agencies brought perpetrators to
book.

While the president needlessly opened
himself to the increasingly shrill accusations from his political
opponents, among others, we are dismayed that his most severe critics
also are sounding more like opportunists who have given little thought
to the dangers inherent in the heating up of the political environment.
Our fragile country can ill afford the tensions that have risen so
dramatically in recent days.

The president must act quickly to lower
the temperature. If he has any information that would support his
initial assertion, then he has an obligation to share it with us. But
if, as we suspect, his initial reaction arose more out of panic than
any desire to mislead, then he should address Nigerians forthrightly
about the general insecurity in the land, from sectarian convulsions in
Jos to widespread kidnappings in eastern Nigeria to Boko Haram killings
in the northeast to the violent upheaval in the Niger Delta. He must
put the recent bombings in context for us all and outline the urgent
steps he plans on taking right away to protect life and limb.

Only this kind of honesty will begin to restore some of the confidence that has been lost.