Federal Govt. Too Weak To Act, Say Northern Politicians

Prominent northern politicians have expressed worries that the Federal Government is too weak to initiate appropriate response to the recent classification of the country as a terrorist haven by the United States of America (USA), following the botched attempt by Farouk Abdulmuttallab to bomb an airliner over its territory.

Former governor of defunct Kaduna State, Alhaji Balarabe Musa; former Speaker of the state House of Assembly under the Balarabe Musa administration, Alhaji Abubakar Mamman Danmusa and the Director General of The Buhari Organisation (TBO), Alhaji Sule Hamman, agreed in separate interviews with Saturday Tribune that government had been timid in its reaction to the US action.

The US government recently announced that it had placed Nigeria on the list of nations with terrorist link, following Farouk Abdulmuttab, the 23-year-old son of immediate past chairman of First Bank Plc, Alhaji Umar Muttallab’s failed attempt to detonate explosives strapped to his body on board North West Airlines plane on Christmas Day.

Alhaji Musa observed that the Federal Government had failed to assert itself over the development which he noted was a ploy for the US to attack Nigeria in future.

According to him, “It should be made quite clear to the US that what has happened can happen even in the US itself. It can happen in Britain because this is a situation caused by international situation. It can happen in the US, Britain, Germany, anywhere. This time, it has happened in Nigeria. Tomorrow, it can happen in New York, London, Paris or anywhere in the world.”

He added that though it was an unfortunate incident because of the involvement of a Nigerian, the country needed not be ashamed because it could have happened anywhere else.

“Now that America has gone further to declare Nigeria as one of the areas where al-Qaeda has base, Nigeria should now, first of all, protest vehemently to the United States for her inclusion in the so-called axis of evil,”he said.

The former governor, who is also the factional national chairman of the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP), warned Nigerians to brace up for a possible attack by the US under the pretext of ridding the country of terrorists.

Similarly, Alhaji Mamman Danmusa noted that the situation of the country in the past few weeks, especially the absence of clearly defined leadership, hasd rendered the government very weak and therefore not well constituted to take bold initiatives.

According to him, “our position is very weak. If you are following what the Americans have been doing, they no longer have regard for Nigeria as much as they had in the years before.

“During the (Shehu) Shagari administration, Nigeria was able to nationalise British oil companies because of the problem in Zimbabwe. We don’t have that clout now. I don’t think Nigeria is really in a position to react in that manner,” Mamman Danmusa, who was a Senator in the Second Republic, asserted.

On his part, Alhaji Sule Hamman told Saturday Tribune that the Federal Government’s slow response to the US action was a clear demonstration of the discharge of its responsibility to the citizens.

He said “The government of Nigeria is in a very weak position today. The response of the Nigerian government has been feeble and less contemplative than one would have thought. But I think this is understandable because since the incident, when the international community was speaking about the problem of insecurity and strengthening border security in their countries, the Nigerian government was mute.