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| Tunde Ajibde |
President Goodluck Jonathan travelled to Chad not long ago. Some Nigerians said his entourage was one man too offensive. The Presidency announced thereafter that the allegation of Senator Ali Modu Sheriff being with the President on the trip was a fiction written by some critics. But a careful sieving of what’s beneficial from what’s bandwagon criticism will show that the matter doesn’t deserve this much dissipation of energy. For this writer, Sheriff should be in Chad; he’s an asset in Nigeria’s relations with that country. Whether or not he should have been seen with the President is another matter. The view that he should be in Chad, arranged or coincidental, is for the following reasons. Any observer of the abracadabra that leadership anywhere performs and gets away with knows that governments get individuals to undertake state assignments while it pretends such doesn’t happen. Maybe, this didn’t happen in Chad; but if it did, this writer salutes the very idea, for, in diplomacy, the end sometimes justifies the means. In any case, that the President’s team allowed Sheriff to have that much contact with their principal out there in Ndjamena indicates a mindset. One doesn’t find a fault with that too, for statecraft isn’t so straightforward, considering that even the most integrity-espousing governments across the globe can smuggle a convicted criminal out of jail, send him on clandestine assignments for the state, and thereafter make him disappear under a different identity.
What happened in Chad is one diplomatic manoeuvre this writer claps for, irrespective of the controversy that the figure involved represents. And to start with, does it mean anything to the reader that Sheriff had been in the opposition party for so long yet the ruling party couldn’t pick him up for offences bordering on funding a terrorist group?
Days before the Chad controversy began, news was rife that President Jonathan would travel to Ndjamena for talks with President Idris Derby. It was added that the meeting was expected to lead to the strengthening of the Paris Accord on joint border patrols, intelligence sharing and the prevention of the illicit movement of terrorists, criminals, arms and ammunition across shared borders. It’s clear no one has a problem with why the President was in Chad; meanwhile, why Sheriff was seen with him is at issue. That the Presidency specially took to the podium to react to the accusation, especially from the opposition party, that Mr. President went around with a Boko Haram sponsor showed how hurting the accusation had been. So, the response equally targeted the opposition “and other bigoted critics of the Jonathan administration over the claim that the President is hobnobbing with the former governor of Borno State, Senator Ali Modu Sheriff, who was recently accused by the Australian Steven Davies, of being one of the chief sponsors of the terrorist organisation, Boko Haram.” Then, it was stated for “the purpose of emphasis that the former Borno State governor was not on President Jonathan’s delegation.”
As already noted, whether Sheriff should or shouldn’t have been on the President’s entourage isn’t this writer’s focus. A king can move around with anyone he wishes. One therefore argues that Sheriff’s presence in Chad shouldn’t have generated much heat if a few fundamentals were paid attention to and politicking hadn’t coloured the criticism. To this writer, neither the allegation by the Australian, the accusation by the ruling party against Sheriff when he was in the opposition, nor the latest criticism from the opposition now that Sheriff is in the ruling party is worth the dissipation of energy. Reason? Both the opposition and the ruling parties have fully exploited the opportunity that the figure of Sheriff and the issues surrounding him offer to lob missiles when it’s politically convenient to do so. And Sheriff has confidently come out on several occasions to deny that he sponsors the violent Boko Haram sect. Now, the confidence of a man who, even when he was in the opposition, acted as though no one would ever be able to pin a shred of evidence on him is worth a closer look.
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