By Salisu Na’inna Dambatta
“Sack the service Chairs,” they chorused.
“EndSars,” they shouted.
“Remove the Ministers,” they said in their media war.
These were some of their wishes. Wishes that now seem to be clearly aimed at achieving a goal: the creation of a state of chaos, the promotion of instability, and ultimately, regime change. Placards suggesting “Buhari Must Go” were displayed during the EndSars marches and violance. The nefarious objective of all the agitations are now clear.
Bishop Mathew Kukah has just treasonablly made a thinly-veiled call for a military coup d’etat against an elected administration.
“Every honest Nigerian knows that there is no way any non-Northern Muslim President could have done a fraction of what President Buhari has done by his nepotism and gotten away with it. There would have been a military coup a long time ago or we would have been at war,” he said incitingly in a message on Christmas day.
And the call on the platform of the House of Representatives by a member for the impeachment of President Muhammadu Buhari further exposed the fact that an orchestrated campaign to create an atmosphere and justification for regime change could be brewing, fanned by forces that do not find the progress the country is making in infrastructure development, expansion in agricultural productivity and the deepening of democracy, palatable.
The United State of America (CNN) campaign against the country, using television broadcasts to tar the elected administration as repressive and killer of rioting youth, represents the globalisation of the image-destruction dimension of the conditioning of minds to justify their plan to effect regime change. They propagated the occurrence of a massacre falsely. Up to now, months after the alleged massacre at the Lekki Toll Gate, there is not a single corpse from the ‘massacre’. And no single family went to the Judicial Panel on EndSars in Lagos to report the killing, or loss of its member during the arson by the Endser-sers. None whatsoever.
Then enters the Financial Times ( FT) of London. Located at the reclaimed derelict Canary Wharf, East London, it proclaimed from its rented headquarters in an editorial that represents the spreading of ill will and evil secret desire, that Nigeria is approaching a path toward a failed state. This is more than mere insinuation by the newspaper, it reflects its participation, most likely for a fee, in looking to implement a hideous and evil design, to see a chaotic Nigeria, where riots and disorder would lead to anarchy and implosion.
One nauseating character of the Financial Times newspaper is that, it habitually turns on countries and leadership of those countries by portraying them negatively whenever proposals from its canvassers to develop and publish profiles or supplements on those countries at unimaginable costs, are rejected. Nigeria could be a victim of that nauseating characteristic, targetted via a poisonous editorial.
The Financial Times, which is reeling from the effects of the Internet and Covid19 on its own financial standing leading to the shedding of some of its staff from several departments, is probably looking for countries or societies that will go down with it, hence a resort to wishing for the destruction of countries like Nigeria. In the past the newspaper welcomed and actually celebrated the destruction of Somalia, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and the current crisis in Syria. Its negative celebrative coverage of the mayhem in those countries can be verified through fact checking by any interested reader to confirm this observation, or if you like, assertion.
Rejecting the unprofessional, unethical and definitely unfair style and substance of reporting the affairs of Nigeria by the CNN International, the Financial Times and lately, the Washington Post, does not amount to suggesting that Nigeria as a nation state and the Muhammadu Buhari administration, are not facing certain challenges. There are numerous challenges.
The challenges include a mild economic recession occassioned by the disastrous and worldwide crippling of economic activities by the Covid19 pandamic. No country on earth is immuned to, or escaped, the recession induced by Covid19. Globe-wide crude oil prices and consumption, collapsed. Nigeria’s earnings from oil and gas, dwindled.
The insurgency in the North East of the country has been rolled back and confined to a tiny fraction of the large chunk of the country which the insurgents declared as their Caliphate. Mopping up operations to finish-off its rag-tag elements by the Military is recording success.
True, bandits, kidnappers and sundry criminals attack villages, markets, highways and nomads to abduct or kill citizens or rustle livestock in the North West, but the security forces and the communities are doggedly fighting back to end it. The recent speedy rescue of 344 abducted students in Katsina State in a combined operation by multiple collaborating agencies, reflects greater sophistication, experience and efficiency in such security operations.
It is pertinent to state that the challenges facing Nigeria, including the security challenge which the FT and other media outlets involved in not wishing the best for Nigeria delight in highlighting as opening the road to Kigali for the country, are being vigorously and successfully tackled by the government. There is a silver lining, a clear indication, that Nigeria, which is not foresaken by God, is about ending those security challenges. Nigeria, which experienced a civil war, will not implode and will definitely be far off the road to Kigali forever.
The Editorial by FT and the obviously dubious coverage of the EbdSars riots by the CNN have clearly exposed the destructive activities these two outlets promote and encourage through their slanted, unbalanced, unprofessional and unethical practice of the otherwise decent profession of journalism. Their gutter journalism, through which the two media outlets spread falsehood, give a fantastically wrong assessment of Nigeria, legitimised disorder and the destabilization of countries, will ultimately push them into deep gutters from which they will never come out.
