Punch
By Tunde Odesola
Goliath and Chief of Defence Staff, General Lucky Irabor, is the highest-ranking military officer in the Nigerian Armed Forces. His duties include formulating operational policies and programmes for the Army, Navy and Air Force with a view to attaining national security.
The Defender of the Nigerian Universe, General Irabor, has able lieutenants in the Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Farouk Yahaya; Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Awwal Gambo; and the Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Isiaka Amao – all Goliaths in their own rights – though smaller in size, but with offices more sought after because they have under their direct controls, officers, men and money.
Irabor isn’t the Philistine giant from Gath who wore to war a bronze helmet, coat of scale armour weighing 5,000 shekels, bronze greaves to protect his legs, and had a javelin slung across the back with a shield bearer going ahead of him.
Irabor is the Nigerian Goliath from Delta State. He’s an Ika. Many people, who don’t know that the Ika are a unique people from Aliokpu Agbor, see Irabor as an ika, a Yoruba word for the wicked because of his merciless role in the bloodbath at Lekki Toll Gate.
On the way to war on October 20, 2020, Irabor armed himself with an AK-47, endless rounds of ammunition, bulletproof vest, helmet, jackboots, knives, teargas, flashlight and horsewhip, coming metaphorically behind his abominable shield bearers, who had perforated many heads with bullets and crushed countless bones even before Irabor’s cavalry halted in triumph at the notorious Lekki Toll Gate, the place of skulls.
Irabor is the Nigerian Goliath, who exactly 15 days after his 55th birthday anniversary, marked amid prayers for long life and prosperity, went to war against thousands of unarmed Nigerians that include children and women. He returned home with a basketful of dripping heads hurriedly interred in an unmarked mass grave lit by the gaze of the distant owl which provided light for the midnight secret operation.
What are the sins of the shot Nigerians? One, they dared to hold aloft the Nigerian flag and two, they demanded a better country from their sightless and selfish rulers.
In the inferred view of Goliath Irabor, who knew that bloodied military guns were cleaned and locked away after the Lekki massacre, Nigerian youths are a truly lazy and stupid bunch, always asking what their country can do for them, and not what they can do for their country.
I think this is why Irabor, the numero uno of the killing Nigerian military, frowns on the leakage of the report by the panel of inquiry set up by the Lagos State Government to investigate the massacre carried out by Nigerian soldiers and police against innocent citizens at the Lekki Toll Gate in October 2020.
It’s not in the character of generals to talk without thinking. With Irabor, speech is silver: silence is stupid. The body language of the Anioma general without a war medal reflects the belief that the man with a gun is always right no matter the emptiness in his skull.
Last Monday, the no-death anthem composed by the media fiends of Abuja stuck in the throat of Irabor, whose army had vehemently denied shooting a live bullet at the scene, let alone hurting a fly.
Repeatedly, the Goliath in Irabor had looked down on Nigerians, and thrown a challenge to them, taunting the citizenry to produce a shred of evidence linking his Army to the killings at the notorious toll gate in Lekki, just like the big Philistine did to Israelites in the Valley of Elah.
Illogical, incoherent and insensitive, Irabor, in a viral video, is more concerned that the report became public knowledge via ‘a wrong channel’ than showing remorse and apologising for the innocent lives that his zombie soldiers mowed down in cold blood on the Black Tuesday of October 2020. Irabor is the cynic whose conscience conveniently sits on the truth while his boots regally trample on justice, shamelessly.
In the interview conducted by African Independent Television, the acting Goliath squawked, “I’d like to indicate that the Armed Forces of Nigeria is a professional armed force. We are peopled by Nigerians and we remain committed to constitutional mandate.” What nonsense!
He continued, “So, we will not, at this point, think that Nigerians should make disparaging remarks…
