As a Nigerian, I am completely saddened by the dimension that the Boko Haram insurgency has taken. The frequency of its attacks, the impunity with which they carry them out and the free space they seem to have acquired since the end of last year are as scary as they are embarrassing. Things should not go on like this for long.
Within the past 12 weeks, hundreds of Nigerians have been killed in the most barbaric manner possible. Between Adamawa and Borno states, thousands have lost their homes and property, insecurity is all over the place. A terribly alarming dimension to the daring venture of the insurgents against the Nigerian state is last week’s abduction of 20 female pupils of Government Girls’ Senior Science Secondary School and Ashigar School of Business and Administrative Studies. With that, Boko Haram seems to have sent signals to the Nigerian state that it is at war.
I am not sure that many of us understand this. Ask Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State. Last Monday after a visit to the Presidential Villa in Abuja, Shettima told the world that Boko Haram had declared war on Nigeria. Shettima, who shed a tear or two some days earlier, solicited that no effort should be spared towards dealing with the insurgents’ incursion.
But I do not know how many of our compatriots from the north share his opinion. It is true that governors of the 19 northern states rose from their meeting in Kaduna on Tuesday to call on the Federal Government to stop the insurgency in the North-East like they were some powerless, ordinary Nigerians like you and me. How much would that call, which now sounds like a tune from a broken record, help the situation at hand? It rang out like some public relations gimmick to count the governors amongst those who have spoken. But, at least, the governors have spoken.
The same cannot be said of so many northern elders. Since the latest set of attacks, the Chairman of the Northern Elders’ Forum, Prof. Ango Abdullahi, has not found his voice. He is perhaps too busy devising ways to achieve his pet project and life ambition – how the next President would come from the North. I wonder if Abdullahi has stopped to ask himself whether it would even be possible to hold elections in Nigeria in 2015 if things go on this way. Unlike a former head of state and the All Progressives Congress presidential hopeful, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), who last week came out for the first time to condemn the latest activities of Boko Haram, describing the ideology behind it as devilish, Abdullahi and his ilk are still playing the ostrich
This brings us to an unavoidable poser of how exactly the northern elite think that Nigeria can overcome the menace which Boko Haram has become to the national psyche. When President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states in May last year, feelers from northern leaders like Prof. Abdullahi and Dr. Junaid Ibrahim were near violent. Abduallhi described the state of emergency as a “declaration of war” on the north. Meaning that the state of emergency was worse than the loss of thousands of lives in the hands of Boko Haram, the paralysis of economic activities in those states as well as the inability of hundreds of thousands of children to attend schools for not less than 24 months before then. This was at the same moment when many Nigerians thought Jonathan had delayed the declaration for too long.
But Abduallhi is persistent is in his posturing as just last month, he announced the plan to drag recently retired Chief of Army Staff, Gen. Azubike Ihejirika, to the International Court of Justice for war crimes. Funny enough, he just would not speak against the violence perpetrated by Boko Haram.
Buhari’s position was not too different from that of Abdullahi’s. Consistently in the past, the retired General condemned the treatment of the insurgents by the Federal Government, comparing it to how the Umaru Yar’Adua administration treated Niger Delta militants and only stopping short of prescribing the same treatment for the Boko Haram insurgents. On one occasion, Buhari was quoted as saying: “Government cannot kill all the Boko Haram members. Government should rather arrest and prosecute the Boko Haram members. They should only be killed when they said clearly they wage war against their country like what happened during the civil war. And even during civil war, those of us who fought in the war were given a copy of a Code of Conduct book which guided us against killing innocent people.”
But Buhari missed it on all fronts. There can be no comparism between the activities of the Niger Delta militants and these Boko Haram insurgents. Neither the motive nor the mode of operation is identical. By his own admission, the Niger Delta militants were incensed against the Multinational Oil Companies operating in their region and sometimes they took it out on the Federal Government. They kidnapped expatriates, blew up oil installations and attempted to cripple the oil production process; it was largely a strategic economic warfare. At no time did they overrun villages, and in the process killing innocent citizens, raping and maiming women and children like it has become the signature of Boko Haram. Even those who fought the civil war knew what they were fighting for and whatever code Buhari was talking about would have applied to both sides of the war. The war that Boko Haram has engaged the Nigerian state in is deadly, unpredictable and difficult to understand. More importantly, leaders of the Niger Delta, including some governors, were involved in the preparations for the amnesty discussions. How come we have not seen any concerted effort from the northern leaders? This is why I think we cannot continue to lay the responsibility for solving this problem on the Federal Government alone.
It actually must be a difficult one for Jonathan to manage. Seen by the northern establishment as a usurper, with every of his action capable of being interpreted as undermining the interest of the north, he must always weigh the options carefully before taking any decision. This is more so because Jonathan does not seem to have enough of the Presidency yet. Like all politicians, he must be baiting reasonable support from the north and would hesitate from going for extreme choices.
For this reason, I consider calls restricting the solution of this problem to the Federal Government as we had from the northern governors as lame. Shettima while speaking to newsmen at the State House rightly noted that we “cannot continue to play the ostrich”. I cannot agree less. However, this is not just about the Federal Government. If, as Shettima suggested, members of Boko Haram are better armed and motivated than our soldiers, where then do we go from there?
My take is that if only for the first time, Nigeria leaders need to come together to solve this problem and give quality advice to the President on how best to apply his carrot and stick in dealing with the challenge. Traditional, religious and political leaders as well as youth leaders all have to come together to put an end to these senseless killings. Those waiting to rubbish the Jonathan administration by making capital out of its failure to effectively tackle the Boko Haram situation should realise that when you throw a stone in the market place, it may just land on the head of your loved one. It would pay no one, northerner or not, to take over a tattered country in 2015, that is if 2015 comes at all?
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