Northern elders and Boko Haram

Thursday, 30 May 2013
Editorial culled from the Tribune

THE Northern Elders Forum  has expressed its intention to institute a legal action against the Federal Government at the International Court of Justice for human rights violations.  The forum’s spokesman, Professor Ango Abdullahi, said in an interview on the Voice of America on Wednesday, May 22, 2013 that the forum had  assembled a team of lawyers who had been gathering evidence to establish that Nigerian soldiers were involved in the killing of civilians in Baga, Borno state.  He maintained that there was sufficient evidence to prove that human rights violations by government and its agencies had been going on “with a lot of impunity in the last three years”.

That Boko Haram is a band of religious maniacs has never been a subject of argument.  It has equally  never been disputed that the mission of the group to impose Islam on people of other faiths is as  condemnable as it is  unattainable.  It is apparent that the sect’s  stated objectives and the modality for their realisation constitute a potent threat to the foundation on which the Nigerian state stands.  The sect does not believe in democracy and it sees the country’s constitution as a worthless document.   It has been killing in tens and hundreds in pursuit of its goals.  It has been wasting lives and destroying people’s means of livelihood.  Its resolve to dismantle everything that binds together the multitude of nationalities that make up Nigeria as one political entity is  also not disguised.

Boko Haram’s bomb blasts  at different churches in  Madalla, Kano, Kaduna and many other places claimed lives in scores and hundreds.  The explosion at the United Nations Office in Abuja was a national embarrassment, and so was the mindless attack on the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero who escaped by sheer force of divine providence, and the bombing incident at the palace of Sheu of Borno.  All  the blood-cuddling incidents did not arouse the  humanity in the forum’s members.

The death of innocent people and the ceaseless onslaughts on security agents who, on a daily basis, put their lives on the line has not elicited a serious  concern from the elders’ forum. This is why it is amazing that the rather belated response of the government to the atrocities of a ruthless gang that has no respect for human lives is now stirring the elders into action as prospective litigants at the International Court of Justice as defenders of human rights.  The extremists had taken control of swathes of land in the northernmost parts of Borno State before  the government declared a state of emergency. They had become a serious threat to Nigeria’s territorial integrity before the soldiers were brought in to flush them out.  That the fundamentalists live among the people is a fact that has never been contested.  If the elders had assisted the government to identify and neutralize them, the situation  would not have escalated to the present point.

On its part, the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) has found it expedient to take contradictory positions on similar situations.  When the Niger Delta militants were fighting for resource control during the administration of the late President  Umaru Yar’Adua, the forum cultivated the posture of uncompromising nationalists.  Its  stance was that  “no responsible government can afford to fold its arms and watch a few misguided elements hold the nation… to ransom…the will of the armed forces is being challenged when their members are killed in the course of their national assignment…government cannot reasonably be expected to shirk its responsibility of maintaining law and order.  Hence the recent campaigns aimed at ridding the Niger Delta region of criminal activities of the militants…the campaigns must necessarily come with collateral damages…”
With the deployment of soldiers  to checkmate the advancing Boko Haram insurgents in the north east of the country, the shoe is now on the other foot.  The ACF now disapproves of a military solution.  Its suggestion is “the slower and more tedious path of dialogue, negotiation and conciliation”.  The fact that Boko Harm has shunned dialogue and opted to  be obstinately defiant has been ignored by the ACF.

 It is worrisome that matters of national interest are being perceived and appraised from a parochial perspective.  The Niger Delta militants were fighting a just cause – against environmental degradation and for a fair share of proceeds from the oil oozing from their land.  The rightness or wrongness of their method can be a matter for debate.  Boko Haram, on the other hand, is evil and awful in every ramification and no one has come out to say it is not so.  It wants to establish an Islamic theocracy which is well known to be impossible.   How logical is it to support military bombardment of Niger Delta militants who were fighting a just cause but dialogue and conciliation in dealing with a maniacal religious group that poses an obvious threat to the continued existence of Nigeria?

Nigerians, Boko Haram and the Committee Syndrome

Sometime in the early eighties, an interesting cartoon appeared in one of Nigeria's leading newspapers lampooning Nigeria's penchant for setting up committees to look into issues instead of dealing with them as they arise. In this instance, water hyacinth had taken over the inland water ways such that navigation by boat had become a near impossible task. Lagos state was worse affected as scores of their ferries could not operate and that predictably affected transport badly in the mega city. So this cartoon showed a building where the committee set up to look into the issue was debating ad-infinitum. A professor was there "blowing big, big grammar", a civil servant was there cautioning the professor that what he was saying was not in tandem with "civil service General Orders (GO)", the consultant was there with his long slides making a presentation that sent majority of the committee members to sleep - they did not have the faintest idea where he got his figures from! While the debate lasted, another part of the cartoon showed the water hyacinth multiplying in increasing numbers and advancing until the entire building where the committee sat was enveloped in water hyacinth! This sad commentary on the Nigerian situation has remained unchanged unfortunately. Water hyacinth as a plant is raw material for the paper industry. As at the time this problem became serious, Nigeria still had a functioning news paper manufacturing company at Oku Iboku near Calabar. All the government needed to do was to contract people to go harvest the water hyacinths to supply the paper mill or provide the needed technology to do that if need be. It could have been a mere executive decision that would even provide jobs for people! But rather, they found it convenient to hide their heads in the sand (in this case a nebulous committee) as per the ostrich. The rest is history. The water hyacinths are still there and the paper mill had since folded up.

We are back full force to the era of committees and some eminent Nigerians (who are they?) are touting the presidential amnesty committee for Boko Haram as the be all and end all solution to the serious acts of mass killings taking place in certain areas of the north courtesy of the sect. Like cancer, what started in a local government area in Borno State had spread to take over the entire state, grown  beyond to Yobe, Adamawa and even made a detour to Abuja and Nassarawa. While the government dithered to give peace a chance, the insurgents got bolder and more vicious and now have added kidnappings to the menu. They are extorting millions of naira from kidnap victims ostensibly to fund their operations. The hue and cry over the impunity of the insurgents and the seeming helplessness of security agencies made everyone to doubt the capacity of government to contain the crisis. Looking for an easy way out, some respected elites from the north latched on to the Amnesty bogey. The reasoning was simple: if it worked in the South, it must work in the North no matter that the circumstances of the rebellion in the south are different from the north. You know in this country, in keeping with national character and sharing formula, whatever is shared to the south, must be shared to the north. After all, If amnesty has been "shared" to the south, why not the north also? This is inspite of the fact that the reason for the militant action in the south had nothing to do with religion, had nothing to do with branding education as sin, had nothing to do with killing people senselessly. It had everything to do with resource control. While no right thinking Nigerian from the south including this writer supported the uprising, the fact remains that the leaders of the militant groups were known people, their camps were known and they were people the amnesty committee could approach and discuss with. After negotiations Nigerians witnessed how the militants came out in the open to surrender and lay down their arms after accepting the terms of the amnesty. Can the same be said of Boko Haram? Is there a place the committee members can go to meet with their leader? How do you negotiate with a leader you don't know? How do you negotiate with a person whose intent at first sight is to bomb you to smithereens? How? Have we so soon forgotten the Boko Haram member who was killed for daring to hold peace meetings with OBJ? Now, those opposed to emergency rule are saying the government ought to fold its hands and wait for the committee to come out with their "white paper". While we wait for this all important committee report, the government should do nothing while its citizens are being butchered by the same insurgents who are supposed to be meeting (or hope to meet) with the committee! How preposterous! Such a government would lose its legitimacy in no time. But I am told some Nigerian elites like playing politics with human lives as long as it is not theirs or those of their family members involved. None of those people criticising the current military effort have lost loved ones or suffered irreparable business losses due to this crisis. It is unpardonable wickedness to play politics like that. It is a shame, a disgrace and most of all, ungodly.

Not so Prof!

While I respect the views of Prof Tam David West on most national issues, his comments on the state of emergency are most disappointing. For insisting that the leaders of Boko Haram are "rational" people smacks of insensitivity to all those families that have lost loved ones by the mindless killings perpetrated by the sect. Unless David West has been living under a rock  in the last few years of Boko Haram insurgency, he would have known that apart from their leader the late Mohammed Yusuf who was killed in mysterious circumstances, the leadership of the sect has been faceless, more so the followers. Nobody can say for sure he knows a Boko Haram member. He may be your always smiling next door neighbour, the neighbourhood tailor, the okada rider, he may even be the stranger discussing with you the tenuous security situation in the country, either justifying or condemning the sect! The northern leaders are at best keeping quiet about it all. Without being told you know that they are playing the survival card - nobody wants to be on the wrong side of the sect by speaking out of turn. Was is it not the same sect that first denounced and renounced allegiance to the Sultan who is both the religious and cultural leader of Muslims? Was it not the same sect that denounced secular authority and have said Western education  (in which Prof West has so distinguished himself) is sin? The latest dastardly kidnapping of 87 year old Shettima Ali Mungono (Tam David West's predecessor in the Petroleum Ministry) is a clear demonstration of the lack of respect for elders by these people.

How rational is a group that insists that all Nigerians must convert to Islam? How rational is a group that targets schools and churches for destruction? To make matters worse, David West suggests that Government should "subtly identify the people in the community whom these people respect, these people should be made to talk to them in camera seriously and sincerely, and pointing out to them what the country is losing and what they are losing." Without meaning to disrespect our erudite professor, this suggestion is so pedestrian it makes mockery of a very serious matter. For the information of David West and all who think like him, evidence is on ground that these people see themselves as being superior in Islamic knowledge than the emir, than the imam, the Mallam, than everyone else! The way and manner they inflict maximum damage tells you they have no respect for age and accomplishments. They have dispatched eminent persons to their untimely graves without blinking an eye and that includes a leading urologist and Professor of Surgery, Hyacinth Nong Mbibu of Ahmadu Bello University. And he was not the only professor killed. Another was killed at a church service in the university campus. Boko Haram have damaged public buildings and destroyed the livelihood of thousands of people including their own relatives without counting the cost. So far the only language they understand is force. Perhaps by the time they square up with the Nigerian military they would be forced to the negotiating table.

We plead with Professor David West and other eminent citizens to support the bold move by the Federal Government to contain the insurgency. This is not the time to play politics with the lives of fellow Nigerians. Every effort was made from covert to overt to bring this sect to the negotiating table but they rather preferred to talk to innocent, defenseless Nigerians through bombs and the barrel of the gun. Let them stand and face the turrets from tanks, the helicopter gunships and incendiary fire from fighter jets. They hoped for it, let them have it.