Welcome back, everybody, from the brief holiday to the New Year 2021.
The kaleidoscope was part of the holiday, having been absent from its weekly appearance two immediate past weeks. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
We are, once again, meeting ourselves in life, good health and cheerful hearts in what is, by His Divine Grace, going to be a God-filled and prosperous year 2021.AMEN.
Since I, in this column do not indulge in prophecies, divination, sooth-saying, and abstract visions as people are wont to do at the beginning of every year, I shall go on immediately to take an analysis of something that has already happened.
I, as usual, shall draw the basis of my analysis from my knowledge of the natural laws of providence, speculate and make projections on several variables of what may possibly and respectively happen if certain conditions remain constant, and what may also happen when such conditions change.
Apart from poverty and penury which presently stalk the country and Nigerians, the next most serious issue for worry in today’s Nigeria is security – both individual and collective. Security has become so paramount and urgent to attend to in Nigeria because of the constant loss of lives as a result of killer Fulani herdsmen, marauding bandits, professional kidnappers, and the asymmetric Boko Haram insurgents.
In managing security, the unique Nigerian way soaked in corruption, acult like structure, unusual and dangerous power plays have been built around the weak edifice of the national security architecture so much so that, it is difficult to differentiate between the managers of security and the criminals who are supposed to be the focus of security management.
Courtesy of corruption and to the utmost surprise and shock of Nigerians, they are witnessing a flourishing and lucrative business and politics in the management of the demonic armed bandits, killer herdsmen, marauding kidnappers, and the asymmetric forces of the manifestly resilient group called Boko Haram.
The fact that these groups of terrorists mentioned remain undefeated in spite of huge financial and man power resources that have gone into the fight may be a testimony to a suspected subversions of national interest by people who are supposed to be in the forefront of the fight against terrorism in Nigeria.
Unfolding events define the structure and nature of this lucrative business and politics of terrorism in Nigeria with its headquarters in northern Nigeria.
The business seems to have enlisted all the segments and social classes in that region with each segment participating in an active or passive manner.
The fact that terrorism business in Nigeria seems to benefit both the youth and some older generations of northern Nigerians including some politicians and not excluding the cultural organizations there as we have seen in the recent participation of the apex Fulani socio-cultural organization, Miyetti Allah in the ‘release’ of Kankara boys , may be the major reason for the intractability of terrorism in northern Nigeria.
The truth has quietly registered in the consciousness of Nigerians that terrorism in Nigeria springing from the north and descending southwards, has become a vicious cycle that will be difficult to break.
The second reason terrorism may be difficult to break in northern Nigeria is what I shall soon analyze and refer to as convergence of interests, opinion and goal.
Convergence of interests, opinion and goal is not unlikely to be the result of common religious faith of the terrorists with that of those who by their actions of neglect, omission or commission play along with terrorists while pretending to fight them.
Nothing better explains the sabotage in the fight against terrorism in Nigeria than the fact that the Boko Haram insurgents always have prior knowledge of troop, arms and ammunitions movement of the Nigerian military forces as the same Boko Haram enjoy the reversed version of that condition which is having the privilege of launching unpredictable attacks on the Nigerian military forces.
There could only be one of two reasons for this advantage: either that there are moles within the Nigerian side who reveal information to the Boko Haram or they have better reconnaissance and intelligence networks than the Nigerian forces can boast of.
The sequence of events in the Kankara abduction best express the lucrative business and politics of terrorism presently going on in Nigeria, and it must be put on record for future generation Nigerians and posterity to know.
To start with, the abduction was reported to have been executed by the bandits. Later, the Boko Haram took over the boys, because Shekau actually released a video of the boys and made a statement that his motive was simply to condemn and discourage the dissemination of western education amongst Muslims, and not to harm the boys.
A former deputy governor of Central Bank, Obadiah Mailafiah, once alerted Nigerians that there was no difference between the bandits and Boko Haram but he was shouted down, hunted and hounded by the DSS (Directorate of State Security).
Shekau wants a full implementation of the Sharia legal system in the north, and may be, all over Nigeria! By the way, this is not the first time Nigerians are hearing of the clamor to introduce the Sharia legal system across Nigeria. Many northern Nigerian Muslims have aired this same view before.
As a matter of fact, starting from the tenor of a Zamfara state governor who took a ground-breaking move for the Islamic Sharia system, more northern states are quietly moving gradually to strengthen the Sharia practice in Nigeria.
Such states like Kano, which, under governor Ganduje recently destroyed crates of alcoholic beverages worth hundreds of millions of naira have joined the bandwagon of states who inch gradually to attain full implementation of Sharia legal system in a secular Nigeria.
Discerning minds observe that the encouragement of some state governors across Nigeria, especially those from the eastern part of the country by a central government led by a Muslim system to establish emirates in their states as a subtle way, not only aimed at Islamic evangelism but also at the introduction of the Sharia system in Nigeria to operate in all the states including states deemed to be Christian state.
The Kankara abduction deal jacked up Nigerians. Through the deal was secretly negotiated and sealed, somebody should tell Nigerians what happened between the terrorists and the Nigerian government before the Kankara abductees were released. Nigerians deserve to know what happened.
The government would want Nigerians to believe that the release of the boys was freely secured, but this is doubtful in the light of the lucrative business of terrorism going on in Nigeria. It is unlikely that hundreds of millions of naira or possibly billions of naira may have secretly gone in to secure the release of the boys who were later adorned in clean dresses and given a presidential welcome, to cap up the media hype and deceit.
It is doubtful that the bandits who initiated the job and transferred the boys to Boko Haram earned nothing in the deal, the same way it is difficult to believe that Boko Haram who badly need money to fund their operations simply released the Kankara boys “just like that”.
If the Boko Haram released the boys without collecting any money after running some operational costs including feeding about 344 boys (final figure given by government as number of boys released) for seven days, then it might be right to speculate that the Nigerian government knows so many things about the Boko Haram than Nigerians can ever imagine. Here again, congruence of interests, opinion and goal may come into play.
Nigerians, including myself, seem to be suffering from collective amnesia. This is, though, not surprising, because Nigerians must first figure out from where the next meal comes than be interested in politics where we have all become instruments of politicking.
Please could somebody confirm to me if what I say here is true that while in an opposition political party, our current President, General Muhammadu Buhari had once been nominated by Boko Haram to be at the head of a team to be produced by a pre-government to negotiate between the terrorist organization and the government.
I am not better informed, like most Nigerians are, as to understand why that organization will feel free and safe to nominate him to be part of the team, but one thing I am very sure and certain about is that they had confidence in him and trusted him enough.
To earn the confidence and trust of a person or a group of persons signifies that there must be convergence of both interests, opinion, and may be, goal between the bearer of the trust and the recipient of the trust. At worst, the recipient of the trust must have exhibited some soft spot, and a certain sympathy for the course which the bearer of the trust represents.
Whatever that may have happened between that time when that confidence and trust was earned and now when our President has moved away from the opposition to the ruling party, is anybody’s guess. My guess is that nothing, most probably, may have happened.
Obviously in a retaliatory, melodramatic, clownish and mockery style, the new opposition led by the PDP and that party’s National Chairman, Uche Secundus, launched an #BringBackOurBoys campaign in Abuja in the same manner as was staged in America by Oby Ezekwesili after the abduction by Boko Haram from a Girls Secondary School in Chibok, as if the then President Barak Obama of U.S had the magic wand to order Boko Haram to release the abducted girls.
I think there should be enough of this deceit because the cat has been let out of the bag. The Nigerian parliament should liaise with the executive and both of them should take a joint decision to present and pass an executive Bill to invite the terrorists (Boko Haram, Bandits, Herdsmen, Kidnappers) for a negotiation and truce for them, the terrorist, to lay down their arms in exchange for general amnesty and absorption for all of them into the Nigerian military services, and not these clandestine pockets of amnesty and absorption as being presently done by the government.
At least, if the Bill is passed, Nigeria will be spared the enormous money marked out as security votes used in fighting insurgency in Nigeria, on one hand, and settling ransoms for kidnapped and abducted citizens in the present sprawling and lucrative business and politics of terrorism in Nigeria, on the other hand.
Secondly, Nigeria must have set another ignoble and unenviable record, as it did with poverty in an international ranking, of being the first country in the world that negotiated with terrorists and absorbed them in her military services.
As the Kankara abduction lasted, two unrelated but ominous signs signifying either unseriousness or a ‘no-issue’ event happened. One is that the Commander-in-Chief who was in his hometown, Daura, in Katsina state preferred to visit his cows instead of visiting the sorrowful parents of the abducted students. The other event is that the Chief of Army staff was demonstrating the notorious concept of ‘operation python dance’ with one of the pythons in his snake farm along Abuja – Keffi Road, Nasarawa State, at the same time he would have been planning to rescue the abducted boys.
Being an elderly and wise man, for the President to have taken the choice of visiting his cows instead of visiting the parents of the abducted Kankara students to encourage them means that the choice he made was more tenable than the one he rejected.
There may actually not have been any truth in Kankara incident, if we are to judge based on the wisdom in the choice of an elderly man, Mr. President who should know better than all of us because he had a successful career over decades in the Nigerian Military Service.
Though hundreds of millions or possibly billions of Nigeria’s money may have been spent in that ghost, most probably staged exercise, they should find another thing to tell us so that, to use the exact word of my teenage friend who is now in the United State, Prince E.E. Okpa, Jr., we can ‘chew’ and be able to swallow and get our bamboozled minds rested.
The President ‘body language’ and the coincidental fact of the Chief of Army Staff visiting and playing with one of his pythons in his snake farm when he should have been busy planning a counter attack and rescue operation for the Kankara abductees suggest that the poor and innocent boys were pitiably, and most probably part of the stage managers tools for the grand Kankara performance and deception.
About the same time with the Kankara incidence, the Chief of Army Staff told Nigerians to brace up because terrorism in Nigeria may last the next twenty years!
That was a public admission of incompetence and failure which would have immediately been followed with mass and voluntary or forced (if they refuse to go) resignation of everybody at the helm of affair in the task of securing Nigeria.
Though bad news for Nigeria and Nigerians, that date of 2040 to end terrorism in Nigeria, given to Nigerians by somebody who is supposed to be versed in security matters, is a long haul which have not justified all the money they have spent so far in securing Nigeria and Nigerians, but it is good news for those of them, including the source of this expert opinion of 2040 date, who pluck the poisonous fruits from the cursed tree of sorrow and blood in Nigeria.
Courtesy of the storyline in the classic work, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”, ‘people with ropes around their necks do not always hang’.
Though the psyche of Nigerians has been brutalized as a result of the unending killings in northern Nigeria, sympathy, sometimes can be misplaced when it is not directed well.
Williams Wordsworth says that, “Sympathy without the power of relieving makes the person who feels it more wretched than the object which sues for pity”.
Northern Nigerian politicians and elites can solve the problem of terrorism in Nigeria, and this will go ahead to curtail the pockets of murders experienced in northern Nigeria that have spread to other locations in Nigeria.
The lucrative business and politics of terrorism which in Nigeria manifest as kidnapping, banditry, herdsmen, and Boko Haram can stop within twenty-four hours if northern Nigerians tell themselves and Nigerians the truth. There are so much they know and gain from the increasing trend of terrorism in Nigeria.
From this background therefore, it seems easy to think that while Nigerians and the international community are worried about kidnapping (adult-napping!), banditry, herdsmen, and Boko Haram, the hitherto oppressed mass illiterates of northern Nigeria who are now busily engaged in any of the four crime opportunities that have just emerged and some northern Nigerian politicians and opinion leaders who either supply arms or participate in negotiating ransom payments between the government and any of the groups who initiated a terrorism deal, have all hit the gold mine in a new but weird business of sorrow and blood.
Thank God that highly respected northern personalities including his Royal Highness, the Sultan of Sokoto have talked to condemn insecurity in northern Nigeria specifically, and the rest of Nigeria, generally.
Unless the north is discreetly sustaining these criminal elements through these subterfuges till these criminal elements come handy to be used for a future religious or regional purpose and advantage in Nigeria, northern Nigerian politicians and the elders should convene one of those their nocturnal meetings with which they are known especially when they want to achieve a power shift from the south to the north.
As usual, the caliphate ground will be a good location for the meeting to take decisive actions to disband the criminals whom some of them had assembled to achieve their political and religious objectives.