BY QUDUS OYEDOTUN
To say that terror group, “Boko-haram” is an Islamic sect or
North’s response to a southern presidency is mischievous and a facade by the
federal government to divert the country’s attention from the real happenings
in the country.
It is ironical to say that, Boko-haram has any Islamic
affiliations because the sect does not subscribe to any of the tenets of the
religion. And as the religion, Islam does not approve of the mindless killings
and maiming that the sect has been engaged in on daily basis. Boko-haram is
only a group of frontier elements, using religion as a façade.
It is however short of sense to say the terror group is the
North’s response to southern presidency or a religious war. This unfound claims
have been defied by the recent killings that have not spared Muslims; abduction
and killing of the Emir of Gwazu; maiming of other emirs and northern elites by
the boko-haram sect.
And to address the presidency’s
claims that the insurgency was fashioned and sponsored by some political forces
and directed at disrupting his administration and governance is laughable, as
the sect started in 2002, when Obasanjo was President, worsened in 2009, when
Yar’adua was President, and continued under his (Jonathan’s) administration. It
therefore seeks an answer as to how all this is a northern conspiracy!
The reality is that boko-haram is a nemesis of the whole of
Nigerians: be it Christians and Muslims, Southerners and Northerners,
irrespective of tribal and ethnic modifications.
It has been unequivocally echoed by well-meaning Nigerians,
Opposition parties and research has glaringly showed that among the factors
that led to the insurgency are, widespread unemployment especially in the north
and the fact that the region lags behind in education, meant a waiting pool of
idle hands to be enlisted into the ranks of the sect.
Among the numbers of suggestion put forward to government
was “Developing a full counter-insurgency programme, rather than address the
problem in bits; Aligning the military strategy with political and economic
measures; De-radicalizing the North-east , which is worst hit by the insurgency;
Equipping the military so they can effectively battle the group; Also revamping
its intelligence gathering mechanism by first winning the hearts and minds of
the locals, who are the ones to give information on boko haram and so on. And
what was the government’s response to these? A DEAF EAR. This is so, because the
advice came from the opposition.
Whether the advice was from the opposition or not, should
not have been a problem of concern to the government, but a cause to act in the
good interest of Nigerians at large.
This leaves us with the worthy recall of concerned Nigerians
that it took about 20 days for our President to make any pronouncement on the
abduction of the girls, because he never believed they were abducted in the
first place, thus losing valuable time to rescue them. It is also worthy of
note that, a day after the first Nyanya bomb blast in Abuja, our President was
in Kano dancing at a rally, as if the Chibok girls abduction didn’t matter and
was not a cause for alarm. Let us recall that Nigeria, which has been one of
the top peacekeeping nations in the world since independence in 1960, is today
a subject of global peacekeeping, with countries running head-to-head to send
any possible assistance to Nigeria to help rescue the girls. And finally, let
us recall that over 12,000 of our citizens have been bombed since 2009, while
8,000 others have been mutilated by the insurgents, perhaps for life.
Similar cases of this insurgency was witnessed in America,
in the year 1993, when a frontier group, “Branch Davidians” under the Koresh
was suspected of weapons violation and US federal and Texas law enforcement
laid a siege that culminated in the death of 76 men, women and children at the
religious group’s base in Waco. The US acted decisively without seeing a
religious conspiracy against the government and back here in Africa, Joseph
Kony’s Lord Resistance Army (LRA) has perpetrated the most heinous of crimes,
including abducting young girls to be sex slaves, just like book haram has
done. The Ugandan government responded firmly without saying the group was the
opposition’s plan to topple it, and the battle continues to this day, with LRA
considerably weakened and a manhunt continuing for Joseph Kony.
Once again, to say that terror group, “Boko-haram” is an
Islamic sect or North’s response to a southern presidency is mischievous and a
facade by the federal government to divert the country’s attention from the
real happenings in the country; but to determine if it was maladministration, I
leave you to decide.
