In its months of inglorious exploit, it has wiped out communities, bombed schools, churches and other gathering, leaving trails of mangled flesh and carcasses of destruction, as evidence of its unwelcome presence.
In two tragic strikes, in a space of two weeks, it put Nyanya, a poor, rural dwelling near the capital city of Abuja, in the global map of terrorism hot spots. Many, who have written about Nyanya, really do not know what the place looks like or what it means to bomb that kind of place, or any place at that. Nyanya is home to the mass of the struggling working class of Abuja. It is refuge to those who can’t afford the suffocating rents of Abuja’s shylock landlords. Nyanya provides hope to the hopeless that they too can make it one day and live in the city centre of Abuja, being not too far away from the city of opulence. The daily movement of residents, commuting from the nearby Maraba, Karu and Nyanya to Abuja capital is testimony that the place is truly a dwelling for majority average Nigerians and the pathetically below average, the hoi polloi. Those who live around the Nyanya environment speak of deprivations of the basic amenities of life: Water is scare, electricity is never constant, that is when available, while crime is a constant companion. It’s a place that could do with modern infrastructure and development, yet government is slow at providing the facilities that would have made life better than it is.
Then, they struck. The men from hell. Bombing luxury commuter buses, as the residents set on their day’s routine, commuting to the city for whatever their hands could find to do, any job. Some who had jobs couldn’t guarantee that what they got could always take them home. But it was a job all the same. They all crammed into the buses, popularly called el-Rufai, waiting for them to depart. A blinding flash. An explosion. Fire. Burns. Blood. Death. End of journey, even before it started. For the many unlucky, end of hope. Death ends all: Hope and hopelessness. Boko Haram ended the dreams of poor, hapless Nigerians, who, like other victims of its insanity, will never understand the senseless reasons behind the group’s onslaught.
Beyond that, the twin bus bombs, which rocked Nyanya is clear evidence that the nation’s security agencies do not yet have answer to the Boko Haram terrorism. If terrorists can strike at the same spot twice in slightly over two weeks, then those who man our security apparatchik must begin to ask themselves some critical questions. A serious country must begin to review the competence of the men it has saddled with the onerous task of policing and securing the lives of its people and the territorial integrity of our nation. A serious government would have promptly kicked the butt of the men it pays to keep watch over other citizens. No reason is acceptable for the death of any Nigerian, not to talk of hundreds of innocent lives, bombed out of existence by a fiendish group. No amount of condolence messages by the president, governors and other public officers can replace lives abruptly terminated. The nation can certainly do more to protect lives of its citizens. If Nigerians are dying like chickens on account of terrorism, it can only mean failure of our security system and failure of government. No less.
To drive home the fact of the failure of our security system and government and, indeed, our collective failure as a nation, is the horrifying news of the abduction of the Chibok girls. Over 200. Some say 234, others quote a lesser figure. For me, it doesn’t really matter the number of the abducted. The sobering and frightening questions remain: Where are the schoolgirls forcefully taken from their campus by Boko Haram? When will they be freed by their captors? No one knows. Three weeks after, no one can provide answers to the above questions. All we hear is that they are in a forest called Sambisa. All we hear is that some of the girls managed to escape but with over 200 still held. All we hear is that the girls, mostly underage, are being sexually abused by their reckless captors. The news we hear can break anyone’s heart, even if they were made of stones. The news is driving the parents and guardians of the abducted girls nuts. The news is driving Nigerian mothers crazy. All over the world, Nigerians are expressing a collective sense of outrage at the cruel abduction of the schoolgirls. But no one, painfully, can exactly tell where the girls are or when they will breathe the air of freedom. And that is the part that breaks my heart.
Even the government seems confused as to what steps to take to rescue the girls. It has set up what it calls ‘presidential committee’ to advise government on how to get the girls out. What kind of nonsense is that? What kind of cluelessness is this? A committee to advise government on how to rescue its abducted citizens in their own country? I have never heard of such clownishness. What else advertises failure of government and governance than the abdication of that simple requirement of national government ‘to secure and protect lives of every Nigerian’? If a group of lawless citizens would seize other citizens and three weeks after, government’s response is to set up a presidential committee to advise it on how to go about rescue mission from citizens, who are not security experts or versed in security work, that, for me, is the veritable definition of ineptitude and inefficiency. That is a sign of total submission and capitulation to forces of evil.
What then does government do with the hefty security votes at the centre and the Boko Haram states? How much have they expended in the war against terror? Are the security forces well funded or the funds are simply disappearing into private pockets? If not, how come the insurgents are allegedly better-funded than our soldiers and security agencies?
The government needs no presidential committee to rescue the girls or tackle Boko Haram. What it needs is decisive action, full military action, not rhetoric. It needs to identify the bad eggs in the military and security agencies, compromising the war against terrorism and flush them out. It needs to reinvigorate its intelligence-gathering mechanism; it needs to unmask the sponsors of Boko Haram and deal with them deadly blow. It needs to barricade our leaking borders. It needs to match words with action. Our nation is bleeding seriously. And our leaders are fiddling. They are talking about the next election, the next governor and the next president. Are they bothered about the next kidnap victim? Would they be campaigning or politicking if their daughters were among the Chibok girls? Would they be playing religious or ethnic politics if they lost a son, daughter, brother or sister or a loved one in Nyanya explosions?
As I have often reiterated on this page, the Boko Haram war can be won only
if every Nigerian, especially the leaders, decides to play his or her part devoid of politics and sectionalism. I once noted in this column: “First, northern leaders must, as a matter of urgency, convene an emergency meeting, to honestly and dispassionately x-ray the problem of Boko Haram, which is fast turning the North to nothing in terms of infrastructure, investment and capital flight. Whatever the governors are doing in terms of development will amount to nothing if the Boko Haram menace is not urgently checked. This is no time for politicking with an issue that threatens the region’s very existence. This is no time for double-speak or playing the Ostrich. A gathering of political leaders, religious personages, Emirs, clan heads and other relevant stakeholders, deliberating honestly and sincerely on the issue, ought to be able to stem this ugly tide. Did these Boko Haram people descend from the skies? Don’t they have roots somewhere? Didn’t they grow up in communities? Don’t they have people who know them, who can appease them or appeal to them to drop their arms against their people and nation? If a meeting had been called in the past and failed to address the situation, it can only mean sincerity was lacking. It could only mean they didn’t hit at the heart of the matter. Every problem has a solution if sincerely addressed and pursued.
“The emergency meeting must incorporate a Marshall Plan for rebuilding the North, by addressing the poverty and backwardness of the region. As Rev. Jesse Jackson once told me in a chat, ‘we have to fight the factors that make recruitment of Boko Haram insurgents easy in the North.’ Such factors, he said, include denigrating poverty and mass illiteracy. With these two factors in place, religious extremism finds a fertile soil. ‘But the North is not the only impoverished region. Virtually, all parts of the country are ravaged by poverty,’ I told Jackson. Yes, he agreed. But we must treat the North’s case as peculiar, in view of the dangerous dimension it has taken. I agree. It is also time for those who created the Frankenstein monster in the name of politics or whatever reasons, to face the reality that the evil wind they sowed yesterday has birthed a whirlwind, ravaging the North and the nation today.”
Postscript: The government must, within the shortest possible time, rescue the Chibok girls. We can’t continue as if all is well: Running government, campaigning and politicking at the centre and the states as if all is normal. A nation that can’t account for over 200 of its young citizens and is carrying on with business as usual, is not peopled with human beings with human feelings. Even animals have animal feelings!
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