In the second part of the article, I argued that Boko Haram terrorism enjoys nothing except to kill, maim and destroy especially if such relate to western education, just the way of the evil one. That is why international and national opinion is against president Buhari’s proposal to grant amnesty to them (BH).
I identified Buhari’s soft spot for the terror group as part of the engine for their boldness and I recalled that Buhari was quoted in THISDAY newspaper dated June 3, 2003 as saying that the army clamp down on Boko Haram was injustice against the North.
The question is whether Buhari is really fighting the terror group using the extracted $1 billion dollars from the Excess Crude Account (ECA). Even so, truth is that Boko Haram has gone haywire, uncontrollable and split into two factions. We are looking at a fundamentalist Islamist group put together by one Yussuf, hijacked by some Northern politicians and now gone awry.
The scenario on ground offers a veritable nasty entertainment for unlookers. For instance, the kidnap of 110 girls from Dupchi Secondary School in Yobe on February 19 2018 though melodramatic suggested that Boko Haram splinter group, the Islamic State in West African Province (ISWA) is quietly in control of a large area of Nigerian territory. By whatever name they bear, it is evident that the terror group is still strong, influential in the North East.
The intriguing aspect of Dapchi kidnap and the return of the girls was the smooth-sailing manner of the enterprise whose ransom was in multimillion euro cash just like the Chibok girl snatching episode. In that same subtle manner, the black flag carriers are acting in a much more sophisticated manner offering drugs, taking over whole fish markets and offering basic health care services to a population that is equally receptive and collaborative. From time to time a group is sent out on a suicide mission.
This is the game of the All Progressive Congress government of diverting huge resources to the cause, of ‘crushing’ Boko Haram in Sambisa as it claims to have done severally. But truth is that large areas of Yobe, Borno and Adamawa remain ungoverned and unserved. They are remote and difficult to access.
They have insufficient water, schools, power, transport, cell phone coverage and healthcare. With an estimated 20 million population, the scope and scale of need is immense.
The bottom line is that for the first time, Nigeria which claims to be the largest economy in Africa and that, (according to Oxfam’s May 2017 report) also has the largest inequality in the world is faced with an unending violence.
Nigeria is confronted with the type of violence brought about not by core injustice such as government sponsored indiscriminate killings, ethnic marginalization, environmental degradation, national discrimination and disregard of treaties. What Nigerians are watching is a scenario of the planned Islamization of close to 160 million. Nigerians with 250 ethnic nationalities and about 200 languages varying religious and traditional affiliations. And the wonder ….under the hypocrisy of wanting to do away with western education, civilization and religion, they want to enslave Nigeria and Africa with their bondage and version of Islamic thuggery.
Boko Haram is a bunch of Africans who have sold their birthrights. With their supporters, they have expunged their memories of the Trans Sahara Slave Trade that began before the trans –Atlantic Slave Trade. They are probably planning to have a utopian nation like Saudi Arabia, the same people who sent their troops to hound down and murder peaceful prostesters in Bahrain and Yemen.
Does anyone still doubt why El Zak-zakki of the Muslim Movement is still held in detention. Ironically it was some in the elite group of northern politicians specially those within the Northern Political Leadership Forum (NPLF) that legitimized Boko Haram and took them from a North-Eastern fringe group to a regional terrorist operational organization. Their hegemonic messages gave Boko Haram and their sympathizers the license to execute the mass carnage on more than 35000 defenceless individuals since the end of 2011 general elections.
And now to the cry about institutionalized corruption and injustice. Nigerians are not fooled by their rhetoric to make their pretentious sectarian plans to continue the injustices that were introduced into the nation’s polity by the Northern Military Industrial Complex (NMC). The goal is just to hijack the government with religious dogma. Boko Haram of course is a ploy in the domination agenda of the North.
Nigerian President Buhari is regarded as a “tough” and ‘rugged’ military man. Even so, he should know that Boko Haram has become an international umbrella on disparate groups and here we are, committing our human and material resources to the task of dismantling a structure (Book Haram), pieced together and bred by some Northern politicians who used it primarily as a hit squad for election rigging.
We have to now accept the reality of the problem that terror groups by whatever appellation are in the process of quietly establishing a nation in Nigeria’s territory. Dapchi is a living example of how Nigeria can be dazzled and the security forces dismissed.