Of harvest of violence

Aliyu Musa

In a series of previous commentaries I warned that it was either lazy or stupid to consider the Boko Haram insurgents’ decision to evaporate into thin air without putting up a brave fight a defeat of the insurgency. It was, as it is now clearly surfacing, a guerrilla strategy for which the military have no training to counter or patience to understand. This explains why they were eager to delude themselves they’d won and were more than happy to mislead everyone into swallowing that storyline.

In their attempts to trivialize the insurgency they manufactured stories after stories of unassailable victory over Boko Haram. They produced (from only God knows where) pictures of purported scampering insurgents they had overtaken and vanquished. And in recent weeks they ambitiously announced the Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau’s obituary, ‘graphically’ telling of how they cornered and compelled him and his cohort to succumb to their superior firepower. The rest story we all know, especially with Shekau’s ‘resurrection’.

I argued from the day President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states that it was an exercise in futility because he was either administering the wrong prescription or dosage or both. There is no denying that the Boko Haram ideology is an extreme scum that we must rid our society of, but it is also true that to do so it means being downright thorough and genuine. But in all the approaches there is hardly a trace of thoroughness or sincerity. Truth is Boko Haram, whether we admit or continue to fool ourselves, is an idea and ideas are not defeated by means of military force. They are countered with superior ideas. The military option only comes as a compliment.

So, even after claiming victory the violent sect keeps reappearing from nowhere to unleash havoc, the latest of which were the massacres in Benisheikh. Why must we keep lying so sickeningly to ourselves? But this is the Nigerian typical response to emergencies like this monster that we deliberately created but soon found out it was way beyond our control.

Several years ago when we had the golden chance to prevent the monstrous seed from germinating we rather did everything to inherently speed up its growth. And years later discernably indifferent to the loss of the thousands of lives of innocent Nigerians, we are on our way to creating more monsters.

The killing of innocent squatters in the name of fighting Boko Haram is not the first of such mindless crimes under the watch of our leaders in recent times. Several scores of people have disappeared with no traces over alleged links with the sect. A man I heard of, who was taken away months ago, was very lucky to be allowed to go with indelible physical and psychological scars. Many, like the Apo victims, have suffered worse fates.

The ordinary Nigerian is, therefore, caught up in crossfire between the vicious sect and other vices, on the one hand, and a bunch of insensitive leaders and heartless security forces, on the other. None of them is, unsurprisingly, any less brutal. Yet they are wrong to assume things will carry on this way. There is bound to be some turning point.

In the meantime, like all previous cases of rights abuses, committees whose main objectives would be to further waste essential resources would be set up to investigate the ‘immediate’ and ‘remote’ causes of the Apo tragedy. And it would all end there. No more words would be heard, except the victims were by some rare luck mentioned in some mundane court processes that would amount to nothing. Such is our sense of justice.

But our leaders need to realize that time is fast running out for them to control the situation. In Kenya, for example, the leaders did not wait for the hostages to all be killed before reluctantly deploying soldiers and police to swoop on innocent persons around the scene or begin spins to doctor casualty figures. They sent armed officers to rescue most of the hostages and apprehend or kill the attackers. This is how a sensitive, responsible government reacts to emergencies.

Postscript:

Africa has died countless times and died again last week with the death of Professor Kofi Awoonor. Each tragedy on the continent turns to rubbles the collapsing fences that once fortified us against invading strangers. Now the vultures spitefully hover over our remains as we embrace our fate with ‘joy’ and ‘take heart’. Though there may not be brave sons to fire guns to bid our departing souls farewell, our fallen hearts will not go down in vain. They will rise again, stronger and scorn our tormentors. African shall be great again! Adieu Professor Awoonor.

This article also appears in the Blueprint newspapers of Friday May 27, 2013.