Date Published: 01/07/10

These people do not know Nigerians By Idang Alibi

Immediately the identity of the lead actor in what has come to be known as the abortive Christmas Day Bombing of a United States of American airliner was known, many Nigerians expressed the fear that the unfortunate incident will give the USA and other countries the excuse to give hard time to Nigerians travelers. That fear has been vindicated by the decision of the USA Government to list Nigeria as one of the terrorist countries that require extra scrutiny of traveling nationals entering the USA.

The uproar that has greeted this decision by millions of Nigerians is justified. You can accuse Nigerians of some crimes like drug running, fraud and obtaining by false pretences otherwise known as 419. But to accuse of terrorism? No. The Americans are mistaken about us on that score. We Nigerians are not in that line of crime. We love life too much to be in such a high risk, often suicidal crime. The Americans who want to label us as terrorists do not know us well enough. We love too much to want to risk in defence of any cause.

And that explains why Nigerians have been serially raped by successive leaders. Nigerians are such a fun-loving lot that very few will want to take any slightly risky action even in defense of such fundamental right as the right to vote and be voted for. it is only in Nigeria that what happened in 2007 in the name of election will take place and people will shrug of their shoulders and learn to live with that massive rape of what is supposed to be the mandate of the people. The truth about us Nigerians is that apart from a few ‘crazy’ persons like the late Gani Fawehinmi, Femi Falana, Joe Odumakin and a few other activists in the human rights community, very few Nigerians will feel sufficiently aggrieved over any matter whether politics, religion or a matter of honour, to go on the streets to protest about it. No one in Nigeria likes to suffer a little inconvenience like detention, not to talk of imprisonment, in order to make a statement that things should change for the better. We are a people who want others to use their head to crack the palm kernel so that we can live to eat the delicious nuts. Have the Americans forgotten that when Secretary Hillary Clinton was here last year, the unmistakable impression Nigerians gave her was that they want America or some other powerful nation to come down here in mighty chariots and drive away those who are rigging election and misruling them so that they can have life and have it more abundantly. Have the Americans forgotten that this is a land that literally flows with injustice, terrible misgovernance, lack of accountability and all forms of evil by leaders, yet the people do not have a culture of protest. Nigerians are content with bemoaning their situation and grumbling and murmuring and complaining endlessly about their fate. This kind of people who can not protest their misrule, are they the kind of people who will want to engage in terrorism in solidarity with injustice against far away people?

If the USA intelligence machinery is good enough it should have been able to establish that the Abdul Farouk Muttalab incident is a completely an isolated one. The young man with a privileged background is not a typical Nigerian. As Information Minister Mrs. Dora Akunyili said, he is more of a Briton than a Nigerian. The case of Farouk is more or less one of failed parentage. Nigerian rich kids like Farouk love to live life to the hilt. Some of them are not fervent for God or country. They go to church or mosque because others go there; they have no real religious zeal. When they find themselves in worship places, they feel easily bored and want to get out of there fast enough to pursue their fancies. If ordinary Nigerian have no real passion for any ideological belief to want to die for its sake, our rich kids are even more so.

I see the mighty hand of God in the failed terrorism incident. And both the Americans and Nigerians have God to thank for different reasons. God possibly wants to tell the Americans that “Except the Lord keep the city the watchman watcheth in vain”. Since the September 11 incident, the USA has tried to make life hellish for some people especially Muslims and Arabs. It has seized upon that excuse to commit horrendous crimes against millions of people all over the world who merely want to live their quiet, peaceful lives. Like now, America will want to use a clearly isolated case to punish millions of Nigerians.

By revealing the identity of the would-be bomber, God is saying further to America that their grievous hurt could come form the most unlikeliest of sources and not from the usual sources they choose to demonise. For who on earth could ever have imagined that it might be an upper class kid from a friendly and non-terrorist country like Nigeria that would want to re-enact a miniature version of September 11, right on American soil and on a Christmas day?

And rather than making friends, America builds more resentment against itself by saying it wants to protect herself. Today the USA will down in history as the most hated superpower that ever existed. God wants America to realize that in spite of her paranoid security consciousness, it is only He God who can protect that country or any other one else. How do I know this mind of God? The Christmas day bombing could easily have succeeded but for God’s intervention.

For Nigeria, God is using Farouk to speak to our ruling elite. They are spending all their time amassing wealth and neglecting their primary responsibility of bringing up disciplined, loving and compassionate children. Money is essential but it is not everything. Muttalab senior and the mother of Farouk will now live the rest of their lives regretting that they did not do enough to groom Farouk to be a responsible child who will bring joy upon them in their old age. How sad.