Call it Boko Haram, call it Maitesine, call it Ansaru or whatever. A serpent, a snake, what’s the difference? Attencion Nigeria!
I have had the cherished privilege of reading the Holy Qur’an from sura 1 to sura 114. One of its many beautiful attributes, one would easily discover, is its eponymous certification of the meaning of the religion it unambiguously espouses – Islam, Peace! As a Christian, I was not a little surprised to discover that no book that I know, or have ever read (and I have read a few) preaches peace, love, justice, equity, mercy, charity, forgiveness, humility, kindness, generosity and the rest of the sublime human attributes as much as this great book, sometimes referred to as The Light. Did not a sura nobly stipulate that there is no compulsion in religion? And went further in The Disbelievers to differentiate between faiths, “… I worship not that which you worship, nor do you worship that which I worship… For you is your recompense and for me is my recompense”.
The mighty discombobulation, however, is the where-from and the how-come of all the darkness, misery and violent debauchery exhibited in the moral profligacy that has steadily reigned (or should we say, rained) upon humanity; tribe and tongue, creed and country, regardless, in the name of selfsame religion. All this, by a cult of a few self-righteous misguided fanatics who, it would appear, are unflinchingly bent on a bloody-mission to reconstruct the socio-political landscape of the present world. And we continue to play mum, if cowed spectators here in Nigeria. Unbelievable!
A very pungent humdinger of a puzzle in this whole Boko Haram saga, one cannot help but wonder, is: are these people true Muslims? Next, are they a genuine representation of the true feelings of the whopping Islamic population of Nigeria and the world at large? If the answer to those two quizzes is in the negative, then I suggest we give them what they want – an unmistakable response, the American style – ten strikes for one. For, it is abject foolhardiness to go waltzing with a live mamba. If on the other hand it is in the affirmative, then something has to be fundamentally wrong and it should be a safe guess to theorize that they are obliquely agitating for a separate existence. Then for Pete’s sake, I say, by all means let’s have a plebiscite and see what follows.
Finally, do their philosophy, demands (if there ever were any making an iota of sense) and modus operandi dovetail with acceptable legal principles (Sharia’s inclusive) of our present station and time? And the prescriptions of our national constitution, how do they fit in? I stand corrected, but l would love to hear one real Islamic scholar anywhere in this wide world lend one germane moral proof to the present lunacy of these crazies, using the teachings of the Great Book, or the sayings of the Prophet (may the peace and mercy of Allah be upon him) through the Hadith, or any fatwa.
The civilized man and woman of the 21st century should be in total consternation for want of pertinent words to express their indignation at some of the utterances attributable to a number of high-ranking timber and caliber of our beleaguered nation, over this extremely critical, touchy and “torchy” issue. I speak of Mallam El-Rufai, the venerable Sultan of Sokoto and all other BH apologists, who, perhaps innocently, or even more likely, in some cases, disingenuously, continue to stand in dubious advocacy of these implacable, cold-blooded mass-murderers (miserable cowards to be sure) with their illegal and illogical demand for blanket amnesty. I couldn’t imagine a more ludicrous suggestion.
Who speaks for the thousands of wasted lives and the billions of naira worth of property destroyed? Pardon me, but I am yet to hear one coherent argument made on behalf of the countless innocent victims and their violated human and civil rights. Rather, everybody seems to be busy stumbling over each other making one big case after another for the rehabilitation of a phantom order of wicked felons.
The entire Northern Nigeria (and subsequently the West, in agreement; and thereafter the rest of the nation, in quiet acquiescence) demanded for the heads of Kaduna Nzeogwu and his cohorts for the misguided assassinations of fifty or so men who they unconscionably wasted in the wanton exuberance of the heinous putsch of January 1966. Absolute madness that was, l must confess. For this, they got the heads of General Ironsi, and scores of junior and senior Igbo officers in the armed forces, six months later. Subsequently they methodically expanded it into the well-timed orchestra of an Igbo-wide blood feast we now tag as pogrom.
A most horrendous, barbarous, psychopathic, murderous orgy of unprecedented proportions, with pregnant women violated and disemboweled, infants crushed, children stomped and unarmed men and women raped, clubbed to death, macheted, decapitated, etc, as the case was.
The North had her field day which, with the rest of non-Igbos in tacit, or overt, support, spilled over into the borders of the Igbo enclave. And the rest was all she wrote – the atrocious Biafra/Nigeria War which effectively obliterated the gigantic advances of the Igbos, setting them several decades back-ward, and purportedly wasted over one million lives, 92% of which were same Igbos.
A very vital question to the highly respected Sultan and the rest of the amnesty proponents is: whose killing, this time around, warrants these latter day spates of blood-induced drunkenness? Actually a manifestation of patent spiritual inebriety which is slowly but surely tightening the noose on the stiff neck of a nation quietly asphyxiating even as citizens bury their thick heads in the sand. I am very sorry, my people, but this is the uncut truth. It can only be left to the imagination of the mind how the good emir, Ado Bayero, on whose candid assurances Ojukwu persuaded tens of thousands of Igbo refugees to return back to the north, after the initial sprees of killings of May 29 and July 29, must have felt watching helplessly as the final massacres were executed on September 29 and later.
My family is still awaiting the return of uncle Reuben, one of those who listened to Ojukwu. His five children, the eldest of which was only four years old, do not have the foggiest memory of him. I never myself met him. We know he got to Jos that September. That was a tiny strand of the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, resulting irrevocably in the volte face of the Igbos towards the road to Biafra.
The Americans, perhaps, in apparent recognition of the circum-ambulatory motion of our planetary system, coined a rather innocuous, but very weighty, cliché, “what goes around comes around”. The present Boko Haram plague is analogous to the pithy expression of the chicken coming home to roost.
The Holy Bible tells the story of a fratricidal blood crying out to GOD from the ground. GOD gave that murderer his guilt sentence, “thou art cursed from the earth which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand; when thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength: a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth”. And supposedly we are all brothers and sisters in Nigeria, ain’t we?
Do we Nigerians seriously think, or believe that we will continually, and so senselessly, and so gruesomely, waste countless tankards of innocent human blood and walk away with a pat on the wrist? Without confession? Without repentance or penance? Without expiation? Come off the self-delusion! Make no mistake about it people, we have an unalterable, collective moral responsibility to deal decisively with Boko Haram now, now, now! Let’s get ready, otherwise, to face the grim consequences. That, l don’t believe, would be funny at all. The Igbos have a little proverb which says that the tree does not wither the very day it was cut down.
While we prevaricate and equivocate with our mixed signals, there is a teacher standing tall in South Africa, Neels Classen by name, who has a lesson or two in criminal justice administration that we need to learn very quickly. The mystery grievances and undisclosed injustices that supposedly drove the Boko Haram to its dastardly acts of injustice (mass murder, fiendish carnage and open rebellion) against the state and its innocent citizens cannot be justified; neither easily atoned for nor wished away on the altar of any religion. Not even Satanists have been known to have descended so lowly nor vilely.
To wit, Mr President, you are the Chief Security Officer and Commander-in-Chief of the powerful hosts of the federation. As long as Nigeria’s response to Boko Haram is this shilly-shally half-measure, you can be sure, all manner of terrorists will continue to pop out of every nook and cranny of the six zones, with their own variety of regional and/or ethnic grievances, waxing bolder and belching more fire. Perhaps this is a good time to tell Nigeria very succinctly that The Fruit of Justice is Peace.
On careful reflection today, we can perhaps all see that the unqualified, omnibus amnesty granted to the Ijaw insurgents, a la 1966 precedence, despite the genuineness of their cause, does now seem a bit hasty. The LAW, and by inference, the NATION, as a corporate entity, MUST NEVER AGAIN be allowed to be arm-twisted to her knees by any person, or group of persons, for whatsoever reason. Else we may as well kiss our sovereignty, or whatever is left of it, good-bye forever.
There is only one language understood by all incurable bullies, we shall soon discover. From 1933 to 1945, there was one of them, history teaches; a mighty terrorist (diminutive of stature actually) who had the whole world, especially Europe, thoroughly brow beaten. Only one man – Neville Chamberlin – so to speak, was uniquely positioned to checkmate him. Inexplicably, he chose to pussy-foot and dilly-dally, pandering to the whims and caprices of this fully-armed megalomaniac as if the hand-written message on the wall spelt anything but ME`-NE, ME`-NE … One fateful day in 1939, Great Britain, as ought long to have been, finally decided she had had her fill of the bull shit. And the rest was an inexorable fait accompli. For, along came Lord Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, and the menace was no more.
Practically every response we have given to just about all our critical national emergencies, since before and after Biafra, has missed the point. They’ve mostly been policies that would seem to consistently compromise the very essence of the integrity of the Nigerian union in the long run. There is another little Igbo proverb which provides that the one quick and sure fix for that painful little boil on your nyash is to scratch it open. Bleed it. I think it is high time the federal government drew for us Nigeria’s own 38th Parallel and make the consequence very clear to all present and future trespasers.
If we had handled past insurgencies as decisively as we ought to have, Boko Haram would have been a non-issue today. Since the root cause of their demented protest (a big mystery to boot) is more than likely still very much alive, l can safely predict, though regrettably, that this whole amnesty deal which is nothing but a big hoax and a travesty of justice will fall through.
Attencion Nigeria! It was the Igbo yesterday. It is still him today, with tiny sprinklings of the others now and then, here and there. The principal target, nevertheless, unvaryingly has remained the Igbo. Now, what about tomorrow? You can take this, Nigeria, or leave it well alone, but more than even odds, I’m willing to bet: it will not always be him. Be duly advised, therefore, Yoruba man, Bini man, Urhobo man, Igbirra man, Igarra man, Itshekiri man, Efik man, Ibibio man, Kalabari man, Annang man, Ogoni man and, sure enough, you too, Hausa man, Fulani man. An incongruous juxtaposition, it increasingly does appear to be, doesn’t it? If you listen carefully, you will hear the cacophonous rhythm of the century-long tremor from Nigeria’s laborious ninety-nine-year journey. Unmistakable!
We may all choose, like we are always wont, to continue burying our heads in the shifting sands of denial and keep passing the buck, just as we usually do. But I think the quake has already begun. No condition is permanent, can we all agree? So, who’s next? Whose head rolls tomorrow? Sure enough, many more will fall, I prophesy, even though I am far from being a prophet. It has long become our tradition, hasn’t it? And we have slowly gotten inured to the horrific effects of such acts as are repugnant enough to make others puke.
Cold-blooded murder is a manifestation of a deep-rooted psychiatric disease. Organized pogrom, be it serial, or spiral, or cyclical, is evidence of a full-blown cancerous metastasis of the spirit plaguing a people, which usually culminates in the inevitable. Yes, we know it. Have you considered the fate of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy? What of Yahya Khan’s Pakistan and Pharoah’s Egypt?
The next important question to the good Sultan, El-Rufai and all the other appeasers is: if it were, say, Tiv Christians, or Yoruba Area boys, or Igbo MASSOB, or Ijaw militants, or Ogoni MOSSOP, for instance, wreaking all this havoc on the Hausa/Fulani nation, burning down their mosques, razing their houses and businesses, and massacring them at will with bombs and what-have-you, using the same atrocious Kamikaze techniques, would you also be preaching this preposterous wishy-washiness as a salutary response? I will help you answer the question: Hell No! The gates of Hades would have broken loose and we certainly will have been in Nigerian Civil War Number Two by now.
We know the hidden agenda of the elite, secret sponsors of the Boko Haram. You want a military coup, don’t you? One that will place you and your cronies in plum positions and give you the usual chance to dip your greedy hands deeply into the cash-till of this nation. This is the only type of Nigeria you feel at home in, isn’t it? Yes, a Nigeria wherein the Central Bank and the Mint House are your private playgrounds.
Keep up your charade and be sure to get your comeuppance in due course. Just keep it up, it won’t be too long, Nigeria! Your phony, perfunctory, barely-audible outcry over the Kano bus station rampage (“unfortunate”, “regrettable” and such nonsensical gobbledygook) is your latest faux pas. Who knows which will be the last? Just keep it up, Nigeria. Stay in your deep slumber, snoozing along while your mischievious children keep playing with match-sticks in your warehouse packed full with dynamite. Wake up, Mr President!
And, by the way, Nigeria, l’m not quite sure what you’re thinking; perhaps you have forgotten, but let me assure you, the Igbos are by no means cowards. You can take that to the bank any day of the week. Check the history books if you’re in doubt. Neither are they rats, nor some cluster of chicks that you can declare an open season upon and slaughter at will by the scores. You may want to refer to an ominous passage in the capitulation speech of the truly gallant general, Phillip Effiong, some forty-three years ago. Nigeria, a word is enough for the wise. Every day is neither Christmas nor Ramadan. Enough is quite enough.
Marizu Ogbuehi (08185775703)
E-mail: maziogbuehi@gmail.com