At a time the entire world is in mourning over the missing 276 schoolgirls abducted at Chibok, Borno State, in April, some prominent Nigerians are still preoccupied with political jostling. Though the North-East Forum for Unity and Development clothed its recent presentations to the Presidency in patriotic robes, its intervention fell short of taking responsibility for the mess created in the region by its own inept leadership.
There is no hiding place anymore; just as the inadequacies of the Goodluck Jonathan presidency have been exposed to global scrutiny, the culpability of the northern states’ political, traditional and clerical leadership in fostering religious extremism, entrenching poverty, illiteracy and insecurity in the region cannot be obfuscated by bashing the admittedly thoroughly inept Federal Government.
We agree with NEFUD that the Federal Government, the security agencies and the First Lady have acted with “callousness and disdain” concerning the abduction, and that the Boko Haram insurgency is “an extension of international terrorism on our fatherland, which has a negative effect on our national, regional and global economic survival and performance.” It also echoed the widespread condemnation of the trivialisation of the disaster by officials and we align with its call for more efficient security measures, especially improved intelligence-gathering and deployment of technology. Jonathan bears the blame for allowing the insurgency to blossom.
But this is where rationality ends. The most irritating of NEFUD’s nine recommendations is the call, now prevalent among the far northern elite, that the President should not extend the state of emergency imposed on Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states. NEFUD and other northern elite are yet to explain to other Nigerians what the affected states or the country gains by ending the emergency or what the citizens of those states lose by the emergency. The governors, the legislatures and all the civil structures are firmly in place: the emergency only provides legal authority for the military to impose curfews or curtail movement in any part of the areas, where necessary, thereby facilitating quick responses to terrorist attacks.
We reject outright, NEFUD’s suggestion that the government should implement recommendations made by three previous panels. We have X-rayed those reports in the past and found them largely useless, being conciliatory towards terrorists and seeking to lay all the blame and the burden of rescuing the zone from its predicament solely on the central government, without acknowledging that the region’s leaders created the problems in the first instance, and should therefore bear primary responsibility for solving them. The only useful thing emerging from the panel led by Kabiru Turaki is his admission that Boko Haram terror is fed solely by a rabid Islamist ideology, and not poverty, injustice and central government neglect, as being deceitfully canvassed.
NEFUD is right to argue that the people “yearn for and deserve to enjoy the dividends of democracy such as security and freedom of movement, to live in dignity and pursue their economic and social well-being.” What it fails to acknowledge is that far more than people from any other region in the country, the Northern rulers and elders have been complicit in creating the present anomic conditions and should, therefore, first, accept responsibility for their disastrous leadership and its consequences so that they can take sincere, reasonable steps to clear the mess.
The continued manipulation of religion, for instance, encourages virulent Islamic sects to espouse (salafist) jihadism such as Maitatsine, Kalo Kalto, Nigerian Taliban, Boko Haram, Ansaru and many others, which reject orthodox Islam and embrace the ready-to-kill, bomb, kidnap and destroy-without-compunction slant. Nuhu Ribadu, the former anti-corruption czar, wondered aloud recently why most of the states espousing theocratic rule foster terrorist groups. Mustapha Jokolo, a former Emir of Gwandu, in a recent newspaper interview, recalled how some northern state governors hired extremists as political thugs, some of whom have now run amok as terrorists. “Most of these governors are responsible…I mentioned a governor of Borno State who was hobnobbing with these Boko Haram boys,” he said.
Abubakar Umar, a former military governor of the old Kaduna State, even insists that “there are some northerners who benefit from the insurgency…” The North-East elders and successive state governors’ major failing has been their refusal to lead a campaign for compulsory and free education up to age 16, instead of harbouring the world’s largest number of out-of-school children, the highest female illiteracy rates and acquiescing to underage marriage and child begging. Unlike the brave youths who have formed the Civilian JTF groups, villagers who have set up vigilante patrols, the region’s elders, clerics and traditional authorities have done very little, or initiated no programmes, to ameliorate the problem.
They dissemble when they ask the central government to tackle illiteracy. State governments in our federal system are responsible for primary and secondary education, not the centre, and southern states have higher literacy rates because their people and governments prioritise education. But North-Eastern states give priority to manipulating religious sentiments in place of provision of education, health and social services, employment creation schemes and infrastructure.
Twelve northern states, including the North-East states of Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Bauchi and Gombe, rudely violated the 1999 Constitution when they enforced criminal aspects of Sharia law without regard for their large population of non-adherents. This way, they unwittingly encouraged extremists like the Boko Haram maniacs who now want to take over and impose their own narrow interpretation of sharia law violently.
The North-East elders must stop playing politics with terrorism and begin to appreciate both local and international efforts to quell the self-inflicted horror. We insist that terrorism will only be crushed in the North when the religious extremism that breeds it is removed.
