More than anything else, Monday’s early morning bomb blast at Nyanya, a satellite settlement in the neighbourhood of Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, bears an important message for the authorities that no part of the country can claim to be safe from Boko Haram’s campaign of terror. It is also a chilling reminder that the menace of terrorism affects us all in our daily lives and that we should all be part of the fight against it.
The horrific act at a crowded motor park, believed to be the handiwork of the Islamist terror group, claimed no fewer than 72 lives, according to official figures. But independently verified figures showed that about 89 lives were lost, while 257 others sustained various degrees of injuries.
Coming at a time when the country’s military have been claiming victory in battles against the mass murderers in the north-eastern part of the country, the unspeakable loss of lives is a clear indication that whatever strategy has been put to use so far has proved to be an abysmal failure. This can be reaffirmed by the recent daring attacks and unthinkable casualties estimated to be around 1,500 lives in the past three months. No other part of the world has witnessed the wanton destruction of lives in the numbers being witnessed in Nigeria, not even in Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq and Pakistan, where terrorism had taken root long before it surfaced here.
Apart from their attacks on military barracks, schools, market places and crowded city centres in the north- eastern states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, the blood-thirsty group, whose link to al-Qaeda and el-Shabbab has been exhaustively proved, had carried out other isolated assaults in Kaduna and a few other Northern states. Most of the victims of the Abuja bombing met their untimely death while attempting to take a ride to the city centre where their offices are located. On the same Monday that the bombing took place in Abuja, about 100 girls were abducted at a girls school in Borno.
No doubt, these terrorists are displaying a greater appetite for blood, cruelty, adventure, confidence and sophistication. They continually show that they can strike at the heart of the country’s soft underbelly in defiance of whatever security arrangement is in place. This current bombing is coming a few weeks after an attempted jailbreak to free some of their colleagues detained in the Department of State Security facilities, just a stone’s throw from the Presidential Villa. That incident claimed 21 lives.
Despite this increasing demonstration of the destructive capacity of Boko Haram, the government has continued to show a lack of political will to tackle the problem. Although a state of emergency was declared last year in three of the most troubled states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, it has not in any way stemmed the tide of terror attacks. No further evidence is needed to show that the campaign has failed and there is the need to change tactics.
This is not the time to pin blame. But there is an urgent need to get a proper understanding of the terror war so that all efforts to end the mindless killings would not end in vain. The primary goals of Boko Haram are consistent with the principles of militant jihad, which aims to purge countries with substantial Muslim populations of Western influence and replace secular governments with fundamentalist Islamic regimes observant of their variant of sharia law. The growing number of weak and failed states around the world provides an expanding breeding ground for such terror groups, and Nigeria is at, or near, the top of the list.
Boko Haram is not a political movement, but an evil group. It is regrettable that many of our elite have chosen to politicise the war against it. When the 9/11 terrorists struck in the United States, for instance, its government diligently compiled the names of al-Qaeda leaders, and, one after the other, eliminated them. Here, the story is different. Who are the Boko Haram leaders and their sponsors? Where do they get their funding and weapons from? What efforts has the government made to get their leaders? Besides, what steps has the government taken to identify, arrest and prosecute the sponsors?
The brutal fact is that there is a growing rank of Islamists in Nigeria and they must be stopped. And if urgent actions are not taken against terrorism, Nigeria may soon slip into an uncertain and dangerous future. The Jonathan government must drop all pretence and go after the terrorists. It should be realised for once that it cannot do it alone. Nigeria needs assistance of foreign military special forces and intelligence personnel to rout the terrorists and the evil ideology underpinning it. Through the strategy of disaggregation, their religious justification should be discredited and their support base eliminated.
Their sources of funding from wherever must be traced and blocked. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, a US-based think tank, a secret paper signed by the former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, in December 2009 said that despite Riyadh’s efforts to crack down on illicit financing, donors in Saudi Arabia constituted the most significant source of funding to terror groups worldwide. Jihadist groups are said to receive cash (or other convertible instruments) from individuals and “charity” organisations in the Persian Gulf, even today, because there are still people who believe in their missions and actions.
The time calls for vigilance on the part of all by being security conscious. State governments across the country should complement the Federal Government’s efforts in providing adequate security for their people.
