The alarm raised recently by Governor Yahaya Bello that terrorists had found refuge in Kogi State merits a very strong security response. Coming after a series of strikes by terrorists and armed gangs in the North-Central state, the fear of terrorists setting up camp and destabilising the region and beyond is real.
Bello’s call left no room for ambiguity. Following the loss of territory it once held in the North-East region, he said, “Kogi is now a haven for Boko Haram because many of them have relocated to my state.” For most Nigerians, this alert was ominous; but for close watchers of global events and those conversant with the strategy of Islamic terrorism, the targeting of Kogi as a base had long been telegraphed by the terror group. A day before this alert at a security seminar in Abuja, four senior terrorists were arrested in a military operation in the state. Recently, Boko Haram cells, hideouts and weapons assembly points have been uncovered in the state. When recently, an Army commander, Henry Ayamasowei, paraded 17 captured kidnapping, armed robbery and terror suspects at a news conference in Lokoja, he displayed along with the guns recovered, Boko Haram propaganda and bomb-making materials.
When terrorists are dislodged from their redoubts, they disperse and seek out safe havens, targeting “fertile grounds” where their extremist theology strikes a sympathetic chord; that is where some in the local population already lean towards Islamic jihadism. This is the template of global Islamic terrorism, proved repeatedly around the world. According to experts quoted in a report by the Los Angeles Times in July 2016, as groups like the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and Boko Haram lose territories and sanctuaries in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Mali, North-East Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon, they seek new bases from where they spread global terror.
This newspaper has often drawn attention to two fatal errors that hobbled Nigeria’s war on terror: one is the lack of understanding of Islamic terrorism, its driving force, methods and ultimate goals; the other the failure by our intelligence community to devise appropriate strategy and capacity early enough to deal with the threat. The driving force of Islamist jihadism is salafism, an ultra-conservative strand of Sunni Islam that seeks, by violence, to return the world to an ultra-puritan version of the seventh century caliphate. It is a transnational movement whose soldiers do not recognise national borders and regard it as their sacred duty to flock to the banner of violent jihad anywhere it is raised and to overthrow all existing political authority. They are anxious to die for the cause and justify extreme forms of cruelty as they seek to strike panic, terror and breakdown of law and order.
Our security agencies should have known since 2011 that Kogi is coveted by Boko Haram and devised intelligence strategies to counter it. Apart from bank robberies between 2011 and 2014 staged by gangs with suspected links to the terrorists, the group had attacked churches, killing 19 members of the Deeper Life Bible Church in Okene in 2012 and ambushed a convoy of troops bound for Mali on the Okene-Lokoja Road in January 2013, killing two and wounding five others. There were also several encounters between troops and terrorists with insurgents killed and their hideouts and bomb-making sites destroyed. Gunmen attacked the Kotonkarfe federal prison in November 2014 and set free 144 inmates, with two federal officials killed. In November 2013, the State Security Service arrested an assistant lecturer in Arabic and Islamic Studies at the Kogi State University, alleged to be a Boko Haram recruiter.
These are just a few pointers to the attraction of Kogi to the terrorists. A senior Boko Haram commander, one Abu Qaqa, is said to be an indigene of Kogi. Besides, security operatives have long contended with violent gangs and extremists in Okene and parts of Ebiraland. The violent Okene-based al-Sunnah sect, an extremist Islamic cult, has had bloody confrontations with the security forces. In October 2015, about 40 insurgents attacked the SSS state HQ in Lokoja in a bid to free their detained members, reportedly engaging federal forces in a four-hour gun battle.
The SSS reported in January that it had tracked and arrested fleeing Boko Haram terrorists in Lagos, Nasarawa, Taraba and Kogi states, confirming the reality of the insipient dispersal. After eight years of terrorism in which 100,000 persons have been killed, according to Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State, with 2.11 million persons displaced, 52,311 children orphaned and 54,911 women widowed, we should never again be caught napping. All platforms – police, intelligence, vigilante and community-based associations – should be deployed fast in Kogi and the neighbouring states. Terrorists are like cancer, they must be neutered before they metastasise.
Jihadism spread in the Middle East after the dispersal of fanatics from Egypt in the wake of a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood following the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981. Al-Qaeda found refuge in Afghanistan after being forced out of Sudan by the United States military pressure and in Iraq and Yemen after its eviction by multinational forces in 2001. ISIS is expanding into Turkey, Asia and Africa as it loses ground in Syria and Iraq and spreading terror through sleeper cells and lone wolf attacks worldwide. Dislodged from Libya, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb moved into Mali and is creeping southwards.
A robust strategy will involve massive security infiltration and smashing of terror and extremist cells, prosecution of offenders and vigilance. The Washington, US-based Institute for the Study of War recommends a multi-pronged strategy to wrest control of territory from terrorists, deny them safe havens and provide effective governance. Bello and all other state governors have a great role to play by funding effective neighbourhood watch cum vigilante groups and stamping out state sponsorship of religion, a major impetus for faith-based impunity in Nigeria. The terrorists must not be allowed to hunker down in Kogi or any part of Nigeria again.
