President Muhammadu Buhari, early last week in Abuja, when he had audience with the new Ambassador of Ecuador to Nigeria, Mr. Leopoldo Rovayo Verdesoto, voiced his expectation that religious leaders in the country should do more to support Federal Government’s efforts to strip the Boko Haram violent sect of all its religious pretensions and fully expose the group as vicious terrorists having no moral or philosophical direction. “What we have succeeded in doing is to separate terrorism from religion…Now, people cannot relate with their relevance anymore and they are only associated with the destruction of lives and properties…” the President reportedly said.
Last July, Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State, one of the North East theatres of Boko Haram’s killings, destruction and absurdities, expressing similar sentiments, said that Islamic scholars were not openly speaking on the issue for fear of being killed. Shettima spoke in Abuja at an event organised by the national secretariat of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ). The governor’s words: “Changing the ideology of the Boko Haram will require intellectual roles by leading Islamic scholars with mass appeal. It is most disturbing to note that today in northern Nigeria, there is no single Islamic scholar that preaches against the Boko Haram ideology, and the reason is because everyone is afraid. Leading scholars like Sheikh Jaafar Mahmud Adam and Sheikh Albani Zaria, who vehemently preached against the (Boko Haram) ideology have been killed. In Maiduguri, scholars like Sheikh Ibrahim Gomari, Malam Bashir Gomari and over 30 different scholars who were opposed to the Boko Haram ideology have all been killed”. He stressed the huge importance of identifying Islamic scholars with the intellectual depth and mass followership to change the Boko Haram narrative so that ‘young souls’ could be saved from listening to the sect.
While we agree with Mr. President that knowledgeable Nigerians now view the insurgent group as basically rudderless ideologically, as well as lacking in morals and respect for human life, it is difficult, as yet, to accept the argument that religion is no longer one of the major attractions that drive the group’s recruitments. What with the under-aged children that still run suicide-bombing missions for Boko Haram, despite the invigoration of military onslaughts against its members since the President’s assumption of office. The major setback, it does seem, is that the nation’s leadership at both federal and state levels acted late in tracing and punishing the obvious political roots of Boko Haram insurgence; as well as countering the brainwashing of ignorant youths/minors and indoctrinating them into a campaign of violence they hardly understand the basis, essence or can coherently defend.
In December last year, a 13-yearold girl who said her parents handed her over to the Boko Haram sect for use as a suicide bomber was arrested by the Kano State police command, a practical demonstration of religious extremism and contempt for the life of one’s own child ostensibly borne out of ignorance and illiteracy even on the part of some parents. She was picked up after the December 10, 2014 double suicide bomb attacks by her co-female suicide bombers near a market in Kano, which claimed the lives of at least four people, with about seven others injured. The girl in her ‘hijab’ when arrested, was still wearing explosives that had not yet gone off. Indeed, it appears while Boko Haram was busy catching them young and violently digging in, the leadership busied itself with politics and underestimated the group’s capabilities until the chicken came home to roost.
We recall, too, the outburst of Second Republic politician, Alhaji Isyaku Ibrahim, in 2012 in response to scathing criticisms against the perceived silence of elders from the North while the violent Islamist sect was on the rampage. “The government is economical with the truth when they say they do not know the originators of Boko Haram…I would not blame northern leaders because Borno leaders who really have the inside information find it difficult to talk for the fear of being attacked”, the politician told a national newspaper in an interview.
Many mistakes have already been made in the name of tackling the menace in the past. As it is, the government should, in addition to the ongoing military campaign, determine past fault-lines that can quickly be remedied. If the intervention of Islamic clerics is one of them, those of them needed should be identified, given adequate security and put to task. Crying over spilled milk or sounding indeterminate this time is not acceptable.
