Mr Tormentor, again, just who are you?

Yes, you are meant to be illiterates who hate English education, but you speak perfect English!  You are meant to be blind to every ‘western’ innovation, but you use the very latest and best of gadgets.  You understand advanced chemistry and physics with which you concoct IEDs (bombs).  You have mastered the use of Uzzi and Kalashnikov machine guns.  Heck, you even run teleconferences, and maintain blogs and websites!  Yet you are supposedly determined to drag the world back to the stone ages, via Nigeria!  You are meant to be bush men, but you know how to post videos on youtube, do proper editing and ‘sampling’ that will make our Nollywood cringe in shame!  Just who are you?

You are meant to be a sect from Northern Nigeria, hell-bent on introducing Sharia after the country has been split up.  But your actions deliberately destroy that region, politically, infrastructurally, educationally, socially.  Somehow, you have all the phone numbers of international news agencies.  Reuters, AFP, Bloomberg, CNN, BBC, Aljazeera.  NAN, FOX and MSNBC will have to beg for inclusion.  Mr Tormentor seem to be very close friends, indeed age long friends to pressmen.

“No!  they say “They are anti-christian, they bomb churches!”  But Imams are targeted as well.  Even an Emir just escaped by whiskers.  “They don’t like southerners.  Most of their bombs are aimed at places where southerners live or worship”, goes another claim.  But a closer look reveals that northerners are victims more often than not.  They say the tormentors are Hausa/Fulani, but these same tribes are resident in all the neighboring countries, living peaceably with their fellowmen!  Hausa/Fulani spread from Sudan, through Cameroon, to Ghana, Seirra Leone and where else have you.  So why Nigeria?  Who chose Nigeria for this intractable torment and destruction?

Your so-called ‘spokesmen’ claim that the war is against the institutions of state, but your attacks have been squarely on the poor and helpless.  The poorest churches, the poorest gatherings, okada riders’ parks, the poorest towns and villages.  What could be the aim here, dear strategic tormentor of the motherland? Being the strategist that you are, I’m sure you know that such terror attacks have more debilitating effects amongst poor people, who live mostly in clustered, under-ventilated, areas, who store kerosene and petrol under their beds?  Did you also reckon, dear tormentor of our people, that it is far easier to cause general chaos, retaliation and carnage, amongst poor people, rather than the rich?

They said you are super-strategists, but your strategies are leading to angst amongst the most impoverished and unfortunate.  Your strategies are pushing the motherland in the direction of a nasty civil cataclysm of no particular order, aim, or direction.  Your so-called strategies make no sense.  How can you say everyone MUST convert to Islam?  You know jolly well that that is an UNWINNABLE war?  So what kind of strategist are you?  Or is that one of the red herrings you sell to confuse Nigerians while you continue your torment of our innocent peoples?

You have simply given the super-rich another head-start.  Never before have the super-rich become even far richer in a short span in Nigeria, than now.  Nigeria now spends untold amounts to secure the rich.  Skyscrapers and luxury hotels are still being built all over the country, while our villages lay waste, burnt to the ground or deserted!  Government offices have become fortresses, too intimidating for the common man to approach for his own betterment. Security men harass them to submission.  Bureaucrats and technocrats have now shut themselves in their ivory towers, in disdain and suspicion of the common man.  The open system that we inherited from our forefathers has been converted by us into prisons. The rhetoric on the streets, from radio and television, is all about mutual suspicion.  Who did we offend to get to this point?  How could we ever turn back the hands of time?  How could we ever repair this country, get this cup to pass over us, so that our children may live as happy citizens not as cats and mice, hating and cursing each other for their different religions and clans?

But if all that is not enough, you, our tormentor, grab the headlines from your chief collaborators and friends – the press.  You seem assured of a career growth by the constant support, attention and befuddlement provided by sections of the press. ‘OH, LAGOS MAY SOON BE ATTACKED!’, their headlines will scream.  ‘AH! IT’S PORT HARCOURT NEXT TIME!’, they would wager the next day. Armed robbery attacks and tribal strife are credited to you just to boost your already impressive CV! ‘THEY MUST BE BEHIND KOGI CHURCH SHOOTINGS!’  The press drives the nation into a frenzy, all the while selling newspapers, and of course on occasion, getting rewarded massively by their masters who control the levers of society.

The next agenda the press has set for you, is that you should start using ROCKET LAUNCHERS.  Some of them, quoted their ‘sources’ just a week ago and screamed on their front pages ‘BOKO HARAM IN MASSIVE IMPORTATION OF ROCKET LAUNCHERS’.  How? From where? They were silent on those… But perhaps in a short while your rockets will start whoozing past our ears as they make haste to several destructive missions, in defiance of the many barricades around many public establishments and worship places.

A few influential people, seeking genuine solutions for the sake of Nigerians, have even claimed that the Nigerian security services are … really… not willing and ready, much less able, to end the torment of poor, hapless Nigerians, from this scourge.  The rest of us hoping and praying this ugly, deadly phase will pass, striving, writing, engaging others every day, urging and cajoling that the people should not let your handiwork stir up destructive, primordial sentiments of destruction in their hearts, are even more frustrated.  Some call us unprintable names just because we think it is counterproductive and utterly brainless to join the bandwagon of hate by urging people to start carrying guns, or to get ready to shoot others down. Some said we are not of ‘real’ Yoruba descent.  For in these times, a Yoruba person or indeed a ‘true’ southerner’ just needs to monger and manufacture more hatred and disdain.

But some have repented.  Mr Fani-Kayode, intelligent and vociferous, was shocked, when, after urging Christians to carry arms and ‘defend’ themselves, after reminding our faceless tormentors that Christians too can shoot, he saw videos of some ‘Christians’ who actually killed praying Muslims and proceeded to openly roast and eat them in the presence of police and soldiers, all the while being videoed.  Lastly, dear tormentor, which of your ‘claims’ do we believe?  For the other day, you ‘claimed’ to have been the one who opened fire on a funeral procession in Jos, killing a serving Senator, but our president promptly denied on your behalf.  Say, tormentor of my people, again we ask, just who are you?