My second thought was; Now, Nigerians will be forced to think; to interrogate our thoughts and feelings and prejudices, and finally begin to come together as we should. But on that also, Nigerians fell flat on their faces. Instead of unity, what we had was a further deepening of the tribal and religious wounds that had afflicted the country. Instead of intelligence, what we had was age-old prejudices again dusted up and applied as a one-size-fits-all to every calamity that befalls this used-to-be-great nation! And instead of measured action and precision, what we had were vacuous words and platitudes, like ‘we would leave no stone unturned’, ‘now we would take action’, ‘we would not let them go free this time’, ‘this is an attack on the international community’, and so on.
I will attempt my own analysis of the situation here. And it will not be what most pundits have attempted before:
Firstly, I beg to contest this idea of Boko Haram this, Boko Haram that. In this instance, we heard that a ‘spokesman’ of the sect, called a reporter of the AFP – Agence France Presse, to tell them that they carried out the attacks. Let us note that the AFP is a French company and therefore close to President Sarkozy, the chief perpetrator of an ongoing genocide in Libya and elsewhere. Moving on, we should remember what exactly Boko Haram is. At worst, we would compare them with say, Maitatsine, which means they are a radical sect of Muslims, who believe in a different way of life from the rest of us and will fight (usually with crude weapons), when dared to change that way of life. That this Boko Haram group will elect a ‘spokesman’, and that spokesman will obtain phone numbers of international pressmen, is a bit too farfetched. Usually such sects do not claim responsibility officially for anything. They just act and leave government to clean up the mess. So as I have said on this page before, we should put on our thinking caps and note that this new Boko Haram is not the real one we used to know…
But that is not what the bulk of our so-called intellectuals and pressmen did. They decided, with deliberate effort, to take the singular ‘confession’ from Boko Haram, as Bible Truth – pun intended. If a crime is committed, the criminal will usually send the investigators in wrong directions using decoys. Not in Nigeria! Since the Boko Haram supposedly laid claim to the dastardly crime, the airwaves have been rented by; ‘What do these Muslims want sef?’, ‘what an evil people’, ‘we should just break up Nigeria and let them have their Shari’a’, and even more distasteful comments. Even holders of several PHd’s mouth these unfounded prejudices, such that one’s heart sinks for the fact that project Nigeria is IRREDEEMABLE! Yes, THERE IS NO HOPE FOR THIS COUNTRY’S MEDIUM TERM SURVIVAL AS AT TODAY, BECAUSE WE AS A PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO MAINTAIN, SUSTAIN AND NURTURE A COUNTRY. And those traits we will carry with us to whatever tribal contraption we romanticize in our hearts today. I say therefore, that the Black man will one day face extinction!
What the ‘claim’ by Boko Haram has done, is to turn that regrettable event into a local issue for Nigeria, further fanning our predicted disintegration. By 2015, the CIA and other reports – mostly from USA, have predicted that Nigeria will be no more. That the government has not made any strategic responses to the contrary, cements the grief in one’s heart and confirms the hopelessness of our situation. An issue as serious as an attack on a UN building is AN INTERNATIONAL ISSUE, and not one that should quickly simmer down into Nigerian Christian versus Muslims, North versus South. In fact, as I write this on Sunday 28th, two days after the event in which more than 20 died (officially), and 150 unofficially, the news item has been hurriedly and TOTALLY removed FROM ALL THE WEBSITES OF ALL MAJOR NEWS CHANNELS – BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, Sky, all have deleted that news story. Why?
Because that is a good way of killing the matter and allowing the culprits get away. They want the culprits to get away now, but they will come back for them later, even if Nigeria becomes another theatre of war. This is the way it works: whoever did the bombing of a well-fortified UN HQ is not some cheap Almajirai with bowl in hand and dagger in pocket. The device exploded there is a top level incendiary device that took out the fortified walls of even the first floor of the well-built edifice. The US Embassy is on the same street, just a few hundred metres away. So let us call this what it is; a truly international attack, planned by truly international people, which should be escalated into a truly international status, and not be localized to serve in the further disintegration of a fragile country; Nigeria!
Like everything else, we would probably NEVER get to the bottom of it. From Bola Ige’s murder, to the October 1st bombings, to the Police HQ bombings, Nigerians are yet unsure of what happened. Or perhaps we are not meant to know. This scarcity of truth and veracity in our country, is our biggest undoing…
What we need is sincerity, not prejudices. Southerners and Christians should not just conclude that ‘Muslims did it’. Worse still, local ‘intellectuals’, and the horde of compromised international journalists, keep repeating that this was done by a group ‘who wants the eradication of western education’. Absolute crap and fraud! This is not western education matter! Also, elder statesmen have a positive role to play in society, which they have neglected, with people like Obasanjo (whom Sunday Trust should write to stop using my column title in Jimoh Ibrahim’s Daily Mirror), and IBB publicly calling each other names. They should note that this country is fast disintegrating in their hands, and because they have benefited from this country, they should rescue it. For the present leadership is far too shallow and complicit to make any impact apart from hastening the predicted cataclysm.
I also think Muslims and Northerners should speak up. In fact, every Nigerian must SPEAK UP! Muslims sit and wait while their religion is being maligned. They should not allow anyone to come and claim that ‘In the name of Allah’, they have just carried out some murders. I know Islam, and it is a beautiful, democratic, egalitarian, religion of peace and love! It breaks my heart that anyone would use it as a convenient dumping ground – side by side with Boko Haram – for terrorism and disunity in Nigeria and elsewhere. Most international terrorist groups were formed and/or nurtured by the western countries who now pose as the victims, using and encouraging and confusing these groups to cause havoc everywhere. We should not allow them to turn Nigeria into a full-blown theatre of war. But we shall all bear the consequences of our silence and prejudices. Soon. Very soon…
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