When few years ago, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan in an address, referred to ‘Terrorism’ as a “global phenomenon, which has come to stay”, the media went agog if not frenzy with the report and pundits including this writer, vilified him for such uncouth statement least expected from a leader who even though he is required to be truthful to the led, also has to fill their cups of hope at all time, lest they lose hope in the nation that it is their duty to protect and nurture at all times. But years on, it appears those who had thought otherwise, have come to see the phenomena through the same lens the president had seen it earlier on as activities of terror in the last couple years have lent credence to what could pass as the clairvoyance of Mr. President no thanks to the heightened crusade of terror and bloodletting that has spilled into almost every continent from Europe to America, from America to Asia and Africa appears to be her youngest issue. It is instructive to add that those of us, who vilified Mr. President for such remarks, were not oblivious of the truism of the report, our grouse way back was the bluntness of the president and the unwritten complacency laced in it. That terrorism has become a global affair therefore needs no emphasis, hence, why it informs the troubles of this article.
History books are replete with America’s struggle with terrorism despite her sophisticated Army she likes to brag about and robust intelligence gathering mechanism and by those struggle, we are not particularly concerned with the September 11, 2001 terror attack on American soil, an average student of history or a careful observer is often quick to know that a huge chunk of America’s National Bill has gone into securing her territorial waters and Airspace from the Fishes and Birds of terror. It is a similar story with the United Kingdom who had it rough with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) who bombed English targets in the 1980’s to make the point that they felt their land was colonized by British imperialist. The same goes the story with the Zionists who bombed British targets in the 1930's in order to create a Jewish state. In far away China, ‘Uighar’ separatists has continued to terrorize parts of that country to institutionalize their own version of Islam. In Colombia and of course many parts of South America, terrorism has also found roots. One need not be reminded or told about the campaign of the world most famed terrorist cell Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) once headed by Saudi Arabia born Osama Bin Laden and the mastermind of the September 11 attacks that hit Washington D.C in the united states of America sending the Architectural edifice-World Trade Centre that used to be a monument of American pride, collapsing to the ground and leaving its debris in its wake until his controversial death sometime last year.
In 2103 and 2014, Kenya, Somalia, Algeria, Mali and Nigeria and Tunisia have become theatres of some of the bloodiest terrorist actions that the African continent has ever seen. African terrorist groups are proselytizing, primarily because Africa’s Islamists are able to take advantage of the fact that many of the continent’s countries have porous borders, vulnerable and corrupt central governments, undertrained and underequipped armies and booming drug trades that provide a steady source of income. In North Africa, the number of Islamic terrorist groups is increasing, such as the Al-Qaeda linked Mulathameen Brigade (the ‘masked ones), led by the Algerian Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who fought in Afghanistan and in his own country’s Civil War in the 1990’s; the Islamist militant group Ansar Dine led by a former close Gaddafi ally Iyad Ag Ghaly; AQIM and Ansar Al-Shariya in Tunusia among others.
According to many analysts, they are recruiting foreign Jihadi fighters, with a quantity of them returning from Syria. Islamist militancy in the Sahel increased following the collapse of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in Libya in 2011, and also in this case as in Iraq, Western countries have so many questions to answer for. For instance while the French intervention in Mali succeeded in retaking the country from the Islamist militants, it has led the latter to disperse throughout the region, representing a huge threat to many countries.
Elsewhere on the continent, Islamist militancy has been very active in West Africa, particularly in Nigeria; Where Boko Haram has been allegedly fighting to establish a ‘pure’ Islamic state based on the Sharia law killing hundreds of people in attacks on schools, army bases and churches. The information that Boko Haram is trying to connect with Al-Qaeda linked groups in North Africa to expand Islamist influence in this uncontrolled area without rules and without the presence of strong governments is indeed nothing new. Indeed Boko Haram has also been reported to have travelled to Somalia, where they have been trained by the Current Al-Shabab leaders.
Somalia’s Al-Shabab militant group, an inflexible offshoot of the Islamic Courts Union that was removed from power in 2006 by the Ethiopian army has been responsible for some of the worst atrocities: unarguably, the best known is the attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi Kenya in September 2013 that took the life of renowned African poet, Kofi Awooner and many others. Al-Shabab have been able to proselytize in the poor country left to its own devices, and it finances its activities with drug trafficking, Ivory smuggling and Piracy, which has led it to carry out terrorist attacks outside Somalia, Kenya and even Uganda
Aggregating all the foregoing, only one conclusion presents itslef- that terrorism before flying first class into African soil had been a thorn in the flesh of the civilized world so called and has continued to take even a more ferocious dimension in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is for nothing that I have always told friends whenever we indulge in discussion of global politics, that the 20th and 21st century will be most remembered for technological innovation and a spring of terrorism
Having said the foregoing, the crux of this article will be centered on the homebred insurgency that has continued unabated in the last couple years in Nigeria with the three northeastern states of Adamawa, Yobe and Borno serving as its hot-bed and the spillover to other northern states of Plateau, Bauchi and increasingly, the financial nerve centre, Kano, in recent past.
Who could have believed were they told a decade ago that a full blown insurgency would one day hold the country to the jugular to the height of putting her sovereignty or that of the central government in the balance? If the villagers of Madagali in Adamawa state, Gwoza in Borno state, Gujba in Yobe state, or indeed the Chibok Girls were told some years ago that they would sometime in the future leave the comfort of their homes to seek refuge in tattered and unkempt refugee camps in the state capital, would they have given any ears to such sorcery? Fast forward to the present, and the past looks strikingly different from the present no thanks to the activities of the ‘Jama'atul Liddawati wal Jihad Al-Sunnah’ popularly called Boko Haram as a result of their staunch opposition to secular education and opprobrium for anything western, although quite ironically, they have continued to prosecute their cause which they insist is divine( although this writer thinks otherwise, as moderate Islam is but a religion of Peace; evidence of which is had in the last revelation of the Qu'ran-"This day we have perfected for you a religion, and I have completed my bounties, and I'm pleased with the religion of Peace-Islam") with inventions born from the womb of westernization and secular education.
As at the time of writing this piece, no individual, nay organization, corporate or otherwise has been able to give a convincing estimate on the total number of lives and properties that has been lost as a result of the campaign of bloodletting by the Islamic fundamentalists, much less the properties real, and personal that has gone in the drains as a result of arson which has been a key modus operandi of the militants. On the contrary, it has become a turf for rookie statisticians to test and draw upon their statistical skills in defiance to all laws of nature and the sacrosanct nature of human lives. What pity!
A concerned observer is often moved to ask the question-so how we got to this point. How did we get to this sorry state? How did we bring savages among ourselves that now feed from our flesh? Nigeria from the time of her creation, was born with the problems of Corruption, leadership ineptitude, Crime wave and since the last decade, had added Kidnapping to the ranks of her societal anomalies an enterprise chiefly prosecuted in the southern part of the country but not terrorism, at least not the type that has been witnessed in the last five ugly years. It was in the second republic that Nigeria came close to what has now become an appendage in her history as a result of the activities of one Mohammed Maitatsine who ran a somewhat similar terrorist cell as those currently carried out by the dreaded Boko Haram sect in major northern states like Kano, Yobe, Borno et cetera but who met their waterloo during the Shehu Shagari administration who unleashed Nigerian troops that rounded up Mohammed Maitatsine and his rag tag army in Kano and Maiduguri, Borno state respectively. Save that, Nigerians being jolly-good fellows have somehow found a way to manage her other societal ills to wit: Corruption, Crime, leadership insensitivity etc as one is soon to hear in a gathering of men referring to all those as ‘hustling’. To put it in the street parlance, “All na hustle, after all, man must chop”. Quite ridiculous, but that is the typical Nigerian for you. And that is why at a robbery scene, after the gentlemen of the road have finished their ‘business’, one is regaled at the crime scene with questions such as: “Hope nobody was shot?” or exclamations like, “Alhamdu lillahi tunda ba wanda suka keshe!” and so on and so forth. All of these go to substantiate the level of premium that is attached to human lives by Africans and particularly Nigerians. We have been inundated with crime, corruption, kidnapping and what have you, that we have come to condone it, or many have come to see it as no more than another product or element of our existence, but we condemn in the strongest terms the taking of another person’s life save through the execution of a court sentence.
And so when the Niger-delta militants began their struggle some 8 years ago, it was not hard before it became clear that the reason why it generated a national cacophony and global concern was because human lives were involved; but little did we know what was in the offing. Little did we know that someday we would be literally pelted with rocks that would make us see the Militants way back in time in the creeks as some ‘saints’. Little did we know that someday the beautiful and symbolical colors of the Nigerian flag would stand and flap its wings side by side with some foreign flag hoisted on shallow grounds with Arabic inscription designed by whom we know not of. We did not know that the human lives we attached so much importance to and protection for would be killed like ants trampled upon, as one writer lucidly captured it; Hence, why it is understandable the unison that has met the condemnation of the activities of the sect by the generality of Nigerians, tongue and creed notwithstanding.
That said, in our own case, something continues to be amiss. We still do not know what the insurgents are fighting for. Some say the institutionalization of Islamic state, an account which has found expression or credibility by the declaration of the Gwoza, in Borno state by the leader of the sect, Abubakar Shekau sometime in September as an Islamic Caliphate. More complicating that ever, is the conspiracy theory sold in the streets of Maiduguri that the government through one interest or the other has provided the ground for the insurgency to rear on. There are rumors that a former governor, serving senators are all complicit in the activities of the sect one way or another, an allegation which at one time or the other was debunked by the characters associated with it. But when one goes into a recoil, to ponder on what sort of government connives with the enemy of the state to take up arms against the same people it swore to protect and whose mandate it holds in contraveyance of the spirit and letter of section 14(2)b of the 1999 constitution, that too pales into insignificance. But that does not mean such reports should be dismissed without ruminating on them for as the saying goes, there cannot be a smoke without fire and every rumor has an element of truth so we cannot hurriedly throw away the baby with the bath water if we really want to see an end to the festival of terror that has overwhelmed us and begin to turn around the tables in our favour.
With the benefit of hindsight, it goes without disputation that Africa and indeed Nigeria as a result of leadership ineptness, social/economic injustice and dereliction of duty accumulated over the years, played a leading role in the gum which has stuck to our feet with terrorism being her latest destination and which deals a huge blow to her corporate existence and survival. It has now dawned on us what years of governmental neglect, insensitivity to the plight of the led, little or no leadership ingenuity and the unmitigated purloining of the public wealth by a microscopic few can morph into-the microscopic rise of elements within the state who over time as a result of indoctrination and cult ritual becomes macroscopic over time and forms a large terrorist cell the type seen in the Al-Shabab in Somalia, Kenya and other parts of East Africa and the variance that has found shelter on our own soil by the Abubakar Shekau led Boko Haram whose death continues to be a stuff for fiction writers. Truly, the odd seems to be against us and that is just understating it.
The time is rife for Nigeria particularly and Africa generally, to return back to the sketch board and begin to redefine measures to protect her territorial waters and porous borders before terrorism becomes a coup de grace to the meteoric rise economically and otherwise it has attained in the 21st century. Whatever measures that need to be taken should be taken, and not just that but with all the alacrity needed; before the entire region becomes a metaphor for terrorism. Now, that is better imagined than experienced as we do not have the military and forensic wherewithal to contain the menace if it spirals beyond its current level.
ECOWAS, ECOMOG, AU and other continental agencies of African coloration or interest, should sit and devise ways of providing a blanket security for the region. It is the considered opinion of this writer, that an African Police force if need be, should be constituted and be saddled with the responsibility of intelligence gathering within the region and should work in sync with the local police at that state level continuously for the sharing of intelligence to increase the level of security for the region.
Apart from the security approach, human capital development also need to be improved as the poverty ratio in the continent is in itself enough ‘justification’ to lend oneself to any cause just to keep body and soul together while it lasts. Improving the Human Capital Development does not come with the waving of a magic wand, it is the extrapolation of robust government policies that would have direct bearing on Africa and Africans through increased job-creation, wealth distribution, social justice, government’s sensitivity to the unarguable onerous task of governance, mass-education for all to increase the literacy level and reduce the susceptibility to indoctrination, provision of adequate health facilities and other basic amenities that would make life worthy of living in the entire continent inter alia would go a long way in placating the venom of subsequent groups or cells who nurse the ambition of taking up arms against their government as a result of frustration. That there cannot be peace and camaraderie in an atmosphere of injustice is a no brainer.
It is not enough for us to acknowledge terrorism as a global affair and then fold our arms to it. Africa and Nigeria should be able to solve her own problem her own ways independent of the west as the slightest thread of dependency on the occidental powers and intellect puts a gaffe on African sovereignty and independence from the shackles of colonialism.
Finally, in our own peculiar case as the giant of Africa whether by numerical strength or Economic buoyancy, much is expected of us as a blow to us, is tantamount to a blow to the entire continent especially the sub-Saharan Africa. The times we live in are not rosy and the stakes calls for desperate measures. The present government and subsequent governments must make it a top priority to secure lives and properties and stamp out every trace of brewing terrorist elements. The years of neglect, has brought us to the quicksand we are muddled in. whether we invite the proverbial snake to sting us again is a question of choice. Our Failure to do so would be a salient invitation or tacit approval by Nigeria and indeed Nigerians for the country in particular and the continent generally to be a backyard for terrorism and insurgency. That is the worst that would happen to this continent still trying to assert and define itself in the fellowship or comity of other continents.
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