All have erred on boko haram

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I’ll raise up my hand and say I erred. When I first heard of Boko Haram
in 2009 ─ after the Bauchi uprising, followed by a three-day insurrection
in Maiduguri ─ I simply equated the group with the Maitatsine sect
which held Kano hostage in 1980. And as soon as the Boko Haram
leader, Mohammed Yusuf, was killed, I cheaply concluded that the fire
had been finally extinguished. This is just like the sect founded by
Alhaji Muhammadu Marwa Maitatsine, I told myself. It took the
President Shehu Shagari administration a few days to send Maitatsine
packing as things boiled over. After that, the sect could not raise its
head again. Boko Haram would go that way, I theorised.
Let’s refresh our memory. The Maitatsine sect had launched a campaign
of terror in the Yan Awaki quarters of Kano city on December 18, 1980.
They killed Christians and fellow Muslims. They burnt people’s houses
and cars, and overwhelmed the police. President Shagari had to call in
the military to quell the upheaval. Thousands of the fanatics were killed
in the operation. My cousins, who lived in Kano then, used to regale me
with stories of how trailers were used to pack dead bodies. Maitatsine
himself was arrested but died mysteriously in government custody,
reportedly from gunshot wounds. That, in effect, sent Maitatsine into
extinction.
And so here I was, thinking Boko Haram and Maitatsine were twin
brothers. A similar, naive assumption might have been made by our
security agencies when they cracked down on Boko Haram in 2009. The
late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adau, on the eve of a foreign trip, had
ordered the security forces to root out the group whose members were
on the rampage over the destruction of their houses and mosques and
the mass arrest of their “brethren” by the police. They were out for
revenge. A spokesperson for the group, identified as Abdullah, told
Reuters: “The police has been arresting our leaders that is why we
decided to retaliate.”
The Nigerian state erred. As the revolt spread to Maiduguri, with
thousands killed and Yusuf captured (he died in custody, like
Maitatsine), the security agencies hastily concluded that Boko Haram
had become history, like Maitatsine. But the “dead” Boko Haram would
go on to launch the country into an unprecedented reign of terror.
Regrettably, long before the insurrection, top members of Boko Haram,
notably Mamman Nur, had been arrested but released following “orders
from above”. Another error. Nur later masterminded the bombing of the
UN House, Abuja, in 2011, killing 16 persons. He is now at large. He is
probably next in hierarchy to Abubakar Shekau.
And then President Goodluck Jonathan erred. From the very beginning,
he had a “North” problem because of the circumstances under which he
came to power in 2010/11. He believed they did not like him and would
do anything to get him out of power. For a very long time, his
committee of conspiracy theorists kept telling him Boko Haram was
designed to fight him. It is because you’re a Christian; it is because
you’re a Southerner; it is because you are a minority; it is because of
zoning (“power rotation”); and all that. As his theorists worked hard on
him, Boko Haram was getting bolder and stronger and destroying
Nigeria.
And then Northerners erred. Rather than see Boko Haram for what it is
and begin to mobilise their community against it, they chose to
propound their own theories: Jonathan was the one sponsoring Boko
Haram in order to destroy the North; he was out discredit his political
opponents with a bombing campaign, just like Gen. Sani Abacha did to
NADECO in those days; and so on and so forth. Borno elders once
demanded that soldiers be withdrawn from their state! (Can you imagine
where Borno would be if Jonathan had listened to them?) Meanwhile, as
the Northern conspiracy theorists were propounding more theses and
hypotheses, Boko Haram continued to destroy the North.
And Southerners erred. Oh, break up the country! Let the North go! Let
them have their Islamic republic! Their politicians are behind Boko
Haram! Now, with the Chibok kidnappings and the realisation that most
of the girls are Christians, some Southerners are asking: “So they have
Christians in Borno?” And I tell them, Yes, they have Christians in
Zamfara! They have Christians in Kano! They have in Jigawa! Yobe!
Bauchi! Gombe! Kebbi! If you’ve been propagating your balkanisation
agenda in the hope that you are fighting only Northern Muslims, there
are millions of Christians who would suffer under a Boko Haram
government! Or you want to relocate them to the South and then tag
them “settlers” and begin to drive them away in another 50 years?
And, by the way, who said Northern Muslims want to be ruled by Boko
Haram? Who wants to live under a group that treats you as only “fit for
the grave” if you do not accept their theology? To these terrorists, any
Muslim who does not believe that “Boko” is “Haram” is as bad as a
Christian and should be packaged for the grave. Any Muslim who says
Islam means peace is a renegade that should be butchered. Evidently,
Boko Haram has killed more Muslims than Christians. Most of the towns
and villages they are destroying in Borno are predominantly Muslim. I
know that they naturally hate and target Christians, but should we
conveniently deny the fact that they have also killed Islamic clerics,
attacked Muslim traditional rulers and burnt mosques?
Let’s admit it: all of us have erred over Boko Haram. We made the
wrong assumptions and came to the wrong conclusions. It is now
getting clearer by the day that though they might have started as
religious partners to politicians, they are now a Frankenstein monster,
mad men on the loose. The Boko Haram of 2002 or 2009 is completely
different from the Boko Haram of today. They are a threat to all of us.
Your religion is of no significance to them. Your tongue means nothing
to them. Your political party is immaterial to them. Your age has no
meaning to them. We are dealing with fanatics and lunatics. The earlier
we woke up to the new reality, the better.
With that at the back of our minds, let us all come out of our error. PDP,
APC, Jonathan, media, elders, everybody – let’s admit we erred all
along. Let us now reason together on the best way to quench this fire. A
common enemy requires a common response from us. We are all
endangered. Let’s not deny it. Politics cannot be everything and
everything cannot be politics.