The Nation Newspaper

Category: Barometer

  • Shameless bandits and abduction of infants

    Shameless bandits and abduction of infants

    If anyone still sympathises with bandits after they carried out the Papiri (Niger State) St Mary’s School abduction of 230 pupils and students, then they must be cut from the same cloth. Aged between 10 and 17 years old, the victims were taken on November 21. One hundred of them were released on December 8, while the remaining regained their freedom last Sunday. Watching the video of the abductees paints not only a picture of state helplessness and impotence in securing what is clearly a very vulnerable country, it also paints a gory picture of the abductors’ abominable cruelty and callousness. They may still be more accurately described as bandits, but they are now also legally terrorists. They can, therefore, no longer plead socio-economic underpinnings for their crimes or take refuge in their so-called struggles; and they can no longer feel entitled to any sympathy from anyone who is not a terrorist or a terrorist sympathiser.

    The bandits also clearly specialise in artisanal mining and protection rackets, turning vast regions of the Northwest and North Central parts of Nigeria into a replica of the North and South Kivu provinces of the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In addition, they have discovered the equally lucrative secondary attraction of kidnapping hapless citizens for ransom. Their exploits in mining and running protection rings do not, however, receive as much attention as their kidnapping prowess, but the two crimes are undoubtedly intertwined. No matter what anyone says or feels, they are unenthusiastic about abandoning the crimes. Just as they abduct one set of victims and release them, a fresh abduction is concomitantly planned. Series of dialogues between the blighted states and bandits have done little to smother the crime as law enforcement agents idealistically hope. To enter into lasting peace deal with the terrorists would be, in the estimation of the bandits, a call to disarm and renounce their crimes. They are unsure any state is capable of satisfying their criminal urges.

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    The world was outraged by the 2014 abduction of Chibok schoolgirls in Borno State, the 2018 Dapchi abductions in Yobe, and since then many more abductions of lesser severity; but in recent years no kidnapping spree has arrested popular imagination as the November 21 Catholic school attack that saw 230 pupils, students and staff of the Papiri St Mary’s School seized by bandits. To tear away so many young learners from the embrace of their parents and comfort of their homes, some of them as young and impressionable as just 10 years old, is unforgivable. But the bandits enacted that crime, showed no sense of remorse, and swapped some of them for the release of their own fighters and possibly money. The federal government has refused to disclose the details of the negotiations, but there are indications that a swap might have been involved.

    Most of the bandits are family men. They have wives and children, and have been known to be so embittered by the state killing of their family members as to also respond with vicious attacks on the society. For men so touched by the killing or arrest of their relations to respond in kind by picking on infants, is an obvious and irreconcilable contradiction. Will they do it again? Yes, they will, if they can. With so much ungoverned space in Nigeria, can the state prevent future reoccurrence? It is not clear. But it is the state’s responsibility to tighten security around schools and monitor, through the installation of novel security architecture, forests and other ungoverned spaces around the country. It is not a small task, given the fact that for decades, the authorities had failed to invest in national security that includes border patrols and drone surveillance. That decades-long failure has brought Nigeria to this sorry and tragic point.

    It is pointless reposing hope in the kindheartedness of bandits. They do not see the children and the infirm they abduct as mere victims or collateral damage when they practice their crimes. They deliberately go after soft targets, hoping to elicit the highest form of cooperation from the government and security agents caught flatfooted. This means they will do it again if they get half the chance. Branding them terrorists may sound tough, practicable and even sensible, but what the authorities need to do more is to ensure that any future re-enactment of mass abduction of schoolchildren is forestalled. The state may not be able to recalibrate and monitor the entire country, but once abduction takes place, they must be able to lock down the affected areas with a view to ultimately thwarting the crime. And if abduction occurs, they must not rest until a fitting closure in favour of the state and the victims is achieved. More, the authorities should urgently acquire the capacity and expertise to monitor and foil the banking and spending of ransom money, no matter in what currency it is laundered.

    Bandits do not care whatever it costs to settle scores, nor do they have any scruples, as they showed in the Papiri abductions. Completely desensitised, they will plunge the country into war if they had the chance. Equally, Northeast terrorists do not care what harm they bring upon others or attract to themselves. The United States has controversially waded into the picture by conducting some airstrikes; it remains to be seen whether the bandits and terrorists will bow to the massive display of force of outsiders, having long disdained or compromised the efforts of Nigeria’s security agencies, or whether they will absorb the punishment and transmogrify into something more sinister. They don’t have shame going after infants; but they may, however, prove to be even more cowardly and vulnerable than the society they had preyed on for more than a decade.

  • Lamido on PDP alliances

    Lamido on PDP alliances

    Speaking to a gathering of his Jigawa State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) supporters at his Kano office on the factionalisation of his party, former governor Sule Lamido, a foundation member of the troubled Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), suggested that “If reconciliation fails, alliances, not coalitions, will become inevitable.” He added: “You know there is a difference between alliance and coalition; we are going to form alliances with any of the opposition parties.” A few commentators immediately began looking in the direction of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), the fringe party already hijacked by former vice president Atiku Abubakar for his 2027 presidential campaign, and assumed that the former governor might be heading in that direction. He, however, seemed to spurn that idea. He loathes mergers, he clarified, preferring instead an alliance.

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    Whatever he does, especially after the PDP schemed him out of the chairmanship race before the Ibadan November party convention, Mr Lamido has admitted the sundering of his party, his readiness to contemplate other options together with his supporters, and the repudiation of any kind of merger with any other party. All he wants is the defeat of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), however that goal is achieved. But who can say whether in the end the ruling party would not throw a crunchy bone at him to tease his delicate palate and test his resolve in the face of complete political erasure in the run-up to 2027?

  • Kanu: Igbo groups question UK

    Kanu: Igbo groups question UK

    Pursuant to the Nnamdi Kanu affair, an amalgamation of Igbo diaspora groups has condemned the indifference of the United Kingdom (UK) to the trial and jailing of the controversial IPOB leader. Mr Kanu, they reminded the UK government, holds a British passport in addition to being a Nigerian. As the groups put it: “A British passport holder was abducted from Kenya without legal extradition, subjected to a sham trial under a repealed law, and sentenced to life imprisonment; yet London remains silent…This silence is deeply troubling and undermines the credibility of the UK as a global human rights champion… But when a British citizen faces unlawful detention and a life sentence, the government’s indifference is deafening. Silence here reads as complicity.”

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    All this is just emotional bilge water. Mr Kanu does not hold a British passport only to merit the intervention of the UK. In this case, and given the nature of the charges, he is also Nigerian. Which one, in the estimation of the British, should supersede the other? Terrorism, everyone now understands, is a grave subject that neither the British nor any other serious country would fool around with. The groups idolise Mr Kanu. Good for them. But they should have restrained him during his wild days of inciting his supporters to mayhem. Blaming the British or accusing them of passivity in the groups’ misreading of the situation and ignorance of the law will not change anything or give freedom to the jailed ‘freedom fighter’.

  • Igbo Leaders’ numbing fulminations

    Igbo Leaders’ numbing fulminations

    Two presumably respected professors signed the communiqué of the last meeting of the Igbo Leaders of Thought (ILT) held in Enugu last week. One is well known: Prof. Elochukwu Amucheazi, president of the group and pioneer Director-General of the National Orientation Agency (NOA). The second professor is not quite as popular in the media, now or in the past: Jerry Chukwuokolo, secretary and a former head of the Department of Philosophy and Religion, Ebonyi State University. He is reported to have done a lot of work on socio-political and developmental philosophy, particularly within Igbo culture. Prof. Amucheazi is a political scientist who once taught at the University of Nigeria, Nnsuka, but is now retired. They may have signed the communiqué, but there is nothing to show that they authored it, or whether they didn’t have any reservations about sections of the draft.

    But the views expressed in the communiqué amounted to sweeping generalisations. Three items stand out in media reports of the communiqué. One, citing what they describe as escalation in killings across Nigeria, especially of Christians, and needing to prevent Nigeria from full-scale collapse, they posit: “The U.S. must not hesitate to intervene physically, including invading Nigeria to disperse the numerous bandits now harassing the nation. We cannot watch history repeat itself. We owe it to future generations to halt this slide into genocide and war.” Two, they condemn what they believe is “genocidal profiling and economic strangulation” of Igbo businesses, linking it to anti-Igbo policies, perhaps in Lagos, and Fulani expansionism. They then conclude that if injustices against the Igbo prevail, the ideology of Biafra will remain attractive. Three, they reject the life sentence imposed on IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu as “unjust, illegal, and politically motivated,” insisting that the conviction is “sad, indefensible and speculative,” and capable of turning him into a “Mandela-like symbol of resistance.” They ask for his release, rehabilitation and compensation.

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    The eminent professors obviously spared nothing. To them Nigeria is heading for collapse, the bedraggled United States is the knight in shining armour, Kanu is right and justified, and the Igbo are once again, perhaps as always, the victims of budding, if not full-blown, genocide. No communiqué can be more tendentious, and no analysis can be so offensively opaque. It is unlikely the professors wrote the communiqué, or read it with the attentiveness it deserves. And if they wrote or read what they finally disseminated to the public, they perhaps submitted unwillingly to the herd mentality of excoriating outsiders than engaging in the self-contemplation and careful examination which the occasion and Nigeria demand.

    Start from their call for US invasion of Nigeria as a means of correcting the country’s many paradoxes and conflicts. Is the US president Donald Trump, in their view, a paragon of democratic leadership? And is the US itself an exemplar of good behaviour at the international level, especially with its gunboat diplomacy against Venezuela, the auctioning of Ukraine to Russia, and the insults and threats to friends and allies alike? Just how sagely does Mr Trump appear to be to the two Nigerian professors in light of his ongoing castration of the United Nations and the almost total demolition of the rules-based order? Mr Trump is abusive, uncouth, disorganised, contemptuous of Blacks and developing economies, and lacking in depth. Is this the same man Professors Amucheazi and Chukwuokolo are inviting to restore sanity and order to Nigeria?

    It is not certain who the other attendees were at the ILT meeting last week, whether they were jaded and ageing academicians or mid-level rabble-rousers from the streets co-opted into making up the numbers at the meeting and giving teeth to the communiqué. Whoever they were, it is shocking and disappointing that they joined many unthinking others to advocate the release of the self-absorbed Mr Kanu whose organisation, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), unleashed mayhem against mostly the people of the Southeast. And comparing him with Nelson Mandela? Well, what kind of hyperbole is that? Not only is the trial still ongoing, and the outcomes at the appellate courts predictable, it is astonishing that the professors could describe his conviction as illegal, unjustifiable and politically motivated. Did the ILT follow his trial, and if they did perhaps absentmindedly, did they read the judgement? Even if the ILT does not care about the lives destroyed in the Southeast and the families shattered, nor the gargantuan economic losses and the humiliating IPOB-midwifed Monday sit-at-home order that locked down the region and paralysed business and social activities every week in the name of securing freedom for Mr Kanu and freeing Biafra, surely they should care about what the law says and how the trial judge interpreted it.

    Finally, the professors and their communiqué speak to what they describe as genocidal profiling and Fulani expansionism to justify the retention of the ill-fated idea of Biafra in Southeast minds. These two superficial tools of incitement are quite popular in the region and among the Igbo worldwide. Instead of the Igbo intelligentsia carefully deconstructing these tools and helping the region to heal and move on even in the face of non-closure of the Biafra War, they have decided to join the rabble by boosting its presumptions. But is it the Igbo alone that are facing Fulani expansionism? And in the face of refusal to return the country to ‘true’ federalism, a departure first articulated and advocated by some Igbo politicians in the First Republic, has every major ethnic group in Nigeria not felt the pangs of ‘genocidal profiling’?

    While Mr Kanu may be the hero of many south-easterners, the other regions see in him a tragic cult hero. The Southeat may view Mr Trump and the US as knights in shining armour, the rest of Nigeria and the world see him as a flawed and superficial leader masking his inadequacies under aggressive pro-Americanism. They cannot and will not save anyone. The professors should seek solace elsewhere rather than chase a chimera.

  • Goodluck Jonathan’s metamorphosis

    Goodluck Jonathan’s metamorphosis

    Former president Goodluck Jonathan had all along been known as a very cautious man, politician and president. His last assignment observing the November 24, 2025 Guinea-Bissau elections, and his incredibly perceptive and strong reaction to the coup that upstaged the polls, however, suggested that either Nigerians didn’t quite know the man or he had undergone an incredible metamorphosis since his misadventure into president election politics in 2022 and last October. Dr Jonathan had led the West African Elders Forum Election Observation Mission to monitor Guinea-Bissau’s presidential and legislative elections. The election pitted incumbent president Umaro Embalo, candidate of the Madem‑G15 party, against leading opposition candidate Fernando Dias, candidate of the Party for Social Renewal (PRS) and his coalition partners. But on November 26, a day before the results were officially released, the unimaginable occurred. The results were annulled, a coup was declared in the most unusual fashion, first by the president himself, and later by the coup leaders who were the president’s military allies, while a supposedly one-year transition regime was emplaced.

    The problem with the Guinea-Bissau polls is not just that the now ‘deposed’ president connived at a coup that subverted the elections, or that his military allies led the coup, or that he had in fact lost the election and needed an excuse not to hand over to the presumed winner, Mr Dias, or that this would be the third time he would flirt with coups d’etat, having assumed office on the back of a forcible claim to the office in 2019 via a 54 percent runoff vote. Or even that he repeated the evil ploy midway into his presidency in 2022, years before the latest chicanery. In fact, hapless Guinea-Bissau can have all the tragic drama it wants, and perhaps with a little help from outside can find a resolution that would power their democracy and lift the country out of the developmental doldrums years of leadership incompetence and corruption, and a national reputation as a drug courier hub, had sentenced the country. Furthermore, many commentators have made one or two uncomplimentary remarks about the lousy change of guard in Guinea-Bissau, including the increasingly impotent United Nations castrated and rendered spineless by the warmongering and apoplectic United States president Donald Trump.

    The problem is that former president Jonathan, who has seemed to acquire new political and leadership clothes, is giving Nigerians tough bones to chew and wearing odd clothes. The clothes are paradoxically fitting, but they were revealed by the Guinea-Bissau polls and the coup which trapped the former Nigerian president for a day in that country. Soon after he was evacuated from the coup-prone nation, Dr Jonathan unleashed a fusillade of denunciations against the ‘deposed’ President Embalo and the coup leaders. Though used to waffling, on this occasion, Dr Jonathan minced no words in damning the chicanery he believed the exiled Guinea-Bissau president had disreputably enacted. And he was quite assertive in his opinion, indeed very definitive.

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    Hear him at length: “What happened in Guinea-Bissau is quite disturbing to me, a person who believes in democracy. In fact, I feel more pain than the day I called Buhari to congratulate him when I lost the election as a sitting president. It is painful for me that President Embaló was the one announcing a military takeover of the government. It is totally unacceptable. What happened in Guinea-Bissau, I would not call it a coup; it was not a coup. For lack of a better word, I will say it was a ceremonial coup because it was President Embaló who announced the coup before the military later came up to address the world that they were in charge of the government.”

    Still animated and angry, he added: “Embaló had already announced that there was a coup, which is strange. Not only announcing the coup, but Embaló, while the coup took place, was using his phone and addressing media organisations across the world that he had been arrested. I’m a Nigerian close to 70, and I know how they keep Heads of State when a coup takes place. They cannot be playing pranks; nobody should call others fools. There is no way there will be a military coup at a time when they were about to announce election results, and the president was the person who announced the coup. It doesn’t happen anywhere.”

    Though there were a few moments in his denunciations when his characteristic inclination for excessive caution peered out, on the whole, however, he pulled the peroration off admirably. It was a relief to hear the former Nigerian president declaim convincingly on a subject dear to the hearts of many Nigerians and West Africans who had endured decades of terror under military jackboots. He was not as definitive after the 2023 presidential election despite its cleanness and fairness, and he inexplicably and unwisely tried to re-enter the 2027 presidential race for an office that obviously continues to tantalise him. But on the occasion of the Guinea-Bissau poll and the concomitant coup contrived against it, Dr Jonathan was firm and brilliant, in fact elegant. Nigerians will hope his new self is not an aberration, a caricature of his old self, or a gargoyle imitating his ambitious self.

  • Trump, Saudi Arabia shock the world

    Trump, Saudi Arabia shock the world

    US president Donald Trump has hosted all sorts of foreign leaders in his uninspiring pursuit of economic diplomacy and personal self-aggrandisement. Some of them he disrespects so intensely that it borders on bigotry, and some others he snivels before them that it is so befuddling. Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa are examples of leaders who could not seem to place a foot right; but Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman al Saud (famously called MBS), Qatar’sTamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and Syria’s new leader and former al-Qaeda-affiliated operative, Ahmed al-Sharaa, are examples of the other class whose business deals with Mr Trump appear to expiate their dangerous predilections.

    Mr Ramaphosa is of course completely innocent of the accusation of white genocide against White farmers, and Mr Zelensky is fighting for the freedom and independence of Ukraine. On the other hand, MBS, answering questions during his November visit to the White House, acknowledged that the murder of Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Turkey in 2018 was a ‘painful mistake, but denied ordering it. Despite US intelligence confirming MBS ordered the hit, Mr Trump did not so much as wince during the interaction. Instead, he growled at the journalist who asked the crown prince the question. Al Thani has many question marks on his head regarding his links to jihadist groups, but his plane gift to the US president obviously absolves him of every allegation. And Syria’s al-Sharaa, despite his past as an al-Qaeda commander, received the backing of MBS who goes on to orchestrate the former’s November visit to the White House.

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    What probably shocked the world the most was how cavalierly and spontaneously Mr Trump came to the defence of MBS. He asked the reporter who queried MBS on the murder not to embarrass the Saudi crown prince, declared that MBS knew nothing about the crime, and dismissively suggested that Mr Khashoggi was controversial and not liked, and ‘things happen’. No one ever thought the day would come when an American president would treat murder so offhandedly. Well, the promise of ‘nearly $1 trillion Saudi investments in new US partnerships are obviously capable of rewriting American and global jurisprudence and moral code.

  • Panic school closures

    Panic school closures

    Responding to the rash (or what grammarians call a deliberate concatenation) of abductions orchestrated to raise Nigeria’s political temperature to boiling point, the federal and some state governments have hastily shut down some of their schools. It was a panic measure evidently ill-conceived. In the estimation of the fidgeting governments, they would rather be safe than sorry. But what happens to uncovered syllabuses? Would students of those schools not be disadvantaged against their counterparts in schools with unbroken calendar? While states shut down fewer schools, the federal government shut down more than three dozen Unity Colleges. The immediate impact of those massive shutdowns was to send the populace reeling, as if the whole country was besieged and helpless.

    But beyond the shutdowns and the hysteria, the governments’ response sent an awkward message of impotence to the rest of the country and the world. At a time when boldness and risk-taking were in great demand, the governments had responded by retreating into their shells. It was a time to think on their feet, reason extraordinarily, quickly restructure their security systems, and make deployments capable of providing rapid response to abductions and attacks even in far-flung places. The question to ask is: should attacks continue instead of considerably abating, would the schools be kept on permanent shutdown? The holiday seasons are upon the country; it is, therefore, unclear whether the shut schools would be opened before the end of the year.

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    The governments had advanced warnings of school attacks and abductions, for these crimes never stopped in the first instance. There was really no concise and coherent plan to provide deterrence for schools susceptible to attacks. Hopefully, the right lessons have been learnt from the Kebbi and Niger States school attacks, not to say the foiled attack on a school in Kogi State. Instead of retreating endlessly and yielding ground to bandits and terrorists, it may be time to develop a powerful homegrown solution to tackle the crisis. 

  • PDP’s gaffe-prone factional chairman

    PDP’s gaffe-prone factional chairman

    After a faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) unanimously affirmed him as national chairman, it took only a few days for Kabiru Turaki to kick-start his career as a gaffe machine of the most exquisite variety. Speaking in Abuja two Tuesdays ago when he led his ‘troops’ to forcibly repossess the party’s national headquarters, and had been tear-gassed in the process together with his ‘brigade commanders’, he shouted himself hoarse in the cause of, as he put it facetiously, democracy. Now, he has again put his foot in his mouth over what he believed was the Federal High Court, Abuja’s predisposition to truncate justice. At the rate he is going, especially given his fecundity, he will likely sustain a weekly production of gaffes until early next year when his faction will conduct their own PDP primaries.

    Former vice president Atiku Abubakar used to be the leading melodramatic politician in the elite category. Now, he clearly cannot hold a candle to Alhaji Turaki, a combative senior lawyer who is neither diplomatic nor conciliatory. How both would have fared had Alhaji Atiku not defected to the fringe African Democratic Congress (ADC) is unclear; but a fierce competition to determine who could run his mouth the wildest would probably have ensued. Well, that’s a moot point now. The former vice president has taken his talent for wild and fanciful summations to the ADC, and Alhaji Turaki has the coast cleared for him to calumniate as much as his lexical resources can carry him.

    On November 18, after inhaling a little teargas during the battle for the party headquarters, his wits addled, Alhaji Turaki cried out to probably the most undemocratic president in United States history to help save or restore Nigerian democracy. He was remorseless: “I want to call on President Trump to come and help save democracy in Nigeria. It is not only genocide against Christians that is happening. He should come and save democracy in Nigeria because democracy is under threat. I am calling on other developed nations to come and save democracy in Nigeria…I have said that we are willing to lay down our lives to protect our office, to protect our democracy and to protect our mandate. Nigerians, you are seeing what is happening. The international community, you are seeing the threat that Nigerian democracy is facing. Come and save us.” He ignored his Freudian slip of confirming Christian genocide in Nigeria and goes on to cry mournfully for help. That help will of course never come. The American president does not just resent democracy, he loathes it, and is fascinated by right-wing, authoritarian and even fascist leaders.

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    Alhaji Turaki’s gaffes sound eerily like morbid humour to most Nigerians. But to the PDP leader, it probably sounds like music. Roundly condemned and mocked for calling for help from the US, he nevertheless caused a letter to be written to the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, Abuja, to complain of juridic bias against his party. According to him, a sinister coincidence pervades the administration of justice in the court, and a conspiracy in assigning PDP suits to generally a trio of judges hell bent on disinheriting the opposition party. Hear him: “My lord, it is of great concern to our Party that it would appear that all matters for the past few years filed in the Federal High Court, Abuja Judicial Division either for or against our Party have always been assigned to the following three Judges only, namely: Hon. Justice James Omotosho; Hon. Justice Peter Odo Lifu; Hon. Justice Abdulmalik. Even though there are other Judges numbering up to nine in the Abuja Judicial Division, who could have taken up any of these matters, as the Abuja Division has 12 Judges. Several of our Party members have recently complained bitterly to the newly elected members of the National Working Committee and the National Executive Committee of the above-mentioned scenario. Indeed, all these three Courts are viewed by party members and indeed the public as ‘courts of particular concern’ with regard to matters pertaining to or affecting the interest of the Peoples Democratic Party…”

    The court will respond to the allegations, but it is not clear whether a copy of that response will be circulated to the media, assuming the PDP does not leak it. But it is interesting that Alhaji Turaki punned the three suspected courts as ‘courts of particular concern’, an indication that the new factional chairman is simply fooling around with activism, perhaps his secret fantasy. It is also significant that while he talked about the coincidence of case assignment, he was less enthusiastic about talking about the jurisprudential exactitude of the suits his party repeatedly lost. For a factional party chairman who was accused of ignoring court judgements and engaging in forum shopping, it is indeed passing strange that he claims to be fighting for democracy and the rule of law, unfazed by his boyish invitation that opens the nation’s doors for disreputable outsiders to meddle in Nigerian affairs. When, sir, is your next gaffe due?

  • Genocide: CAN needs doctrinal rethink

    Genocide: CAN needs doctrinal rethink

    On November 19, United States lawmaker, Congressman Riley M. Moore, issued a statement after his meeting with a Nigerian delegation led by National Security Adviser (NSA) Nuhu Ribadu over President Donald Trump’s controversial redesignation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern. A day later the US congressional hearing on Nigeria took place. Chaired by Chris Smith, Mr Moore was also present. After his meeting with Mr Ribadu, Mr Moore declared: “Today, I had a frank, honest, and productive discussion with senior members of the Nigerian government regarding the horrific violence and persecution Christians face and the ongoing threat terrorism poses across Nigeria. I made it crystal clear that the United States must see tangible steps to ensure that Christians are not subject to violence, persecution, displacement, and death simply for believing in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

    Sounding a little conciliatory, weeks after shouting himself hoarse over the persecution of Christians in Nigeria, he added: “We stand ready to work cooperatively with Nigerians to help their nation combat the terrorism perpetrated by Boko Haram, ISWAP, and Fulani militants against their population, specifically Christians in the Northeast and Middle Belt regions of Nigeria. The Nigerian government has the chance to strengthen and deepen its relationship with the United States. President Trump and Congress are united and serious in our resolve to end the violence against Christians and disrupt and destroy terrorist groups within Nigeria. I urge the Nigerians to work with us in cooperation and coordination on this critical issue.”

    From all indications, except something goes wrong, the Americans might strike a tentative deal with Nigeria to stave off the ‘guns-a-blazing’ attack President Trump promised if there was no let up on the ‘genocide’ against Christians in Nigeria. Included in the delegation were Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, NSA and Leader of the Delegation; Her Excellency, Bianca Ojukwu, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Kayode Egbetokun, Inspector General of Police; Chief Lateef Olasunkami Fagbemi, SAN – Attorney General of the Federation; General Olufemi Olatunbosun Oluyede , Chief of Defence Staff; Lt. Gen. EAP Undiendeye, Chief of Defence Intelligence; Ms. Idayat Hassan, Special Adviser to ONSA; Ambassador Ibrahim Babani , Director of Foreign Relations, ONSA; Ambassador Nuru Biu, Acting CDA, Embassy of Nigeria; Paul Alabi, Political and Economic Section, Embassy of Nigeria in the US. Did the delegation persuade the Americans to exercise restraint? It is unlikely. They probably only managed to sow seeds of doubt in the heart of Mr Moore regarding the efficacy of any attack by the US.

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    Central to the discourse at the US congressional hearing were the depositions of the US Christian community and their Nigerian allies who continued to harp on their conviction that the killings in particularly the Middle Belt of Nigeria were genocidal in intent. But here, precisely is where the problem lies. Because of years of campaigning for the US to intervene in the matter, the Nigerian Christian community may have inadvertently precipitated an American cause of action they can’t influence one way or the other. A few weeks ago, Mr Trump gave what amounted to an ultimatum to Nigerian leaders to rein in the ‘genocidal’ attacks or face military action of undetermined severity. The American threat has predictably caused uproar. While some Nigerians wondered how American bombs would discriminate between Christian innocents and non-terrorist Muslims, the Christian community in both the US and Nigeria have appeared to be relieved that at last, help was on the way.

    However, the relieved in the Christian communities are divided into two categories. While some hope that the American threat would not proceed beyond mere threat but would ginger Nigeria into discernible action against the terrorists, and have spoken gingerly about their expectations, a second group, but probably fewer in number, appears indifferent to a shooting war between the superior American arms and the archaic arms of terror masterminds. Given the massive haemorrhaging they have endured from those who have murdered Christians and taken their lands, especially in the Middle Belt, both Christian groups are dead set against sustaining the status quo of flimsy action. The problem, however, is that gradually and perhaps imperceptibly, the doctrinal foundations regarding violence in the defence of their faith may be changing due to the frustrations Christians experience in getting their government to act decisively against rampaging killers. The early church, who were more persecuted than the modern church, reposed no faith whatsoever in violence of any kind, either from within their ranks or from outsiders, against their enemies. Is their methodology still relevant in the modern era where dividing lines have been blunted by globalisation, culture wars, and the sweeping and often anarchic generalisations of the social media?

    The modern church is, therefore, in a quandary over whether to support the retaliatory and deterrent killing of their persecutors or to face the unfathomable existential dilemma of waiting to be wiped out and dispossessed. If they vote for the former, they face the harrowing task of providing new and probably unscriptural doctrinal justifications for their choice. That task, given their history, will not be easy. In fact that task has been made doubly onerous by seeking a champion in Mr Trump who has neither the history nor the grace for moderation. Indeed, seeking American intervention might in some ways be interpreted as an indirect admission of losing faith in the power of Christ to save His church. But perhaps, the Middle Belt knows that the battles in the Middle Belt between the natives who are predominantly Christians and Fulani militias who are predominantly Muslims is all about land wars for which the cry of Christian genocide has become a resonating global mobilisation tool.

  • Probe every security breach, abduction

    Probe every security breach, abduction

    Kebbi State governor Nasir Idris has been livid over the abduction of some 25 schoolgirls from a government school in Maga community in Zuru Emirate. He was angry that despite being tipped off about the impending attack, the security agencies could still not prevent the crime. Worse, according to him, the manner of the abduction reeked of conspiracy. He said: “As a responsive government, when we received intelligence on a possible attack, we summoned a security meeting…The security agencies assured us that all was well and that personnel would be mobilised to the school…The military was deployed, but they later withdrew by 3 am, and by 3:45 am, the incident happened…Who authorised the military to withdraw? How did security personnel pull out at such a critical time? That is our concern. We have asked the military to investigate and identify who gave that order…Our duty as leaders is to ensure that our daughters return home safely, and we are doing everything possible to achieve that…What is happening in this country shows that enemies are working against this government.”

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    The governor’s allegation should be probed. In fact, every case of abduction should be probed to rule out conspiracies and collaborations. While it is true that security personnel are spread dangerously thin everywhere, an indication that the country’s security paradigm is unworkable, it does not necessarily preclude the possibility of conspiracy. On the heels of the tragic execution of a brigade commander in the Sambisa sector of the Northeast during counterinsurgency operations, incidents that smell of conspiracy need to be investigated in order to reassure Nigerians that the security agencies have not turned on themselves. Dealing with the enemy without is far better than dealing with the enemy within. The loss of a brigade commander, Musa Uba, and the Maga abduction should be investigated.