DOMESTIC terrorism occurs when a citizen or group of citizens of a particular country targets people within the same country for ideological, religious, ethnic, economic, or other reasons. Like terrorism involving targets outside the perpetrator’s country of citizenship, domestic terrorism is often premeditated and violent. However, as I will illustrate later, violence takes different forms. Although the focus is often on physical violence, there are non-physical forms of violence that are nonetheless quite destructive.
Nigeria and the United States share many things in common, including presidential democracy. Recently, however, domestic terrorism of the physical form has dominated the news in both countries, claiming many innocent lives.
As recently as Saturday, July 27, 2019, Boko Haram killed as many as 68 mourners at a funeral in Borno State and injured many others. A few days earlier, they had ambushed Nigerian troops in the same state, killing an army commander and several soldiers. Indeed, hundreds, if not thousands of soldiers have been killed, leading to a recent report of a mass grave for fallen soldiers. Boko Haram has hit various targets, especially across the Northeastern corridor. Overall, it is estimated that Boko Haram has claimed about 100,000 lives and abducted thousands, especially young boys and girls, over ten years.
The recent killings by Boko Haram followed a wave of kidnappings for ransom, some involving fatalities. The kidnappings have occurred across regional, social, class, ethnic, religious, gender, and age divisions. What started in the oil-producing Niger Delta as a means of sending a message to the government and the oil companies by militants in the region to pay more attention to the region’s degradation soon became a nation-wide commercial activity. Once adopted by herdsmen wielding AK-47 rifles, the whole nation became entrapped.
The current wave of domestic terrorism in the United States exposes the vulnerability of the leader of the free world. Yes, Nigeria today may be notorious for kidnappings. Nevertheless, the United States has more mass shootings than any other country in the world. There has been at least one mass shooting a day since 2013. However, the figures peaked since President Donald Trump came to power in 2016.
Over the past weekend alone, two deadly mass shootings occurred within 13 hours of each other. In El Paso, Texas, one 21-year old White male killed 22 and injured 26 others, while another 24-year old White male killed nine and injured many more in Dayton Ohio.
Interestingly, the Texas shooter is a White supremacist, who holds the nationalist and racist views of the extreme right. He specifically targeted El Paso because of its teeming Hispanic population. By contrast, the Dayton shooter held extremely leftist views, apparently in reaction to the growing nationalist and racist views of White supremacists.
The critical question is: Why is the incidence of domestic terrorism rising in both countries, despite apparent differences in its manifestation? Americans and Nigerians have been grappling with this question. Opposition political leaders in both countries have not shied away from pointing accusing fingers to the presidency.
Former President Barrack Obama puts it succinctly for other opposition leaders: “We should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalizes racist sentiments; leaders who demonize those who do not look like us, or suggest that other people, including immigrants, threaten our way of life, or refer to other people as sub-human, or imply that America belongs to just one certain type of people”.
Obama did not stop there. He then went on to place this type of language within historical and global contexts: “Such language isn’t new—it’s been at the root of most human tragedy throughout history … It is at the root of slavery and Jim Crow, the Holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda and ethnic cleansing in the Balkan,” No one is in doubt about the political leader Obama had in mind.
It is President Trump, whose relentless racist, bigoted, and misogynistic remarks are believed to be at the root of recent violent behavior and attitude toward immigrants and minorities. In truth, Trump’s language is violent. It is the kind of violence often classified as symbolic violence, that is a kind of verbal violence that is harmful in its own way.
True, Trump was pushed by recent events and commentaries on them to condemn White supremacists and racism, he nevertheless denied connection between his language and domestic terrorism. Instead, he attributes, against available evidence, the behaviour of the Texas mass shooter and other gun-touting persons to mental illness, violent video games, and the Internet. True, Nigerian opposition leaders’ castigation of the presidency over Boko Haram insurgency and the wave of kidnappings may lack the kind of historical depth displayed by Obama; nevertheless, they have been vociferous in their attack. The truth is that neither the American nor the Nigerian President has done enough to curb domestic terrorism. While Trump may be said to talk too much, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari hardly talks or talks too little. Like Trump, he deflected attention from the roots of herdsmen kidnappings by pleading tolerance and accommodation. No wonder his latest effort to establish Rural Grazing Areas has been met with stiff opposition, especially in the South.
Buhari needs to be reminded that there is wisdom in the saying that a stitch in time saves nine. Had he responded to the outcry against clashes between herdsmen and farmers and the call for disarming the herdsmen, the escalation of the conflicts might have been checked. Besides, the infiltration of Bororo herders, who are often identified as the ones behind kidnappings, might have been prevented. By allowing the conflicts to merge with kidnappings, Buhari now has more than herdsmen-farmers clashes to handle.
Nevertheless, I hold the view that domestic security is more of a local, than national, issue. Abuja cannot watch my backyard in Idanre any more than neighbouring police or nearby Civil Defence officer could. That’s why it is important to speed up legislation on state police and allocate more of the defence funds to states and local governments. The role of the Federal Government in domestic security should not be more than policy formulation, monitoring, and quality assurance. In other words, while the defence of the nation should remain a federal matter, domestic defence should be decentralized.