“From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.”– Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
This open memo is written to you because yours sincerely assumes that wherever your members might be, whether in the forest of Sambisa or your bunkers of destruction located across Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states, it will definitely be easier to gain your attention through this medium because one can reasonably presume that your sect actually has access to print and the electronics media. After all, your group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, has consistently been using the social media to convey his mostly satanic messages across to the Nigerian government and its traumatised people.
Nigerians are more exasperated and frustrated by your group’s sustained havoc-wrecking spree on public/religious institutions as well as your having sustained effective devilish killing plots against innocent citizens of this great country. This is sadly in the face of largely un-motivated and ill-equipped military. Having perfected these heinous conducts, especially in the face of avoidable inadequacy by the state, hardly would a day pass without a destructive bang of your sect rocking one or two corners of the northern parts of the beleaguered country.
This wanton act of disrespect for human lives by your sect has defied human reasoning and has even cast serious aspersion on the veracity of your members’ claim to be true adherents of the Islamic faith as championed by Prophet Mohammed (SAW). Personally, yours sincerely has always been seriously ashamed of your evil acts and terribly embarrassed when people asked whether my Islamic religion condones the barbarity of your highly destructive and pretentiously Islamic sect.
This memo has become highly instructive because of the helpless state that your injurious acts have put my fellow country men and women. Apart from the routine killings and destructions by your sect’s members, the group, sadistically, moved a regrettable step backwards when it abducted in a day, over 250 school girls writing final examinations in Chibok, Borno State on April 14. This is otherwise a global record by any terrorist group like yours, which gave our government away as not in control of state security and even overall national affairs.
By this savage act on innocent girls among others, you have become unreasonably plucky and treacherous soldiers of the Islamic faith: Through your numerous abductions and other killings, your irreligious attacks and disdainfully fearsome influence have stigmatised genuine adherents of Islam. The blood-thirsty illiterate recruits in your nest of killers called Boko Haram must have a rethink if truly they desire aljannah firdau.
Yours sincerely is pleading with your group to please release unharmed, the school Chibok girls. Ordinarily, my pleadings should have been directed at the federal government that constitutionally ought to ensure that the security and welfare of the people are primarily guaranteed. But the response of the presidency to demands of protesting mothers when they went to Aso-Rock was heart-shattering. It is inconceivable to note that the Jonathan presidency told the protesters to direct their protests and grievances to the direction of Boko Haram. This is embarrassing because the ruinous sect is not known to the nation’s grund norm. Thence, what the presidency is saying or insinuating is that it has ceded its constitutional role to the sect. Otherwise, why should it say what ordinarily should be a shame on its professed capacity to govern the country?
This government has broken the trust reposed in it by the Nigerian people when they voted for it in 2011. And its blame-game of putting liability at the door steps of Boko Haram is unacceptable. The blame-game of this government already connotes a lost game because blames create no change and true fighters/winners don’t apportion blames. The Boko Haram should, however, not take the timidity of this government to mean that the group would continue to hold sway forever. This column is, once again, appealing to the group to sheath its bloody sword and quickly release the school girls whose parents are still under intense trauma as a consequence of the sudden disappearance of their affectionate wards.
The Boko Haram members definitely would have parents among their membership and it is useful to ask how any of them, despite their heartless onslaughts on the people, would feel if their kids, whether male or female, is abducted and with little hope of rescue by a dreaded group like theirs. If only they could shed off the toga of barbarity and wear the garb of humanity, they would waste no time in releasing those girls to government for onwards transmission to their parents.
Let the group realise that its fight is not against President Jonathan who is well protected in his Aso Rock fortress, but against humanity because the entire world is now concerned and alerted to its inhuman representations as depicted by the senseless abductions of these girls and several others. Nothing lasts forever and the essence of doing anything good/pleasurable is to be imbued with the wisdom to know when to stop. This is not to talk of the evil that the sect represents.
Yours sincerely is using this platform, once again, to tell Boko Haram that whoever might be its promoters before it went out of control; it is pertinent for the sect to know that it has exhausted its nuisance value. The moody state of the nation during the last Children’s Day and yesterday’s insipid Democracy Day celebrations were clear pointers to this fact. So, dear dreaded Boko Haram, pity the girls and their parents in the name of the Almighty Allah – and release them hale and hearty!
