With less emphasis on the use of force, the continued onslaught of the Boko Haram sect on innocent Nigerians can be tackled with total unity of purpose in the Christendom, Rev. Ladi Peter Thompson, Special Adviser for Conflict Resolution & Counter-Terrorism to Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) President Ayo Oritsejafor, has advised.
The cleric took the position while sharing with Newsextra, the crux of the parley that recently held between the Oritsejafor-led CAN representatives and the United States Consul-General, Jeffrey Hawkins, in Lagos.
“Working together with the global community, the Nigerian Boko Haram problem would cease to exist in six months if we could put the CAN house in order! The whispers coming from the shadows of CAN are the greatest threat to all the sacrifices that genuine Christian leaders are making to preserve our future. The terrorist designation for Boko Haram that the CAN President sought in his mid-year congressional visit to the US Government would have been granted but for the whispers of the “useful idiots” within our system. The “useful idiots” syndrome is not a term that Nigerians are familiar with but it is not in anyway a new concept,” Thompson declared, adding: “All that Nigerians need to do is to open their eyes and think.”
He is unhappy that some voices within the rank and file of the CAN have been misinforming foreign authorities about the severity of the insecurity problems in the country which has, for a long time, been spear-headed by the dreaded Boko Haram sect.
Recounting his observations at the Lagos meeting, Thompson sad: “Seated across the table was the US Consul General flanked by two aides from the embassy and for once, I really felt sorry for the CAN president as I watched him struggle to persuade the diplomats that the Boko Haram was a product of a religious ideology cut from the same cloth as the Al Qaeda. Summing up his case, he recounted the recent attack on the church in the military installation in Jaji and wondered aloud why it was so difficult to connect the dots. As the special adviser to the CAN president for conflict resolution and counter terrorism, my mind played back meetings that the CAN president had held with several dignitaries from various countries. A coin dropped when it dawned on me that the follow-up questions from our foreign dignitaries seemed to conform to a set pattern.
“When the US diplomat casually mentioned that Nigerian Church leaders had informed them that there were radicals and extremists on both sides of Nigeria’s religious divide, the CAN President raised a vigorous objection and demanded corroboration! The same thing exactly had happened earlier at a meeting in Abuja at the Italian Ambassadors residence with dignitaries from the European Union, the Apostolic Nuncio and several bishops representing the Anglican, Catholic and Methodist churches. As the representative of the CAN president at that meeting I was alarmed when the foreigners made the same assertion. My clinical refutation was no less vigorous than that of the CAN president. It did take us a while before we realized that the recurring assertions were a product of a deliberate propaganda coming from our own ranks! It is my candid opinion that the CAN president is often at a tactical disadvantage at diplomatic meetings because there is so much that cannot be divulged publicly about the depth of the boko haram situation in Nigeria.”
Lamenting the awry security development, Thompson recalled Oritsejafor’s experience in Warri when he received a distress call from Damaturu recently in hot tears. “Pastor Oritsejafor was in tears when he narrated the story of a frantic call. ‘They are coming … I hear gunshots’ were the caller’s last words to the CAN President’s cellular phone. Yet another Christian victim dead in the hands of the Boko Haram men and their campaign of religious intolerance.”
“Putting myself in the shoes of the US diplomats,” Thompson revealed further, “I had to admit that there are complexities to the Nigerian challenge that could obscure the focus of any well-meaning friend especially when there is no dearth of conflicting information from the side shadows of CAN!”
On the “useful idiots” concept, he noted that it is a pejorative term for people perceived as propagandist for a cause they do not understand and become unwitting tools in the hands of the leaders of such causes,” adding that “it is interesting to note that many highly respected persons sometimes fall prey to its lure. In the era of the cold war the term was used to refer to Soviet sympathizers in the Western countries. In political terminology this implied that the people naively thought themselves to be friends of the Soviet Union while they were actually held in contempt by the Soviets and used cynically for propaganda.”
Citing an example, the activist cleric said: “When French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier and Neville Chamberlain, his British counterpart went to Munich to sign the September 30, 1938 agreement with Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany, both men earned themselves prominent seats in the community of “useful idiots”! The Munich Agreement was an appeasement permitting Nazi Germany to annex some parts of Czechoslovakia inhabited by ethnic Germans called Sudetenland. The agreement was negotiated at a Munich conference without the presence of Czechoslovakia and signed by Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy. Both Prime Ministers of France and the UK returned home to cheering crowds with glowing reports of how war was averted.
“On the Nazi side, Adolf Hitler held Chamberlain in utter contempt describing him as an umbrella wielding fool! Winston Churchill denounced the agreement in the House of Commons. The rest is history because Nazi Germany was raining bombs on London a few years down the road in Hitler’s quest for global domination. Adolf Hitler’s recruitment of “useful idiots” was not limited to the political world. There is a long list of religious leaders who initially swore by the innocence of Adolf Hitler and helped to recruit millions under their care into the Hitler Youth!”
