Tag: Kukah

Interestingly, many of those that have condemned the Odi massacre, including President Goodluck Jonathan – remember the embarrassing altercation last year between him and former president, General Olusegun Obasanjo, over the massacre? – and supported the granting of amnesty for the Niger Delta’s militants are the same people that have since been advocating the use of the same force, indeed an even more brutal one than that used in Odi, as the only solution to Boko Haram.

For example, The Punch (March 14) which has consistently condemned dialogue with the sect called the amnesty “outrageous” and “gravely precarious.” Yet as recently as January 15 it had praised amnesty for the Niger Delta militants as a “panacea for peace in the hitherto restive oil-rich Niger Delta…” even though, in fairness, it also expressed some concern over the seemingly open-ended approach to the amnesty.

The Nigerian Tribune, which also opposed any form of dialogue with Boko Haram in its editorial of July 13, 2011, had apparently forgotten its editorial of February 8, 2011 wherein it said “Soldiers and other security agents, even if they are professionally neutral, cannot bring lasting peace to Plateau State. The people of the state must begin an honest search for peace.”

Similarly the Nobel Literature Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka has been vehemently opposed to dialogue with Boko Haram. Yet back in 2001 at the height of the clashes between security forces and the Odua Peoples’ Congress, he petitioned President Obasanjo to condemn what he said were the human right abuses of OPC members and called for dialogue between the organisation and the authorities.

In the light of his high reputation as a champion of human rights, let me crave the indulgence of the reader to quote his petition extensively.

“What,” he said in that petition, “has become apparent and undeniable is a systematic project of decimating this organisation through acts of intimidation, brutalisation and extra-judicial killings. We cannot stand by and watch these murders continue, openly or in secret. The gaols are filled with alleged members of the OPC. We have evidence of their routine ill treatment, and the resolve of the police to continue in their conduct, in full impunity. Much of these atrocities constitute punishable crimes in any decent society. They are being catalogued, and will be answered some day, unless restraint is exercised and the agents of excess called to strict order, and urgently.

“No one advocates violence. State violence is no less reprehensible than the sporadic violence of extreme civil movements in society. An organisation is not condemned by the actions of infiltrators, agent provocateurs, and even the authentic lunatic fringe within a movement.

“There is law in this nation – at least, we are persuaded that we now live in a society organised around the principle of legality. The police are not above the law. The police are certainly not licensed as killers in society. We insist: THESE KILLINGS BY STATE AGENCIES MUST STOP…

“It is time that the OPC be called to dialogue in whatever states they exist, but most especially in Lagos State… If the path of dialogue is rejected and the current project of piecemeal pogrom is pursued, let it be understood that full responsibility lies in the hands of this government and its security agencies.”

At the time of Prof Soyinka’s petition, OPC had clashed violently not only with the police. It had also done so with just about every major ethnic group resident in Yorubaland, all in the name of protecting Yoruba interests. Tell newsmagazine, in its edition of October 30, 2000, accurately captured the organisation’s reputation for violence in its cover story of the four days of mindless killing, maiming and destruction OPC unleashed on Lagos residents from October 15, mostly against so-called Hausa. In a sidebar to the story, the newsmagazine catalogued the organisation’s bloody attacks between July 16, 1999 and October 15, 2000 under the caption “(OPC’s) Trail of Blood.” The description couldn’t have been more apt; the bloody trail included attacks on the Ijaw Egbesu Boys in Ajegunle, Hausas in Sagamu, Ajegunle and Mushin, Igbo traders at Alaba market and even a clash between the Gani Adams and Dr Frederick Fasehun factions of the organisation in Mushin.

The difference, they say, is that Boko Haram, unlike OPC or the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND), is faceless and its goals and demands are irrational. The simple answer to the first excuse is, if Boko Haram seems faceless – and it is not, because the authorities very well know and have occasionally been in contact with several of its leaders, including Imam Abubakar Shekau – it is because it seemed politically convenient for government not to put any face to the sect’s leadership. At least twice it was persuaded to dialogue with government and lay down its arms. Each time someone, obviously an insider, leaked the move to a select media before negotiations had even begun in an apparent attempt to scuttle the talks. Worse, the authorities arrested those the sect sent to begin the talks.

Whatever anyone may think is the difference between Boko Haram and MEND as a beneficiary of amnesty, the fact is that the militants did not come out from the creeks where they operated from until it was clear that late president, Umaru Yar’Adua, was sincere in his commitment to bring an end to the problems of Niger Delta. So far such sincerity in seeking an end to the insurgency in the North has been lacking in President Jonathan’s government and in its security agencies.

As for the argument that the goals and demands of the sect are irrational, there is also the simple answer that however irrational, those goals and demands do not, and cannot, justify the terrible collective punishment the communities in which the sect’s suspected members live have been subjected to all these years. This is the lesson of Justice Lambo Akanbi’s judgment on Odi.

In any case, it is not all of the sect’s demands that are irrational. Its stated objective of Islamising Nigeria through the barrel of the gun is certainly irrational if only because the Qur’an (2:256) itself categorically states “There is no compulsion in religion…” It also says in Chapter 3 Verse 20, “…So if they submit then indeed they follow the right way; and if they turn back, then upon you is only the delivery of the message and Allah sees the servants.” In other words, the word is persuasion not force.

Islamophobes, of course, love to quote Chapter 2 Verse 191 of the Qur’an which says “And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter…” as evidence that Islam is a violent religion. This is simply plain mischief – probably worse; mischief, because the quotation is taken completely out of the context of the verse before it and the two after.

Verse 190 of the chapter says “And fight in the way of Allah with those who fight with you and do not exceed the limits, surely Allah does not love those who exceed the limits.” Verses 192 and 193 respectively say “But if they desist, then surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful” and “…Fight with them until there is no persecution, and religion should be only for Allah, but if they desist, then there should be no hostility except against the oppressors.”

Taken as a whole it is clear from these verses that the Qur’an is against aggression. It admonishes Muslims to fight only in self defence and even then never to exceed the limits. No sane person would disagree that bombing churches, schools, motor parks and media houses, killing and maiming innocent people, etc, as Boko Haram has done, is exceeding Allah’s limits even in self defence.

But other than Boko Haram’s untenable goal of Islamising Nigeria by force, there is nothing irrational in most of its other demands, especially the demand that the security forces stop the abuse of their powers in carrying out their duties to secure peace, law and order in society. This is a demand that has been repeatedly made by Amnesty International and myriads of local human rights organisations, including CLO and CDHR, even as they have rightly condemned Boko Haram terror.

That the country is less secure and less peaceful today than it was four years ago when President Yar’Adua ordered the military invasion of the Maiduguri stronghold of Boko Haram, is proof positive that the preference for the use of force by the authorities almost to the exclusion of other options is a triumph of wishful thinking over the experience of the last four years.

The big lesson of these four years of the failure to crush Boko Haram despite the military occupation of its redoubts is that amnesty for its members has become a doctrine of necessity. On its own, it may not guarantee peace, law and order in the country but without it we are not likely to see an end to the sect’s terror any time soon. Besides, it is not likely to cost the country the leg and arm that amnesty for the Niger Delta militants has cost this country – over N200 billion so far, and counting.

Now that President Jonathan seems to have made his choice, albeit tentatively, between those like Bishop Kukah who support amnesty and those like Sheikh Gumi who oppose it, he will, hopefully, follow it through in good faith and refuse to be deterred by his more gung-ho security chiefs who have consistently failed to deliver on their boasts of crushing Boko Haram.

Predictably, last month’s call for amnesty for Boko Haram by the Sultan of Sokoto and nominal head of Nigerian Muslims, Alhaji Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar, and its initial outright rejection by President Goodluck Jonathan have provoked strong avowals and disavowals. Of all these avowals and disavowals, three have stood out because of the prominence of the religious leaders that have made them and the way they seem to have traded places in their disparate positions.

First was Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, son of the renowned late Sheikh Abubakar Gumi, and himself a leading light of the Izala sect founded by the father. In its lead story of three Wednesdays ago, the up and coming Abuja based Blueprint newspaper exclusively reported him to have dismissed the Sultan’s call as “hypocritical.” This was clearly against the grain of the apparent widespread support in the North and among Muslims for the Sultan’s call.

Boko Haram, said Sheikh Gumi, is an ideology that respects no law, “not even the Qur’an or Hadith or scholarly fatwa.” There is, he said, therefore no basis for dialogue with its adherents, much less granting them any amnesty. “It is,” he avowed, “a creed that must be crushed.”

Two weekends ago, Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, issued an Easter message that couldn’t have disagreed more with Sheikh Gumi’s position. To reject amnesty for the sect, he said, was to operate at the same (disagreeable) level with its adherents. The offer itself, he said, may not solve all our problems, “but it will bring us closer to a new dawn.” Those who have rejected the amnesty, he also said, have focused more on how the issues involved “fit the survivalist instinct of the president and his ruling party.”

The same weekend, Bishop Kukah’s highly respected senior in the Catholic hierarchy, Cardinal John Onaiyekan, the Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, spoke in the same vein in his own Easter message. “The call for amnesty,” he said, “would seem to me quite appropriate and even necessary.” Useful and necessary as the security response has been, he said, it has obviously not been enough on its own.

Overall, the cardinal’s Easter message was more measured and more cautious than the bishop’s but it was the latter’s that received wider media publicity.

This position of the two senior Catholic clergy is obviously at variance with that of the leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) under Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, and possibly with that of the majority of Nigerian Christians. CAN, as we all know, has been vehemently opposed to any form of accommodation with Boko Haram which it has accused of committing genocide against Christians in the North, with at least tacit support of the country’s Muslim leadership.

The position of the cardinal and the bishop, though consistent with the religious doctrine of forgiveness, clearly exposes them to a charge of appeasement. However, from the consistent manner they have stuck to that position in spite of the fact that the Catholic Church, probably more than any other, has borne the brunt of the alleged Boko Haram mass killings of Christians – alleged, because Boko Haram has apparently since become a franchise used by criminals and possibly rogue elements in the security services alike for their own ends – it is obvious that this is a cross that the two are prepared to bear.

In his dissention from the popular Muslim and Northern support for the Sultan’s call for amnesty for Boko Haram, Sheikh Gumi seems to be in total agreement with the country’s authorities. For example, speaking at a seminar in Lagos last Tuesday on “Enhancing Military-Media Relations towards Improved Security” in support of his Commander-in-Chief’s initial rejection of the Sultan’s call, the rather bellicose army chief, Lt. General Azubuike Ihejirika, said in effect that force must remain the principal, if not the only, weapon for fighting Boko Haram.

“There is no country where terrorism has been curbed,” he said, “that force was not applied. There is none in history…I talk so much about force because that is my own line of business. I am to destroy the terrorists, if I am able to find them.” (National Mirror, April 3).

Sheikh Gumi and the authorities may agree on what they believe is the need to crush Boko Haram, but General Ihejirika’s position clearly defines the limit of that agreement. For, whereas both the general and his boss obviously believe they can destroy the sect militarily, the sheikh believes they simply can’t. Their government, he said, lacks the competence and, by killing and terrorising more people than Boko Haram through its Joint Task Force Operations, it also lacks the moral strength to succeed.

His own solution? “A select Muslim high ranking officer, good intelligence, special strike squads (and) genuine cooperation of the civilian population,” he said.

Of the four elements of the sheikh’s formula for the defeat of Boko Haram, most people, I guess, would agree with him on the last three, in so far as they are simple common sense. By the same token, however, hardly would anyone agree with him that “a select Muslim high ranking officer” is necessary for success in the war against Boko Haram.

On the contrary, it is more likely to further divide an already divided military along religious lines and weaken it even more. Indeed with good intelligence and cooperation from the civilian population, it matters little, if at all, what the religious or ethnic affiliation of the field commander – and even of the commander-in-chief – is, so long as both are men of good faith.

The fundamental problem with government’s apparent over-reliance on the use of force in tackling Boko Haram is that it cannot win hearts and minds. General Ihejirika may, as he has said, be in the business of using brute force to solve problems but as he has also acknowledged, albeit with little conviction apparently, brute force alone, or even as the principal weapon, has never solved anybody’s problems. If it did, all terrorists would have since been wiped off the face of the earth given the overwhelming force governments the world over – especially that of America, the world’s self-appointed global police and its only super-power – have deployed, and continue to deploy, against terror organisations.

Every problem requires good intelligence and the cooperation of all and sundry for a viable solution. Above all, every problem requires good faith on the part of all parties involved, but especially on the part of those in authority. None of these three requirements can be secured by relying on brute force only or in the main, especially of the kind deployed in Borno and Yobe states since 2009, following the extrajudicial killings of several leaders, and even many more suspected members, of Boko Haram.

This brute force was similar, perhaps even worse, than that used in the Delta against the region’s militants before they were granted amnesty in June 2009, more specifically the kind of brute force former president, General Olusegun Obasanjo, inflicted on the Odi community in Bayelsa State, President Jonathan’s home state, about 12 years ago; a brute force which Justice Lambo Akanbi strongly condemned in his judgment last month and for which he awarded the community N37.6 billion against the Federal Government as compensation.

There may well have been some politics behind the size of compensation the court’s compensation. But politics or no, it is still legitimate to ask, as The Guardian did in its editorial of March 11 about the judgment, “Why would a government unleash violence on its defenceless citizens in the name of maintaining law and order? Why would such a horrendous havoc be wrecked on a community because of a few bad elements as though there is no single innocent and law abiding citizen in the community who deserves government’s protection?”

Breath of fresh air indeed!

When President Goodluck Jonathan promised during his campaign for the 2011 election that his administration would usher in a “breath of fresh air” into the country, I thought it was no more than one of those empty sloganeering politicians over-indulge in during campaigns. Nothing the administration has done – or not done – since then has proved my scepticism wrong. On the contrary, the degree of insecurity from arbitrary use of power by the authorities and the scale of corruption in the land alone have enveloped the land with so much stink you can barely breathe.

Two days ago, the administration enhanced its reputation for doublespeak when it picked on Leadership newspaper over its exclusive story last week about an alleged presidential directive to its operatives to use all means, fair or foul, to frustrate the emergence of All Progressives Congress as a formidable opposition to the ruling Peoples Democratic Party.

After four of the newspaper’s staff honoured a police invitation for questioning, it released two of them in the night but detained the other two reportedly with instructions from “the oga at the top” to keep them incommunicado until they reveal the source of their story and of the documentary proof which they published to back their story.

This is outright Gestapo style out of the book of Hitler’s Germany. Some “breath of fresh air” indeed! The other two were released yesterday night.