‘Nigeria Factor’ has delayed taking decisive against Boko Haram
At the beginning of the Boko Haram menace, it was not too difficult to foresee what we now have: emergency declaration in three of the states that had given birth to the country’s most lethal terrorist group. If it had not been for the prevalence of the Nigeria Factor, we might not have gone this far before reading the riot act to a group that must have set out to destroy the federation.
As a hydra-headed concept, the Nigeria factor has always included a belief in the capacity of the average Nigerian or Nigerian institution to escape the laws of physics, the type of belief that makes it normal to hope that problems may go away on their own or that problems can get solved by talking them to death or praying them out of existence. Sometimes, the factor encourages us to feel that money can be used to solve all problems. In all cases, the tendency grows among the ruling elite and many of the people they rule that the symptom of a problem is synonymous with the root cause of such problem. In the end, applying the Nigeria factor always succeed in changing the form of (rather than solving) the problem to which it is applied.
When the seed of what became Boko Haram mentality was sown in the first term of Obasanjo’s post-military presidency, we looked away from the issue. When some northern governors declared their states as Sharia states, President Obasanjo ignored them, saying that the decision was a political fad that was destined to fizzle out with time. Some pundits observed then that the decision was to make governance difficult for Obasanjo while others pointed out that the decision of northern governors to declare their states Sharia units was dangerous for the federation and its commitment to secular government. Obasanjo could not be bothered; he continued with his international travels that he thought would clean up the image of Nigeria that was sullied during Abacha’s brutal dictatorship, and the rest is history.
Then came the militancy of youths in the Niger Delta. The root cause of the militancy was the injustice in allocation of revenue from petroleum and gas. Niger Delta youths, who believed that the region was the victim of the country’s only extractive business, called for restoration of the principle of revenue by derivation that was part of the constitution upon which Nigeria agreed to be one country at independence in 1960. Obasanjo looked away from the cause of the problem. He was quick to attack Odi which he saw as the community that hosted the killing by Niger Delta militants of law enforcement officers. Consequently, media attention shifted to the sack of Odi and not the cause of the violence by Niger Delta militants.Obasanjo called a political reforms conference that also avoided paying adequate attention to the grouse of the Niger Delta militants, particularly their demand for adequate compensation for the destruction of the region’s ecosystem by oil exploration and exploitation, and the rest is history.
Furthermore, killings of Beroms and other groups in Plateau State came to national attention during Obasanjo’s rule. But the government looked away from addressing the cause of the killings that had since become a part of the culture of Plateau State. Suddenly, the federal government declared a state of emergency in Plateau State for six months, but the situation remained the same, even up till today. This was despite calls on the federal government by citizens committed to a federal republic to focus on the root of inter-ethnic violence in a multiethnic federation. Nothing changed and history rolled on inexorably.
In the era of UmaruYar’Adua, there was a resurgence of militancy in the Niger Delta. Yar’Adua responded to this with amnesty. Militants were given money in exchange for their weapons and their passion for justice in the allocation of revenue to a region that has been de-natured by decades of petroleum exploitation and gas flaring. Again, the focus was on the symptom, not the cause, as the Yar’Adua government created, in addition to amnesty, federal agencies to bring development to the Niger Delta, and it appears that the rest is also history.
After Goodluck Jonathan became president, despite the controversy over PDP’s rotation agreement that the presidency was still to go to the North after Jonathan completed the term of UmaruYar’Adua, a new group, Boko Haram surfaced. The popular or forced belief was that the group was conceived to make the country ungovernable for the president who had prevented the North from moving power back from the south to the north. Pundit’s insistence that the worldview advertised by Boko Haram was too dangerous for a federation of plural cultures was largely ignored. But whenBoko Haram became very violent and lingered longer than most people had expected, new theories about how to deal with the country’s most violent terrorist sect emerged, one after the other.
First was the theory that Boko Haram was restricted to the Northeast where it was born and would evaporate with time. Next was the view that President Jonathan was treating the Islamic terrorists with soft hands. General Obasanjo called for more stick than carrot as the best way to end the menace, reminding the nation of his own style of intervention in Odi. Shortly after, the former chairman of the board of trustees of President Jonathan’s party called again for more carrot or dialogue.
Then came the call by modern and traditional rulers for amnesty. The whole country was encouraged to swallow any pride and beg the terrorists to abandon their worldview, in exchange for money and promise to bring more development to the North. Northern leaders in particular brushed aside calls for a country-wide dialogue or conference to discuss the issues of Boko Haram’s worldview and demands along with those of other nationality and religious groups in the country. Boko Haram waxed stronger by the day. Warnings from international friends of Nigeria about Boko Haram not being just a local group to solve a local problem were also eclipsed by strident calls for amnesty. The result is that we are now at the stage in which President Jonathan believes that the country’s sovereignty has been divided, some left to him and his legislature, and some being seized by Boko Haram terrorist group.
Finally, an emergency has been declared in three of many more Boko Haram states. What if the military with additional powers given to it by the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces succeeds in keeping Boko Haram quiet? Would that be the end of the interrogation of Nigeria’s multicultural federation that has been at the center of Boko Haram’s agenda to turn Nigeria into a Sharia country and outlaw western civilization, the source of Nigeria as a country?
