Boko Haram: Security Implications Of America’s Intervention —Lajuwon Lasisi

The other time, a Greek Gift of unserviceable Navy warship was launched in Lagos with pumps and pageantry after Nigeria had coughed out $8 million to rehabilitate the 40 years old naval vessel. Do we call this a rehabilitated Greek gift?

Nevertheless, Nigeria should think twice before asking America to help on Boko Haram. An adage says “The old chicken always takes cover whenever it sights the coming of a hawk because of the previous bitter encounter with it”. America went to Iraq to capture the maximum dictator, Saddam Hussein in 2001. Saddam was defeated and picked up from a hole covered by cobwebs. This military adventure led to war of attrition between the Sunnis and the Shites, with the help of Al-Qaeda group, the Sunnis became very consistent in suicide bombing of targets in Shites’ neighbourhoods in Baghdad and other cities in Iraq. In fact for good 10 years that American troops operated as peace keeping force, before pulling out last year, the intelligent secret service of FBI failed to find a clue and solution to the suicide bombing in Baghdad and other cities. By the time American security outfits left last year, the sect had intensified the suicide bombing with heavy casualties anytime they struck.

Bombings also continue in Pakistan and Afghanistan up till today without any concrete solution to curbing it by the American troops and its intelligence services. Therefore, America cannot solve our own form of Al-Qaeda terrorism. It is our own internal affairs problem like the other countries earlier mentioned. America can give useful advice, but we should be prepared to solve the Boko Haram problem ourselves.

Don’t forget that it took America many years before the head of Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, who was instrumental to the destruction of the World Trade Centre in New York, was killed in a building, very close to a military school in Pakistan.

America has never experienced an internal war of attrition, like the one Nigeria is passing through today. Hence, she is deficient in the capacity and capability of essentials to gather intelligence among different ethnic tribes in the affected areas of the North, who are not ready to divulge facts about Boko Haram to foreigners because of fear and uncertainty of the aftermath of their action. America can only give Nigeria, professional advice to complement/supplement her physical presence in Borno and other volatile states in the north.

The only country Nigeria can call for such difficult assignment is the state of Israel. This is a state established in 1947 by United Nations Organisation, sustained by war in 1948, and continued to be sustained by other intermittent warfare in 1967, 1973, and series of guerilla warfare waged by militant wings of Palestine against the nation of Israel. And since 1947, the nation has been in a state of war. It has also developed the most powerful secret service, called MOSSAD in the world. Every Israeli citizen is security conscious. And these are the crop of people that populated MOSSAD. If America had known (and which she knows) she should have given the job of fishing out Osama to Israeli MOSSAD which would have captured him alive and taken him to Washington DC. within some months. In addition, an Israeli special squad went to Iran and lifted a newly constructed Nuclear Reactor to Israel without a hitch. With all these antecedents, and other breathtaking feats, Israel is qualified to be invited to help stamp out Boko Haram from our midst.

However, we presume Nigerian problem of Boko Haram needs no external interference because we all know that it is a creation of certain powers that be. Like a Yoruba adage, which says: “The water insects that dance on the surface of water have their drummers playing for them under the water”, the Boko Haram is being sponsored by a cabal of politicians who have resolved, that if they are not allowed to rule the country, they would make Nigeria ungovernable for Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. The facts are unfolding, former governor Shekarau has been interrogated, others would be interrogated for the same purpose. Boko Haram has come up with certain unacceptable demands, which should be regarded as nullity, for the nation. Nigeria cannot be ruled by sharia law because it is a secular state. The limited Islamic education is not the best equation or alternative to western education. All Islamic states in North Africa, Middle East, Singapore, etc. embrace western education! Western education has been in existence since the colonial days, and there is no way of replacing it with limited education.

Besides the bombing of Christians in the churches, the last straw that broke the camel back, is the order given to the southerners to move back to their states of origin. And since Boko Haram always carry out their threat on any pronouncement, the southerners have started returning home for security reasons, because the fear of Boko Haram is the beginning of wisdom.

The northern governors met sometime ago to allay the fears of the southerners and stop them from leaving the north, because, according to them, they were in control of the situation. However, we suppose, the affected southerners would not listen to them because Boko Haram are the ones really in control and they are killing their neighbours in their states with impunity, without the governors and leaders doing anything. The meeting held on Boko Haram by northern elders recently in Abuja, where former president Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida made a speech to conclude that the north was ready to go to war in order to preserve Nigeria as an entity, was meaningless. All these proclamations of the northern governors and elders should be regarded as Fulani Diplomacy. They know why the Boko Haram sect was armed. If you listen to the trend of their pronouncements, you are bound to notice their seeming helplessness in taking any needed drastic action against the terrorist sect. Even the appeals being made by the governors of the affected states were defensive in nature.

On 3 January the Emirs and northern elders issued a communiqué, asking for state pardon for a murderer, Al-Mustapha, and release of Commissioner of Police Zakari Biu who made sure that Kabiru Sokoto, the mastermind of the Christmas Day bombing of St. Theresa’s Catholic Church in Madalla, escaped. (He was rearrested last week). I believe, you are following the unfolding events so as to be a better judge. That reminds us of the killing of 10 youth corps members in Bauchi State, and the reaction of Governor Yuguda to that atrocious extermination of our leaders of tomorrow. Instead of showing genuine and unalloyed empathy for the departed souls, as a well educated governor, the only analogy he could remember was his experience during the student/police crisis at Ibadan University, where he escaped death. What relationship does this have with the murder or execution of the 10 youth corps members in cold blood by Boko Haram? Therefore, all the apologies of the northern elders, Emirs, and governors, are just crocodile tears of deception. They know where they are heading to. After all, they are born to rule Nigeria forever, or the country could go to blazes. When Major Al-Mustapha and his accessory, Mr. Sofolahan, were sentenced to death by hanging on 30 January, 2012, the Boko Haram issued a warning to the government, that if Al-Mustapha should be hanged, they would extend their holocaust of attacks to the judiciary. And whenever they issue a threat, they normally carry out the threat. That is to tell you that they are government themselves, whose orders have to be obeyed.

You can now assess accurately the threat of those northern leaders, who promised Jonathan that they would make the country ungovernable if a northerner was not allowed to form government on 29 May 2011.

Nevertheless, Nigeria has 3 options to follow if it were to remain as an entity:

1. State police should be established in the 36 states to complement the effort of Federal Police in detecting crimes and fishing out the Boko Haram members in the affected states;

2. The northern governors, emirs and elders, should disband the weapon of mass destruction, created by their unguarded speeches and actions to save Nigeria from disintegration; and

3. The national sovereign conference, which some wise men have been clamouring for since 1999, when Obasanjo became president, should be convened now by President Jonathan, as a forum to iron out our differences, and to deliberate assiduously, on whether or not we should continue to live together as a nation.

•Lasisi wrote from Lagos