Even for a city that must have gotten used to terrorist attacks since the Boko Haram sect took up arms against Nigeria, last Friday’s multiple suicide bombing and machine gun attack on worshippers at Kano’s famous Grand Mosque next to the Emir’s Palace, must have come as a most devastating shock to many Nigerians. So far between 50 and over 100 people are said to have been killed in the attack. Many more have been injured, several of them critically.
The Grand Mosque attack, which bears the hallmark of Boko Haram, was hardly the most daring. Certainly it was not as daring as the almost simultaneous terror attack on no less than 12 far-flung targets in the city which occurred on January 20, 2012 and in which over 150 lives were reportedly lost.
The Friday attack was even less daring than that by armed men riding motorcycles on the motorcade of the late Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero, exactly a year to the month of the 2012 multiple attack on the city and which was apparently aimed at assassinating the then elderly emir. The attackers failed in their objective but they succeeded in killing four people including the Emir’s driver and two of his bodyguards, one of whom tried to shield the emir from the gunshots. Several more were wounded.
What has made the Friday attack shocking even if less daring than at least the two in question, was its vicinity, so sacred and close to the Emir’s palace, and its timing, so soon after the new Emir, Malam Muhammadu Sanusi, called on Muslims during a Friday sermon in the same Mosque to rise up and defend themselves against terrorism in the face of the apparent failure of the security forces to deal with Boko Haram’s insurgency.
“These people,” he reportedly said during the sermon earlier this month, “when they attack towns, they kill boys and enslave girls … People must stand resolute. They should acquire what they can to defend themselves. People must not wait for soldiers to protect them.”
If the Emir was quoted correctly, it was an unwise thing for him to have said because, given Boko Haram’s past response to such threats , it was like waiving a red flag before a bull. Actually, worse; with a bull you knew what you were dealing with, whereas with the Boko Haram phenomenon, no one knows for sure, at least not anymore.
No doubt Boko Haram terror is real. But then so also has been its manipulation by politicians and even religious leaders for selfish considerations and self aggrandisement. And, far-fetched as it may seem, it is not so outrageous to suspect our security outfits of being more interested in manipulating it for regime security than in helping to bring it to an end.
The reader may recall that not long ago our Directorate of State Security (DSS) stirred a minor media controversy when, without any concrete evidence it seemed, its boss wrote a memo to President Goodluck Jonathan accusing the outspoken Colonel Dangiwa Umar, Rtd, of being a sponsor of Boko Haram. The retired colonel escaped censor only because he enjoyed the rare privilege of being close enough to the presidency to have an opportunity to defend himself, which he apparently did successfully. At least he was never detained, much less tried.
When the Emir of Kano called on Muslims to rise and defend themselves against Boko Haram, it was not only like waiving a red flag before a bull. It was also like asking people to help themselves to justice.
Last Friday, the worshippers at the Grand Mosque did just that when they overpowered the machine gun wielding attackers and, instead of handing them over to the authorities, lynched them to death. That may have satisfied the public’s desire for instant justice but it also foreclosed any hope that the attackers could have helped to unearth those behind the attack.
Unhelpful as it was, however, the lynching was a manifestation of widespread public disenchantment at the capacity and the willingness of the authorities to end the Boko Haram insurgency. This disenchantment is bound to be reinforced by the way the case of Aminu Sadiq Ogwuche, the alleged mastermind of the Nyanya Motor Park bombing in Abuja, was discharged by the Federal High Court in Abuja on November 24 for “lack of diligent prosecution.” Since then the Nigeria Police and the SSS have engaged each other in an embarrassing blame game over the bungling.
The authorities and their sympathisers have often argued that Boko Haram was, and remains, a manifestation of the statement by senior opposition elements that they would make the country ungovernable over their loss of the 2011 presidential elections. However, logical as the argument sounds, it conveniently overlooks the fact that the sect’s violence predated the current administration. It also ignores the fact that members of the sect have absolutely no respect for anyone who does not share their ideology.
More significantly, the argument ignores the fact that it is the prerogative of those in power to use all the resources at their disposal to expose and punish anyone who seeks to undermine the State and it is therefore a copout to blame the opposition for the failure of those in authority to do their job properly. So far they have woefully failed to do so in bringing an end to the Boko Haram insurgency.
Instead they and their sympathisers have resorted to blaming a section of this country’s leadership, both secular and cleric, of not speaking out loud enough in condemnation of the sect. This, to begin with, is of course not true. Long before the Emir of Kano spoke up against the Boko Haram terror, many leading secular and religious leaders had spoken up against it. Many, including the famous Sheikh Ja’afar, the benefactor of Boko Haram’s founder, Muhammadu Yusuf, who later fell out with his religious godson over what he said was his wayward philosophy, have paid with their lives.
But even if it is true that some leaders have not spoken out loud enough against Boko Haram, of what use have all the loud condemnations of the sect been beyond creating a show of sympathy? At any rate how can mere condemnations be a substitute for having a credible policy for dealing with the violence?
When President Jonathan spoke last September at the High Level Meeting of the United Nations Security Council in New York on the issue of global terrorism, he highlighted the terrible cost Boko Harm has exacted from our country. “The costs,” he said, “are high: over 13,000 people have been killed, whole communities razed, and hundreds of persons kidnapped, the most prominent being the mindless kidnap of our innocent daughters from Chibok Secondary School, in North East Nigeria.”
In his short and eloquent speech he listed what his government had done to deal with the insurgency. These, he said, were his Presidential Initiative for the North-East (PINE) aimed at providing immediate relief for victims of the insurgency and “fast-tracking infrastructural development in the region”, the $ 1 billion Victims Support Fund, which he said had already raised half the target sum, and his administration’s support for the Safe School Initiative, a project of Mr Gordon Brown, a former British Prime Minister.
Clearly missing from his list was any mention of his administration’s policy of engagement with the real Boko Haram to negotiate an end to the insurgency. He mentioned none because he had none since the man himself has repeatedly said the sect lacked the faces and names to engage with.
Suddenly in October the authorities announced to the world that they had discovered faces and names behind the sect to negotiate with and had indeed agreed to a truce. Coming at a time when the sect seemed to have progressed from guerrilla tactics to seizing and holding territory, the announcement looked like a bit of a stretch. Still most people were willing to believe it because it offered a huge relief to a public so hungry for peace and security in the land.
Sadly the relief turned out to be short-lived when Boko Haram announced on November 1, that it never agreed to any seize fire with anyone. So instead of relief the announcement began to elicit widespread cynicism about its motive; the President, it seemed, needed a big “October Surprise” as he prepared to formally announce his worst kept secret – his decision all along to seek re-election next year.
Since the failed October Surprise, Boko Haram has escalated its terror and hardly a week has passed without news of its bombings and seizing of territories. Last Friday’s Kano Grand Mosque attack was merely the most shocking in recent months.
Predictably the President has asked the National Assembly to renew his emergency powers for the third time since May 2013 to deal with the situation. The National Assembly seems reluctant to do so for the good reason that the state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States, has only made matters worse instead of better. Besides, the extension is bound to spill over into next year’s elections.
Even then a renewal seems inevitable if only because, bad as things are at the moment, it is not difficult to imagine how they can get a lot worse without the state of emergency.
As a friend of the Jonathan presidency, Col Umar has been pleading with the National Assembly to oblige the president. In a recent interview in The Guardian (November 29), in which he made the plea, he said “We cannot afford to politicize the problem.”
The retired colonel couldn’t be more right. The problem with his plea, however, is that he seems to have directed it away from the greatest culprit – the Jonathan presidency – in the politicization and manipulation of Boko Haram for narrow objectives.
