It is instructive that Boko Haram, the Islamic fundamentalist
group, has finally declared war on Christians living in the northern part of
Nigeria with yesterday’s ultimatum giving them and Southerners living in
the north three days to quit the region.
Reacting to the declaration of emergency rule in parts of
the north where their activities has been very catastrophic in the last months,
Abdul Qaqa, a self-acclaimed spokesman of the group, said "…we are also
giving a three-day ultimatum to the southerners living in the northern part of
Nigeria to move away."
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| Nigerian Police chief, Hafiz Ringim |
"We wish to call on our fellow Muslims to come back to
the north because we have evidence that they would be attacked.” Apparently in
the thinking of this group, the sizeable number of Christians of northern origin do not simply exist. Every Christian is a southerner and every Muslim is a northerner. This, obviously, is unfortunate.
The new approach of Boko Haram is a tacit call for the
dismemberment of the entity called Nigeria. Besides, it strikes a resemblance
to the Nazi-style isolation strategy used against the Jews in the Hitler-era
Germany. During this time, Jews in
Europe were subjected to progressively harsh persecution that ultimately led to
the murder of six million Jews (1.5 million of these being children) and the
destruction of 5,000 Jewish communities.
These deaths represented two-thirds of European Jewry and
one-third of world Jewry. The Jews who died were not casualties of the fighting
that ravaged Europe during World War II. Rather, they were the victims of Hitler's
deliberate and systematic attempt to annihilate the entire Jewish population of
Europe, a plan Hitler called the “Final Solution” (Endlosung).
Obviously, when you kill people who’ve done nothing to you,
you naturally expect reprisal. Since it’s not coming, Boko Haram keeps doing
more harm to call it forth. But there are questions: do we go so far with them;
do we allow genocide, religious/ethnic cleansing? Do we fold our arms until it
happens?
Like I stated in my last posting, one of the most crucial
challenge confronting the government of Nigeria today is to fish out the
elements behind the Boko Haram. If the
bomb throwers and suicide bombers as is widely held are a bunch of unemployed
youths, then some financiers must be providing the financial and logistic support
that enables them to operate. Our
military intelligence must fish these sponsors out and treat them as sponsors
of terrorism.
The Nigerian Police authorities have as usual dismissed the
Boko Haram threat as baseless and an act designed just to create panic. The
Deputy Force Public Relations Officer, Yemi Ajayi, while describing the threat
as “empty and calculated efforts to create fears into the people”, noted that “the
Federal Government has done enough to protect the lives and properties of the
people in this part of the country regardless of their tribe and religion.”
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| Governor Obi of Anambra (right) receiving the corpse of Agnes |
Past experiences have made Nigerians cynical when they hear
such statements from state agents, particularly the police. During the last crisis in Bauchi, corps
members who run into police stations to seek refuge were butchered by the
hoodlums. Agnes Ezennadozie, a pregnant
corps member, who was one of those to run into a police station, was killed by
the mobs with her unborn baby.
“She called me and said ‘Honey, it’s like a riot is taking
place’,” recalled her husband, barely holding back tears. “I asked her how safe
she was and she said they were at a police station. Later, she called to say
the hoodlums were surrounding the station and I told her to run from there. As
we were talking, I heard a scream and then nothing,” he added. (
As one conflict expert noted in an article on Boko Haram,
those calling for government dialogue with the group, “don’t understand the
techniques of timing in the management of conflicts. You dialogue only when the ears are open.”
Suffice to conclude with the thoughts of this expert: “Hope now is on what the Joint military Task Force
(JTF) would do. If they succeed, Nigeria will manage on; if they fail, there’ll
be no restraint to the killing of Christians in the north powered by frightened
northern elite.”
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