The Boko Haram Threat …Whither Nigeria’s Intelligence Network

After series of senseless killings in Bauchi and Borno States, and an attempt to blow-up the Police Headquarters in Abuja, early this year, in which scores were maimed and not less than eight lives lost, the notorious Islamic fundamentalist group the Boko Haram sect, last week Friday, stretched their terrorist exploits beyond unimaginable limits. The United Nations office in Abuja became a target.

That came at a time when Nigerians were busy debating whether or not the group’s members deserve amnesty, and when committed Islamic faithfuls were observing one of Islam’s most sacred moments, the Ramadan.

As in previous attacks, the recent attempt targeted not just a humanitarian establishment of global renown, but indeed innocent men, women and children, a terrorist pass-time that spoke volumes of the level of moral depravity and indeed degeneration the Boko Haram sect truly exemplifies.

Sadly, more than one year after this very dangerous culture started playing-out in the criminal magnitude as experienced today, it is indeed disturbing, regrettable and very questionable that the nation’s Intelligence community not merely appears helpless, there is yet no meaningful success in trailing the masterminds of those behind the dastardly acts and their sponsors.

Equally worrisome, is the fact that even when a pocket of such suspects was arrested and detained in a security facility in Bauchi, they escaped, allegedly with the connivance of senior military officers, who we later heard, were facing court marshal in line with military protocol.

Nearly one month after, not only is little or nothing heard of that military trial, the Boko Haram sect is becoming even more and more brazen in their attacks in a manner that betrays the existence of very influential backers.

Often reluctant to tie events of this kind to some of the many African adages, considered to be wise sayings, I have repeatedly resisted the strong urge to join the bandwagon and ask: “If the owl cried last night and the baby dies today who killed the baby? So, I wont.

Even so, it must be noted that no measure of criminality thrives as the Boko Haram’s has, without influential backers and financiers, as globally witnessed in the Al Qaeda saga, when slain terror master-mind, Osama Bin Laden held sway.

Today, suicide bombers, heard of and despised by Nigerians, in distant lands, are gradually becoming common place, with none offering any useful lead as to what the ideological peg to the criminality might be.

The much the world knows of suicide bombing, is the criminal act of targeting highly populated public places, killing innocent citizens and destroying historical places as a means of getting public attention to a given course.

In such exercises, the bomber is often believed to be materially compensated through family, siblings and other loved ones before he offers his life, content that he would enjoy eternal bliss, having died for a noble course.

Here, what can we say is the cause that the Boko Haram sect is pursuing before slaving to see whether such is noble or not? The little known of Boko Haram’s worry is that it detests Western education, the same weapon of modern civilisation that most of the group’s leaders enjoyed. Another, is the imposition of Sharia in all Northern States of the Federation, and if possible, the whole country, a tall-order that negates the secular nature of the nation’s constitution.

Could that be the reason churches in Jos and elsewhere were initially targeted? What then explains the bombing of markets which Moslems and Christians alike patronise? Now, with these unlikely variables carefully eliminated, what remains is the political perspective which appears to have been ignored for far too long except when, following the independence-day,  Abuja bombings, former Military President Ibrahim Babangida’s campaign leadership was briefly fingered and let go, afterwards.

Viewed critically, there is an ample need to properly investigate some key Northern leaders who at various times threatened to make the country ungovernable, should President Goodluck Jonathan pick the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP’s) ticket to run the April 2011 general elections, instead of leaving same exclusively to the North.

In a publication in this column, Monday, October 25, 2010 titled, No,  To Divided Nigeria (Again, Addressing Ciroma’s Threats) I virtually begged Mallam Adamu Ciroma and his co-travellers, under the aegis of Northern Elders Forum, to check their vexatious vituperations that are capable of dividing the nation along North-South lines.

That would not be my first and from all indications, not the last time as I quickly then recalled, “only last week (Sept 28, 2010), Mallam Ciroma, in an obviously sponsored news report repeated his earlier annoying warning that should President Goodluck Jonathan continue with his presidential election bid, picks the PDP ticket and eventually wins the election, he would see a Nigeria that would be too ungovernable”.(Emphasis mine).

Jonathan not merely ignored the warning, he contested and won the elections overwhelmingly, and even garnered more votes across the Nation, including the Northern part of the country, meaning that the Northern Elders Forum was speaking for themselves – the political elite, as usual and not the ordinary Northerners who were obviously also tired of the same recycled faces as IBB, Buhari and Atiku.

Could the on-going security breaches and senseless killings in parts of the North be the punishment for Jonathan’s ‘disobedience’ and by extension the fulfillment of Ciroma’s promise of making Nigeria ungovernable?

Ciroma was not alone. Last year, former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory Mallam Nasir el-Rufai was the first to urge Jonathan to join the presidential race, and days later went on to berate former Military Head of State, Major General Mohammadu Buhari as impatient with the truth.

But shortly after Jonathan’s eventual electoral victory, the same el-Rufai was quoted as saying that Buhari would have been the best president for Nigeria, with a warning that the country would crumble under Jonathan’s feet as President. Isn’t this a pattern? Or was el- Rufai cajoled into that double-speak on account of the seemingly sponsored uprising in parts of the North after the elections?

How far has the country’s intelligence community gone investigating the various leads that beg for attention? How long will the various security organs remain helpless, while innocent Nigerians are daily slaughtered like Sallah rams? Or, are we to accept that Police success in investigating crimes cannot be extended to the Boko Haram onslaught?

Only recently, all well-meaning Nigerians stood up in celebration of Police arrest of those behind the kidnap of Pa Michael Obi, father of Nigerian soccer International and English Premiership side, Cheslea’s mid-fielder, Mikel Obi. The speed of the investigation, the rescue of the captive and the capture of the culprits by the Police gave Nigerians a good reason to believe that all hope was not lost in the fight against the level of criminality daily unleashed on the country. What is wrong in that direction?

I ask because the acts of terrorism daily unleashed on the Nigerian state by the Boko Haram terror gang has assumed such a frightening dimension that clearly challenges the capability of the country’s security. Yesterday, it was the Police Headquarters, today it is the UN office, where will it be tomorrow?

President Jonathan should do more than convoking regular  meetings with the various heads of the security concerns and instead order that the fight be taken to the terrorists’ safe havens. Yes, it is true that guerrilla warfare of the fledging type is not an easy task to contain, especially in areas where terrorism is a way of life, and suicide bombings a religious pass-time, hence the need to do every thing now before Nigeria degenerates to the ilk of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Whatever is required to help the Nigerian security forces to achieve this must be done now, not later, because the multiplier-effect of failure to act fast can better be imagined than seen.

But I have a worry. Rather than condemn the terror attacks and suggest ways of checking further killings, two of Nigeria’s most revered retired generals and former Presidents, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and Ibrahim Babangida have been busy bandying words as market women would, on a bad market day.

Beyond that and for good reasons, all Northern leaders must also rise-up now and join forces with the Federal Government to fight the new kind of terrorism being witnessed in the land, if indeed, they are patriotic and innocent of the allegation many Nigerians fear to voice –complicity.

My Agony is that even some sect members mistakenly caught by the Joint Task Force (JTF) were quickly freed in very questionable circumstances, with little or nothing known as to why, and  how or by whom.

The truth must be told. Now is the time to keep Nigeria one, and One we shall remain, because that has always been the duty of all Nigerian leaders. Therefore, any threat to that, no matter by whom, should be crushed by the Commander-in-Chief. That, is Jonathan’s mandate.