Those Kano Killings …If Kwankwaso Had Learnt Early

On Monday, September 5, 2011, this Column felt a compelling need to admonish Kano State Governor, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso over his calls for immediate release of Boko Haram suspects in police custody, for their alleged involvement in the bombing of the United Nations (UN) House in Abuja, a fortnight earlier. That terror attack had left 23 killed, and 81 people injured, among them defenceless men, women and children.

Being the first such attack on a humanitarian organization of global renown on Nigerian soil, the unfortunate incident naturally evoked uncommon passion, empathy, and indeed, grief among all well-meaning people here in Nigeria and abroad.

Among those who condemned the terror attack was the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III. He described it as an abominable act in Islam, ‘especially in the month of Ramadan’ when Moslems seek the face of Allah in piety, self-deprivation and prayers for peace, forgiveness and love.

In an emotion-laden Sallah message to the Muslim Ummah, in his palace in Sokoto, in commemoration of the Eid el-Fitri, the monarch urged Islamist terrorists to fear God and desist from their nefarious acts, as they negated the true tenets of Islam. While commiserating with families who lost dear ones to the bombings in Abuja and in Jos days earlier, the monarch urged true Moslems to unite against the evil which the Boko Haram represented to Nigeria’s own democracy and unity.

It was at such a time, that Governor Kwankwaso was busy calling for the immediate release of Boko Haram suspects. This column was curious for several reasons.

In 2007, some suspects, including Mamman Nur, one of those declared wanted over the Abuja bombing, were arrested by security operatives but were quickly released because of similar Kwankwaso’s calls. Interestingly, the car used for the August 26, 2011 UN House bombing was registered in the same area of Kano State where the terror suspects had been arrested and quickly released in 2007.

That we felt should have worried the Kano State governor and given him a hint that danger might be brewing under his nose. Instead, the governor felt a more compelling need to pursue immediate release of suspected Boko Haram members.

Specifically, the governor urged security agencies to release members of the Yusfiyya Movement, notoriously known as Boko Haram along with other members of Jihading religious groups, who were in detention for any reason whatsoever.

In an ominous attempt to pledge his love for and undying loyalty to Boko Haram, Kwankwaso went the extra mile to explain, ‘at no time did the state government ever authorise any security agency to arrest or detain any member of Boko Haram or of any religious sect, for that matter.

That position showed a state governor who could not be depended upon to investigate, using the police and other security officers, arrest and charge to court any member of the Boko Haram sect, in spite of emerging facts that point to Kano, his own state, as a first shop of test in efforts to combat terrorism in Nigeria, because of the cosmopolitan nature of the commercial city and is imminent targets – Christians and non-Hausa-Fulani, including Igbo traders. That kind of disposition, for a chief security officer of a state within the federation, appeared very worrisome.

Could it be that Kwankwaso did not listen to the Sultan of Sokoto, the undisputed head of the Supreme Islamic Council of Nigeria? But if he did, was he simply being Moslem than the Sultan? Or could his action have been a veiled submission to the self-preservative theory of courting the love of one’s assailants in order to live, at the risk of others’ lives?

This Column then cautioned: “Kwankwaso might think that he enjoys the friendship of the extremist Islamist sect. But his is instead that of one living in a fool’s paradise, an allusion of grandeur which, in the long run, will make regret one too late”.

Intrinsically, bombs thrown in a market place spares none, either Moslems or Christians. If Kwankwaso and family, due to their privileged positions don’t make it to the market place or any other busy public place, at least, one close to them could, if not at the time of the UN House bombing, of which he showed no respect to the dead, some day, someone could.

Just as feared, Kano, Governor Kwankwaso’s homestead became a battle ground penultimate Friday, a worship day for devoted Moslems and left in its trail 185 dead. The same Boko Haram, the governor loved to defend whole-heartedly has since claimed responsibility for the attacks on security houses and Christians.

Those deaths are most painful and we share the pains of families who lost loved ones to that senseless bloodletting in the name of religious cleansing by a faceless, misguided and demonic cowards obviously emboldened by the silence of thorn-coats like Kwankwaso, who speak from both sides of their mouths.

If Kwankwaso had learnt a lesson or two from the security concerns of Jos, Abuja and Bauchi, among others, and not spent useful time defending terror suspects and creating a safe-haven for Boko Haram in his state, the 185 dead might have lived.

Yes, Boko Haram members may claim to be Moslems or truly are, but do their dangerous activities, of mass murders, destruction of property and senseless bloodletting, at peace time, reflect the true nature of Islam? Do they symbolize the true nature of Allah, which true believers know as love? Will the Boko Haram’s activities attract converts to the faith or force all others to generalize that Islam, as a religion, is a violent one.

These were considerations that seemed to have meant nothing to the governor and there are no positive signals that he would any time soon.

That is why, as we canvassed last year, the governor must earn our sympathy and understanding because he perhaps required the friendship of the Boko Haram sect, to, not merely serve out his term as governor but to live and enjoy the spoils of his political voyage ever after.

In that circumstance, shouldn’t the next plausible option left be to persuade him out of Government House, since, by his choice of friendship with Boko Haram, he has inadvertently chosen to become a sworn-enemy of the state? Shouldn’t Nigeria respect Kwankwaso’s choice for protection of terrorists instead of his own state and nation?

Problem is, there is no telling if the embattled Kano governor is alone in sympathy with the Boko Haram or there are many more of the governor, either out of fear or genuine acceptance of the warped ideals which the group represents, have been weighing the options. Or is it a tacit demonstration of support for the predicted division of Nigeria along religious lines, by the year 2015?

In the case of Kwankwaso, it could also be a way of insisting on the respect for the rule of law and our criminal code which presumes even a self-confessed criminal as innocent until and unless found otherwise by a competent court of jurisdiction. After all, Nigeria operates the accusatorial process of prosecution as against its inquisitorial opposite.

The governor may have a point there, but shouldn’t he be informed enough to know that in times of war, like the country’s against terror launched by Boko Haram, some of such rights could be sacrificed to ensure thorough investigation, for society to know peace? Without such arrest, detention and systemic interrogation of such high profile suspects, how can Nigeria successfully fight the common threat to Nigeria’s’ civilisation, secularity, and indeed, democracy?

These are the considerations that should occupy the consciousness of the Northern elite and men in power like Governor Kwankwaso and not support Nigeria by day and sympathise with terrorists at night, under the cover that they are fellow Moslems.

Unfortunately, the one man that takes all the blames of failure is President Goodluck Jonathan, even if, as governors, Kwankwaso and his ilk also enjoy security votes that by law are never accounted for.

My Agony is that the Constitution does not empower President Jonathan to suspend indefinitely, such ill-equipped states’ chief security officers as easily as would a governor, local government chairmen.

This is Kwankwaso’s saving grace and an embattled president’s dilemma.

This is why for the reasoning of the likes of Kwankwaso, it needs to be said even for the umpteenth time that crime is a contagion which main incentive is the leverage of dodging the appropriate punishment.

If they had known that “every unpunished delinquencies has a family of delinquencies”, as warned by Herbert Spencer in his postscript  to The Study of Sociology, perhaps, the Kano State governor and his co-travellers would have insisted on ‘exact justice’, for felons in 2007,which in the reckoning of James Russel Lowell, in Among My Books: Dante, ‘is commonly more merciful in the long run than pity, for it tends to foster in men those stronger qualities which make them good citizens’, but what Kwankwaso inadvertently prevented by his hasty calls for the release of terror suspects, has turned around to hurt not just his state but defenceless men, women and children.

If only he had heeded our September 5, 2011 warning, when, the theatre of terror was miles away from his home, in Abuja and Jos, Plateau State.

Soye Wilson Jamabo