One of the positive fallouts from President Buhari’s participation at the G7 Summit which ended last week in Germany is the emerging consensus that the new administration deserves the support of the international community towards finding a lasting solution to the insurgency in the north east. Better late than never, I would say! It is curious that the conscience of the world until now was relatively unmoved by the tens of thousands of dead victims of Boko Harm and the humanitarian tragedy of nearly 2 million internally displaced persons (IDPs).
To add insult to injury, Amnesty International had the guile to blame the Nigerian armed forces for “human rights abuses” in its recent report. Curiously, they hardly ever condemned the recurrent killings of so many innocent people but it is collateral damages accompanying military action against the insurgents that has worried them the most. What a strange world we live in!
I used to be an enthusiastic supporter of Amnesty International right from my student days. I have sadly reached the solemn conclusion that their activities and orientation are no longer in the interest of our continent, and in particular, the territorial and sovereign integrity of my country. While I am vehemently opposed to the hounding and persecution of gays and lesbians from any quarters, the active promotion of sodomy by Amnesty and other Western human rights organisations in our continent constitutes, in my opinion, an affront on the spirituality and moral conscience of African civilization. Amnesty, here we part ways!
Part of the arrogance of the West is manifested in the baseless presumption that Euro-American values are universal — that everybody must succumb to them if they are to be recognized as being in conformity with the so-called Universal Standard of Civilisation.
I also read with great interest the recent article by former anti-corruption Chief Nuhu Ribadu published in ThisDay newspaper of Wednesday 10th June. Nuhu is someone that I respect and esteem; a patriot of the highest integrity. In that article he sought to explain the insurgency as largely an outcome of “globalization”, dismissing all the “conspiracy theories” that have accompanied most of the discourse around it.
In our day and age, it is a mark of intellectual sophistication to dismiss any and all conspiracy theories. Conspiracies are, of course, all the rage these days — about the emergence of such viral scourges as HIV/AIDS and Ebola, even about 9/11 and the principals behind the rise of the Islamic State. Many of them can be safely dismissed as nonsense. But we must not dismiss all of them to the point of naiveté.
For the records: I am not a believer in the conspiracy industry. But I have come across enough treacheries in the world to convince me that only fools can maintain that conspiracies do not exist whatsoever. From Ibn Khaldun and his concept of “asabiyya” and the Freemasons in medieval Europe, to the shadowy world of the Illuminati, the Anglo-Saxon networks inspired by Cecil Rhodes, the Mont Pelerin Society, the Club of Rome, the Trilateral Commission and the Beilderberg Group, we have to concede that world is a more complicated place than we were taught in school. We would not be wrong to suspect that those who run the current Babylonian world system have been involved in all sorts of conspiracies throughout much of modern history.
It is also part of the game of deceit to dismiss anyone who suspects possibilities of conspiracies to be either a fool or a knave. But that does not change the fact that conspiracies can and do exist. The teacher who had the greatest influence on the growing Bill Clinton, the eminent historian and political thinker Carroll Quigley of Georgetown University, earned his place in the firmament of world scholarship by proving that conspiracies do exist and that their influence on world politics cannot be discounted as far as the geopolitics of the trans-Atlantic world is concerned.
For my part, I have spoken at many forums within and outside Nigeria about the insurgency. I spoke to a gathering of Francophone West African Generals and security chiefs in Niamey, Niger, in April 2013. I challenged them about the failure of our neighbours to do more to stop their nationals from being part of the Boko Haram brigade. I was greeted with an ominous silence. I gave a seminar on the insurgency in September last year to students and faculty of the University of Ghent in Belgium. To my astonishment, all the sympathy went to Boko Haram and all the bile was reserved for the Nigerian state.
When I tried to raise some policy issues about the need to prepare for a rehabilitation and reconstruction programme for the north east with the outgoing Goodluck Jonathan administration, I was greeted with an icy stonewall. Meanwhile, our northern brethren continued to blame the government and the late Patrick Aziza as being “the sponsors” of Boko Haram at the same time being opposed to any serious military action on the part of the government in tackling the insurgency. The same people continue to look away as “Fulanis” wage a viciously murderous Jihad against defenceless peasants throughout the Middle Belt. Goodluck Jonathan famously confessed that he was “eating and dining” with the agents of Boko Haram. And yet, as Commander-in-Chief, he could not bring himself to do anything about it. The cold and calculated ambivalence of America, the French, and NATO regarding the insurgency has made me extremely suspicious about their real intentions. Ditto for our neighbours Chad, Niger and Cameroon.
My conclusion is that the insurgency in Nigeria is a giant conspiracy involving government, some elements within our armed forces and security agencies, Western powers, al-Qaeda and ISIS, some Arab governments, some of our northern elites and a frightful gaggle of unknown subterranean reptiles. It is a conspiracy of all against all, with the sole intention of bringing Nigeria to its knees and dismembering our great federation. We may never know the structure and morphology of that conspiracy, but one day we shall be told it. Only an idiot would believe that a well-organised group armed with highly sophisticated weapons, money and expensive SUV vehicles could have been acting on their own without help from foreign and local potentates. I also get the strong impression that multinational force headquartered in Ndjamena, Chad, is made up of people who know more about Boko Haram than they are prepared to say. The conspirators, it would seem, are now being asked to be part of the solution. May God Almighty deliver us from this millennial infamy!
Now that the world community has agreed that the knaves behind Boko Haram must be brought to book, I am more optimistic that we would soon see the back of the scoundrels. We must now work towards putting in place a framework for post-conflict reconstruction for the war-affected region.
Lest we forget: The Goodluck Jonathan government inherited the Boko Haram insurgency which has been ongoing for almost a decade now. Efforts have been made at instituting dialogue with the insurgents, with no success. The Joint Task Force (JTF) launched by the government is waging a titanic struggle with the insurgents who are increasingly on the defensive. With cooperation of our neighbouring countries of Chad, Sudan and Cameroon, we are confident that the wind has turned against the insurgents. The presidential order to move Defence Headquarters to the war zone is a wise decision. We believe now is the time to win the battle of hearts and minds and to wean the people from a tradition of conflict to one of peace, reconciliation and progress. This is the right moment to launch a post-conflict rehabilitation and reconstruction programme for the north east. It will not only show that the government cares and is looking ahead, it will have a positive and salutary impact on the fortunes of the PDP in that region as we move ever closer to the elections.
Civil society, government and the international community must join hands to restore hope and to build the foundations for a just and lasting peace. Indeed, the sages of old have taught that light will always triumph over darkness. But it is clear that light can defeat darkness not with the weapons of vengeful violence, but with the arsenals of enlightenment and reason; with that moral force which accords with the spirit of the laws and the conscience of civilized humanity.
We take the view that terrorism is nothing less than the ultimate test of the moral fibre of free societies. In the Nigerian and African context, its rise is not only on account of globalization and its unequalising tendencies; it is also related to the crisis of development and nationhood, and the failure of the state to provide human security and act as a servant of the people. Tackling terrorism requires a fight to regain the hearts and minds of youths and to foster dialogue among communities. Government must become the servant of the people, not their master. Military action will continue to be necessary, but it must be carefully deployed and it must conform to international humanitarian standards. The security agencies must work more closely together and should be more strategic in their thinking and action. The Federal Government must also step up cooperation with ECOWAS and other neighbours.
The strategy we advocate calls not only for bold action in defeating terrorism; it requires expanding the possibility frontiers of welfare while widening the democratic space for popular participation. We must re-commit to the ideals of a servant state that promotes the welfare of our people while providing decent jobs for the teeming millions of youths; steering them from a culture of nihilistic violence to one of tolerance, patriotism and nonviolence. Ultimately, it is about reinventing Nigeria as a compassionate country; a purpose-driven nation with a clearly defined vision of its manifest destiny as the leader of the New Africa.
In my humble opinion, the current terrorist insurgency is essentially a failure of human security. Linked to this is the crisis of development itself — spurred by poverty, deepening inequalities and the ravages of climate change. The paradigm of security-based human development provides an expansive framework beyond the narrow scope of ‘national security’ which is anchored on the defence of the state and its apparatus. If human development is broadly understood as the empowerment of individuals and communities and enhancing their capabilities, human security should be seen as its natural counterpart. By securing the lives, livelihoods and well-being of people against hunger, disease, want, war and natural catastrophes, the state is expanding the possibility frontiers of welfare.
As we understand it, human security embraces the responsibility to protect individuals and communities within and across nations from the physical and emotional insecurity from war, violence and conflict as well as natural and man-made disasters. Terrorism and the state of fear that it engenders is clearly one of the major threats to the security of individuals, communities and nations.
For most of the north, there is no gainsaying that the insurgency has impacted severely on local livelihoods and the regional economy in general. Lebanese and Indian expatriates with established businesses in Kano going back decades have relocate elsewhere. Hotels, banks and other businesses have witnessed significant reductions in their activities. The border towns that once thrived on trade with neighbouring countries have also seen business curtailed because of increasing restrictions on cross-border traffic. In Kano alone, an estimated 126 industries have recently closed down (Sunday Trust, Sunday 9 September 2012). Another trend is the massive movement of southerners from the north, many of them SME operators and professionals.
In Nigeria, poverty wears a predominantly northern face. Some estimates place poverty in the region at 60 percent and youth unemployment at 45 percent. This contrasts with the Lagos and the West where poverty figures are around 20 percent while youth unemployment hovers around 10 percent.
The north east will probably pose the greatest development challenge for the new administration. The most depressed region within the north is the north east, a trend that has been exacerbated by the insurgency. The case of Borno is particularly illustrative of the general trend. A State that officially defines itself as “The Land of Peace” has become a by-word for violence and religious extremism. Partly engendered by mass disenchantment born of impoverishment and partly sponsored in the past by misguided politicians, the rising spectre of extremist violence has reinforced a path-dependence of poverty, wiping off livelihoods, undermining societal cohesion and deepening the vicious cycle of poverty. What is true of Borno is equally true of Yobe and Adamawa. The havoc wreaked on the rural countryside has undermined agriculture and food security. Nearly 2 million IDPs have moved into ramshackle refugee camps, many of them traumatized women and children. Social capital that long held communities together has been destroyed. Trust has evaporated.
Beyond the loss of lives and the destruction of properties and physical infrastructure, terrorism is even more damaging to the soul of the individual and the community. Buildings that have been destroyed can be rebuilt in no time. Infrastructures can be rehabilitated. Traumatized souls, sadly, may take a generation to heal.
Pursuant upon the consensus agreed at the G7 Summit, the government should articulate a rehabilitation and reconstruction programme for the north, together with a fund into which the UN, the World Bank, the EU and others can complement whatever counterpart funds the government can mobilise in these trying times. The north east can also be the best laboratory to test the welfarist proposals that have been made by the APC planning team. All of this will be good not only for the north east but also for a just and lasting peace in our country.
Obadiah Mailafia
