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ISSUES IN THE NEWS

Pastor Ayo Oritsejeafor came to Abeokuta to make a “suggestion” which is insulting to our intelligence, as Yoruba people. He says only religious leaders and not President Jonathan can end insecurity in the Northern Region of Nigeria which can only mean that the post-colonial Nigerian Nation State has no business with combating terrorism, even though the terrorists make no pretenses about their intention to overthrow and overwhelm the post-colonial Nation State and impose its political preferences on the country. Thus, when the embodiment of that post-colonial Nation State is adjudged as not being responsible for protecting the State, such a State has no reason to exist.
Yet the same president will say “Nigeria must not break” and Pastor Ayo Oritsejeafor will chorus him, which can only mean either the President has already capitulated to the terrorist demands or both the President and Pastor Ayo Oritsejeafor are playing games with the lives of thousands of people that had not only died premature and preventable deaths but are also encouraging more boldness on the part of the terrorists.
If, therefore, Pastor Ayo Oritsejeafor wants the northern political and religious leaders to end the insurgency, he should also promote similar notions for Yorubaland so that our leaders will take care of our defenses in our own land and by extension, the rest of the country’s peoples should also take care of their security, which if carried out as suggested by Pastor Ayo Oritsejeafor, they must surely be empowered to do so.
The Governors have no say in how the security system is coordinated, talk much less religious leaders; in fact the Governors are also under the control of the security system in spite of their perceived roles as “chief security officers”. For them to be effective in order to follow Pastor Ayo Oritsejeafor’s solution, instead of Jonathan asking for a $1b loan to fight BH, these leaders should be asked to do so; instead of Jonathan having total and complete command of the armed forces, these leaders should be asked to do so; instead of the Jonathan government developing diplomatic initiatives on fighting BH, these leaders should be asked to do so—and the list goes on.
What Pastor Ayo Oritsejeafor should actually be advocating, at the minimum, is the Regionalization of the armed forces with the immediate benefit of not only providing employment for thousands of youths who will be recruited by such an army and professionally trained but also with the added security benefit of having the entire Region policed and militarily secured by local residents working within an overall Federal security mechanism. This will achieve the neutralization of the terrorist anchor which depends on their ability to create fear among the populace and render the existing government incapable of defending them; for at that point, the people will be armed and able to defend themselves. This will also place the nature of the post-colonial State into focus, as this will be a sort of its necessary negation by undergoing a rebirth of the post-colonial State, where old forms of doing things will pass away and all things will become new thus formally decolonizing according to our own needs.
In dismissing poverty as a propellant of the insurgency, the importance of the rank and file, who are not necessarily rich or from wealthy homes but constitute the fighting arm of the insurgency are denied; that Osama Bin Laden may be rich but the vast majority of his fighters are not as rich as him or even the Mutallab case that Pastor Ayo Oritsejeafor referenced does not negate the role of poverty in attracting recruits into terrorism. Which is even why the beginnings of such organizations always entail provision of welfare schemes to the poorer sections of the society from which the pool of fighters are derived. This was even in the story of Boko Haram’s emergence, where even as it played roles in electoral choices, it was also able to create economic and social welfare schemes for its members. Obviously, wealthy persons, by definition, would not require such schemes for their existence.
Terrorism simply aims to force the State into a position of powerlessness whereby the people will have no confidence in the ability of such a State to protect them. When this inability is compounded by a lackadaisical attitude of the State as we are witnessing in Nigeria, the terrorist gains the upper hand. But such a situation can be avoided only if the Nation State itself is created as per the wishes of its inhabitants.
Thus, when ISIS came out of the rubble of the different rebellions in the Middle East, its main goal is the neutralization of the Sykes-Picot Line that created what we now know as Iraq, Syria and the various countries of the Middle East. On the other hand, when the State of Israel came into being in 1948, it was able to defend itself from terrorist attacks, fight wars of existence and generally take care of itself simply because its State is conditioned by the fundamental, historical necessities of the Jews. In Africa, it is the complete opposite, where the State was created as a negation of the fundamental necessities of the various peoples and the continuous existence of the State rest on such denial—hence the organs of State are not responsible to its citizens and such organs are used to impose any elite formation that is able to control it on the citizens.
The UK that created Nigeria ended up, over a period of time, agreeing, first with the Irish for them to have an independent State of their own in 1922 and now with the Scots, on the methodology of their relationship, giving the Scots a chance to be completely independent of Britain or in the alternative, what they call “devo-max”-that is maximizing devolution of powers which will at least create and maintain Scottish identity, with Wales waiting on the wings. Canada, a former British colony, also experienced a similar occurrence in the case of Quebec, even as the attempt at Quebecois Independence failed. What matters is the civilized approach taken to resolve the problem and these “Europeans” are as human as we are.
But what do we have in Nigeria? The mantra is “Nigeria must not be divided”; Nigeria’s unity is “non-negotiable”—and of course the promoters of such will rely on its army to enforce it. It may be forgiven the major beneficiaries of British colonialism, if they want to cling to it—but how about those from the Niger Delta or South-South, who are daily experiencing the negativity attached to this Nigerian entity and yet want to continue clinging to it by force and using all the paraphernalia of its State to impose its preferences on other sections of Nigeria? Which will make a Pastor Oritsejeafor come and start telling us that “northern leaders” should fight BH? It is the same Niger Delta/South-South leadership that did not allow negotiations between the Peoples/Nations/Lands(as in Scotland-Yorubaland) of Nigeria on the nature of State that suits them, which ought to have ordinarily been what Jonathan’s Conference should be all about and which which would allow for a possible “regional” armed forces that will not only be economically beneficial to the Nations but will also allow them to fight and contain any threat to their existence as a Nation, even within an overarching Federal framework.
Pastor Ayo Oritsejeafor says BH can only be defeated by a superior ideology without specifying what that “superior” ideology is. Certainly, it cannot be in asking northern religious leaders to fight it, for that is not even an ideology, however defined. To comfortably fight an ideology with a “superior” one implies the understanding of the ideology being fought and with what it is being replaced. If, as Pastor Oritsejeafor says, BH is a “religious ideology” it follows that any superior alternative must either be found in another religious ideology or in a completely “material” ideology which has nothing to do with religion. But the “Lord’s Resistance Army” of Kony is not in any way different from BH in practice except in one being “Christian” and the other “Muslim”; which means terrorism is not a function of religious beliefs or religious ideology only. Pastor Oritsejeafor acknowledged the mutual understanding and respect for different religions in the south which also shows that “religious ideology”, alone, is not responsible for Boko Haram’s Islamic insurgency.
Any ideology is based on the existential circumstances of the society from which it sprouts, while terrorism is a possible means towards its achievement. The conflict between and within Nations and religions are political in nature, from time, where each tries to maximize its potentials in the contradictions thrown up within the society, either in a single or multiple societies and in the process devise methods of identifying the forces best suited to carry out the mission. That is the function of “ideology”.
Thus, to fight BH with a “superior” ideology as Pastor Oritsejeafor suggests, cannot be based on using the religious/political leaders whose existence is wrapped around the continuity of the present. If the Northern Emir, for example, derives his influence from the nature of the post-colonial Nigerian State which Boko Haram wants to overthrow, such a relationship cannot be said to be “superior” or else BH will not attempt its overthrow. BH is able to do so because it feels superior to what the post-colonial State has to offer. And if Pastor Oritsejeafor is looking for a “superior” ideology, it must be found in the negation of what BH has found to be inferior and that is certainly not in asking religious leaders to do the fighting.
But it is apparent that Pastor Oritsejeafor is not looking for a “superior” ideology; he is looking for a justification for the continuation of a Jonathan Presidency or else he would not say that Saudi Arabia has trained some Yoruba Muslims as terrorists and sent them back to Yorubaland; the implication being that Yorubaland must continue to rely on the Nigerian Armed Forces, whose commander-in-chief is Goodluck Jonathan, for protection.
By Leye Ige