Please read this wonderful piece below.
To: Members in For a Corruption-Free Nigeria!

-------------------------------------------------

The amount of money an emir expends on a single trip to Europe for
medical check-up would build a clinic big enough to serve a community
of 5000 people; the amount of foreign exchange a top civil servant
pays yearly to educate a single child abroad would build a primary
school capable of providing basic education to hundreds of pupils; the
amount of money a politician spends to sponsor his wives and
children’s trips to Saudi Arabia for lesser pilgrimage, to Dubai for
shopping and Europe for holidays annually is enough to establish
community banks and provide access to capital for thousands of small
businesses or fund poverty alleviation projects in several
communities.Boko-Haram1

What do the emir, top civil servant and politician have in common?
They are all western-educated, blinded by a culture of corruption and
nurtured on the plundered public resources. So to the ordinary citizen
whose pregnant wife dies in labour for lack of basic healthcare; whose
child cannot get basic literacy and numeracy skills due to the
collapse of education and whose entire life is a painful journey
through biting poverty and hopelessness, if western education produces
a system as insensitive, an elite as heartless and a society as
unjust, then that form of enlightenment (boko) should be anathema
(haram). This is the figurative definition of Boko Haram.

This article is not an attempt to justify the killing of innocent
Nigerians, Muslim or Christian. Those acts cannot be rationalized and
are totally condemnable. But to understand a problem requires that we
get to the bottom of the real issues. Boko Haram started because many
young people, unable to live with the growing level of poverty and
social injustice, opted to move out of the periphery of society to
live in isolation, embracing an interpretation of Islam as their
ideology. The group did not have a violent outlook and only sought to
live in their own alternative reality, however Utopian.

However, when the police attacked and killed several of their members
during a funeral procession without provocation or an apology, the
arena was set for a fierce backlash. Even at that stage, it was not
too late to make amends, but the same ‘Bokoed’ elite that forced them
to the margins of society now sought to criminalise them. When the
group made the mistake of taking arms against the instruments of
state, government found the excuse it needed and ordered that the
group be crushed. The military went in with force and shelled
populated areas indiscriminately. Some observers estimated that as
many as 7000 people, mostly innocent women and children were
slaughtered; nobody bothered to count. For several months, the stench
of dead and decaying bodies pervaded Maiduguri and its environs.

Even at that stage it would have been possible to manage the
situation, but government chose not to and proclaimed victory,
forgetting that an ideology was not a military target. Soon, pictures
and video of the cold blooded murder of the group’s leader and top
echelon, as well as the brutal killing of young children and many
handicapped people by the police began to surface. Very little has
been done to bring the police officers - many of whom can clearly be
identified in the videos – to justice. Obviously, the state was above
its own laws.

Several unanswered questions remain regarding government response to
terrorism. Why did late President Umaru Yar’adua not visit Maiduguri
where thousands of lives were lost, mostly in hands of the military?
Why has President Goodluck Jonathan not visited Bauchi Gombe and Yobe
where thousands of lives have been lost in communal and religious
unrests? Why did he turn down the mediation offer by Borno elders?
Are the people being killed in Plateau state second class citizens?
Why are we turning a blind eye to what can only be described as
genocide in Southern Kaduna? Why was there so little media coverage of
the Sallah day attacks that killed hundreds of Muslim worshipers in
Jos? What is the response to the recent massacre in Ebonyi state that
left at least 60 people dead?

Clearly, government has no answers.

In typical Jonathanian fashion, the response has been to throw money
at problems. The average spending on security last year was 2 billion
naira every day of the entire year. What Nigerians got in return was
the bloodiest peace-time year in history. Undaunted, the president
plans to spend a quarter of this year’s budget on security. The
combined security and defence spending in this year’s budget proposals
would average about 3 billion naira ($20 million) daily. This is the
highest ever peace time spending on security, but the measures being
taken are tragically comical, revealing fundamental flaws in Nigeria’s
security and defence thinking.

Many major streets in Abuja have been barricaded and the flow of
traffic diverted from potential targets. All roads leading to the city
have checkpoints that only create traffic chaos and misery. And for
those who didn’t know, the offices of the Department of State Services
(SSS) are now more visible than before; security posts are being
constructed at the previously obscure entrance of the Nigeria
Intelligence Agency (NIA); all roads bordering the Defence and Police
Headquarters are now blocked. It would be catastrophic for Nigeria to
fight a war with another country because all it would take to decimate
our top military cadre is an attack on the Defence Headquarters where
the Army, Air Force and Navy have their offices – in a single
compound!

Government has also awarded a $600 million contract to install close
circuit cameras in parts of Abuja. Don’t ask if they work and if we
have the data base from which to identify persons of interest. At the
current rate, all roads leading to churches will soon be blocked; all
routes leading to mosques will be barricaded; all schools will soon be
guarded by bomb squads; battle tanks will be stationed at the gates of
hospitals, and all markets will be guarded by elite troops and
military helicopters,

While these laughable ‘security’ measures are being put in place, the
real challenge – Boko Haram has metamorphosed through the three phases
of terrorism.

Initially, the group was guided by their peculiar interpretation of an
ideology.  The second phase came when they decided to carry out
revenge attacks on perceived enemies – mostly policemen and the
‘Bokoed’ elite. And because government failed to act responsively,
they quickly moved to the third phase which is marked by
indiscriminate killing and bombing. This phase is not about protecting
an ideology or even in retribution for perceived injustices. They now
kill simply because they can. And no one is safe - Muslim or
Christian, northerner or southerner: Nigeria is under siege.

Spend a trillion dollars to fight terrorism and what will you get?
More terrorists! That is what the American experience in Afghanistan
shows. Even President Jonathan, callous and obtuse as he is (whatever
happened to the fresh air) must realise that military action will not
solve what is essentially a problem born of social injustice and
hopelessness.

According to Bolaji Abdullahi, the Minister of Youth, 20 million
Nigerian youth (41.6%) are unemployed. This should be the focus of all
security strategies in the country, not the massive procurement of
arms. How many citizens can government kill? The three billion naira
the federal government alone plans to spend daily on security would be
better spent on building safety nets below which no Nigerian should
fall.  All 36 states’ security votes, running to hundreds of billions
would better serve to create jobs or introduce unemployment benefits
to millions, not stolen by governors.

Boko Haram or not, as long as the level of poverty, unemployment and
social inequality continues to rise, no amount of money voted for
security or quantity of arms bought will make Nigeria secure. And the
president’s unilateral decision to withdraw subsidy on petroleum
products will certainly not help matters. Ironically, Jonathan seems
to have gone through his own three phases: Jonathan the Clueless,
Jonathan the Congenial and Jonathan the Cruel.
 
 
By: Salisu Suleiman