Clues in Shekau’s monologue

Also published in Daily Trust 

The escalating succession of the bloody and indiscriminate attacks across the North is obviously becoming too overwhelming not only for the victims and the other vulnerable people, but also for those who follow its unfolding incidents, especially considering how some devastating incidents are quickly overshadowed by other incidents in terms of the number of fatalities and amount of devastation. After all, even the incident of the mass abduction of hundreds of teenage girls in Chibok, which has attracted unprecedented international attention, is gradually being overshadowed by other incidents.

Interestingly enough, even though it is so far the biggest single abduction committed by the insurgents, the amount of international outcry it has attracted continues to baffle many observers considering the fact that many massacres had been committed before the Chibok abduction and have indeed continued to take place across the region, yet the reaction (if any) of the same international community has always been inadequate and lacked sincere commitment to prevent its recurrence.

Chibok: The case for foreign intervention

Also published in Daily Trust  

The excitement expressed by many Nigerians and the outright rejection voiced by many others over the possible United State’s intervention to help rescue Chibok abducted girls subsided when it appeared that the US would not actually commit combat troops to engage the insurgents, after all. Instead, its intervention and that of the other countries which offered to help would be limited to aerial surveillance and advice on counter-insurgency tactics.

Consequently, though the foreign military experts have since arrived the country and are presumably executing their mission, not much is expected from them since  the actual battle is still expected to be executed by the same Nigerian troops who are, honestly speaking and to a large extent quite understandably, too downhearted to tackle the increasingly audacious Boko Haram terrorists.

Resilience has limits

Also published in Daily Trust

With their sense of resilience, creativity and self-motivation, majority of Nigerians have been able to, some extent, cope with the challenges and resiliently endure the leadership-inflicted misery imposed upon them by the country’s successive military and civilian regimes over the decades. As a matter of fact, many of them have been able to achieve various degrees of success in different fields of human endeavour, in spite of the overwhelming impediments.

In other words, an average Nigerian creatively devises means to endure and survive the impact of the systemic deterioration and failure, while, in the meantime, he consciously or unconsciously lowers the bar of his expectations in the system, which is, in any case, the most realistic attitude under these peculiar circumstances, for it, at least, spares him the trouble of further disappointment.