Also published in Daily Trust
As blame game and
conflicting conspiracy theories over the identities of the vested interests (if
any) behind the emergence, persistence and escalation of Boko Haram crisis
continue to circulate, the fact that the crisis reflects the extent of our
collective failure as a country cannot be disputed.
Yet, fairness
necessarily entails attributing appropriate portions of blame to the actual
person(s) or party/parties responsible for each particular aspect of the
crisis. This, after all, determines the nature and scope of what is expected of
individuals, communities and, of course, the government in order to come up
with a collective approach to end the crisis. By the way, this method is the
first realistic step towards addressing all the other challenges bedevilling
the country.
Anyway, as
Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the
largest portion of the blame goes to President Jonathan, particularly as it
relates to the persistence and escalation of the terrorists’ attacks, since,
having come to the presidency after the terror gang had already emerged, he
can’t be held responsible for playing any role in its emergence.
In any case, President
Jonathan’s evident leadership skill deficiency and the fact that he lacks moral
right to tackle the pervasive corruption in the military and other security
establishments, being corrupt himself, explain his reluctance to hold his top
military commanders, intelligence chiefs and other top security officials to
account. After all, he also never holds them to account over the embarrassing
tactical mediocrity, poor intelligence gathering and superficial analyses of
intelligence reports, which have always characterized their combat strategies
and affected the performance of the understandably dispirited soldiers on the
warfronts.
Nevertheless, while
President Jonathan remains chiefly responsible for this failure, the allegation
that he and/or the federal government is actually behind the killings and bomb
attacks in the north and against Muslims in particular is simply ridiculous, to
say the least. As a matter of fact, this is the most ludicrous of all the
conspiracy theories about Boko Haram crisis in Nigeria.
Obviously those who
fabricated and disseminate this false allegation or insinuate it, most of whom
are politicians who, having no alternative political program to attract
sufficient public support on its basis, and having no moral right to claim
honesty, being equally corrupt, capitalize on people’s growing frustration with
the government for it is failure to contain the insurgency and restore security
in the region.
Consequently, the
popular narrative in the north is that, there is no Boko Haram terror gang
anymore; instead it is President Jonathan who actually masterminds all the
attacks against the north and Muslims. Many people from the region pretend to
ignore the simple and unmistakable fact that, there is still a terror gang
popularly known as Boko Haram according to which there is no difference between
Muhammad Buhari and President Jonathan, and which is determined and is indeed
hell-bent on eliminating the Nigerian state in order to replace it with their
distorted version of religious system, which they falsely call Islamic system.
After all, they have killed many prominent figures in the region and even
attempted to kill Buhari himself.
Though the vested
interests behind the apparently systematic dissemination of this conspiracy
theory have managed to mislead, and are still misleading, millions of
northerners including many among the educated also, which is particularly
baffling, they don’t seem to realize the implications of their mischievous act.
In any case, a big
dilemma awaits them if Buhari is eventually elected President, because I am
sure Buhari presidency per se or even if the Sultan himself became president,
for that matter, it will not make Boko Haram lay down their arms. I wonder what
explanation they (i.e. those conspiracy theorists) will then give.
Anyway, a substantial
portion of the blame goes to Muslim scholars also for their apparent reluctance
to seek for appropriate relevance to facilitate reaching out to the gang’s
leadership for dialogue. Besides, since Boko Haram ideology originated in some
serious misconceptions and misrepresentations of Islamic religion, it is the
duty of Muslim scholars to dispel such misrepresentations and present the
actual teachings of Islamic religion.
Though I realize the
high risk involved in doing so, after all, some prominent Islamic scholars like
Ja’afar Mahmud Adam and Sheikh Mohammad Auwal Albani were brutally assassinated
for daring to openly challenge Boko Haram’s ideology, Muslim scholars can
still, as a matter of fact they should, get productively involved one way or
another, with a view to reaching out to the terror gang’s leaders and engaging them
intellectually with the hope of convincing the truth-seeking among them to
abandon violence and rejoin the mainstream Muslim community in the country.
While there may be other
parties sharing some of the blame for the failure to end Boko Haram insurgency,
the aforementioned are undoubtedly the principal parties in this regard. It is
therefore only when all parties sharing the blame for the persistence of
Boko Haram insurgency live to up to their respective responsibilities that the
much needed united and coordinated front could be formed, which is necessary to
tackle the increasingly overwhelming Boko Haram terror campaign in the country.
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