Army-Shiite clashes: JCI report at a glance

Also published in Daily Trust

In the aftermath of the late last year’s Army-Shiite bloody clashes in Zaria, and amid the ensuing heated controversy over the justifiability or otherwise of the amount of force used by the Army against the Shiites, I wrote a two-part article titled ‘The external dynamics of Zaria incident’ on December 18and 25, 2015 respectively, in which I avoided speculation over the party responsible for sparking the clashes pending the outcome of the official inquiry into the incident. I, instead, dwelt on the underlying external dynamics behind it, which, among other dynamics, represent the context in which the circumstances of the incident are properly understood.

Now that the Judicial Commission of Inquiry commissioned by Kaduna state government in the wake of the incident to conduct a thorough public inquiry into the immediate and remote causes of the clashes, and give recommendations on the ways to forestall its recurrence in the future has submitted its report, a mere glance at the report shows how much effort the commission members had put into making the report as exhaustive and objective as possible, notwithstanding the decision by the Zakzaky-led Shiite group to boycott its proceedings. After all, whatever they would have said, had actually been said by their fellow Shiites and other apologists who made presentations in the course of the proceedings. 

Also, now that the commission has indicted both the Army, for using disproportionate force to tackle the Shiites, and the Shiites, for their seditious defiance of constituted authorities that provoked the clashes, Kaduna state government should, once the relevant White Paper is prepared, immediately go ahead with the prosecution of both the General Officer Commanding the Nigerian Army’s 1st Division, Major General Adeniyi Oyebade who was said to have ordered the use of the excessive force, and the Shiites’ leader Ibrahim El-Zakzaky who was indicted, among other things, for his insistence on not restraining his followers, as well as all other individuals involved from both sides, in order to judicially establish the extent of the culpability of  each individual to punish them accordingly in such a way that it serves as a deterrent to others. 

It’s, however, important to note that, though punishing the culprits through judicial process is a necessary step, among some other steps, toward addressing this particular incident, preventing its recurrence entails taking into account its remote causes and other relevant dynamics as maintained in the JCI report, which, though isn’t absolutely perfect, is realistic enough anyway to constitute a reliable reference for Kaduna state government, other state governments in the region and even the federal government to come up with effective strategies to address the ideological and socio-political factors that led or contributed to the emergence of this particular form of subversive tendency in the society, so as to prevent the occurrence of similar incidents in the future.

In fact, considering the apparent deficiency of Nigeria’s security intelligence agencies in terms of background knowledge on the religious ideology and political agenda behind Shiites’ inherent subversive tendency against constituted authorities not only Nigeria but in all Muslim countries or countries with considerable Muslim populations around the world, with the exception of Iran of course, the report is authoritative enough for adoption by the country’s security intelligence agencies, which obviously need to expand their scope of knowledge to cover this form of security challenge, and to acquire appropriate intelligence gathering and utilization capabilities necessarily needed to tackle it.

Though the report maintains that the so-called Zakzaky-led Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) is not a registered organization, after all, the federal government should probe his funding sources, which are obviously largely foreign, the actual motives behind it and the agenda it serves. Therefore, inasmuch as the so-called IMN does not have official financial transaction records, being an unregistered organization, probe into its funding sources should focus on the local businesses involved in facilitating the inflow of the funds used in promoting its seditious agenda in Nigeria.

The report also rightly laments the successive governments’ negligence that had made it possible for the group to openly exercise and promote subversive activities against constituted authorities over the years, and to occupy public lands where they built their shrines, hence the report equally rightly recommends reclaiming such illegally occupied lands. Meanwhile, Kaduna state government should ensure that no part of the state is subjected again to what the residents of Gyallesu neighborhood in particular (where zakzaky’s residence was located in Zaria) had suffered at the hands of his ragtag and ill-mannered militia who had subjected the residents of the area to constant harassment and systematically violated their rights of free and unrestricted movement, under the pretext of providing security to Zakzaky and his family.

By the way, Zakzaky managed to not only indoctrinate his largely ridiculously gullible followers, but actually fooled them into believing that the successive Nigerian governments, in collaboration with the Israeli intelligence agency (Mossad) and the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), have been conspiring to assassinate him all along, due to his anti-western stance. Appealing to his followers’ emotions in this regard, the self-proclaimed anti-western cleric would tactically exaggerate his purported relevance in the scheme of things by concocting some ludicrous conspiracy theories purportedly targeting him, raising false alarm and playing innocent victim of illusory persecution to derive cheap and unearned public sympathy, which he would always manipulate to incite his followers against government and attract more followers among the unsuspecting public.

Anyway, with the submission of the JCI report on Army-Shiite clashes in Zaria last year, the ball is now in the government’s court, as the risk of the return of the status quo or prospect of averting it for good will be determined by the extent of its commitment to adopting the findings of the commission and implementing its recommendations.