Monday Column by Emmanuel Yawe
royawe@yahoo.com | 08024565402
There has been global outrage against
the kidnapping of over 200 teenage schoolgirls at a government school in
Chibok, Borno state, and the ineptitude of the government in freeing
the prisoners. Apart from the media spotlight on this outrageous act,
some of us have received desperate calls from Nigerians abroad seeking
information on what the hell is going on here. Nigerians living abroad
have become butts of ridicule and very cruel jokes. A friend in the UK
told me on the phone how his nine-year old daughter, after watching news
broadcast about the girls came over to him to find out why nobody could
alert the police about the abductions; or are there no police in
Nigeria? Born in the UK, she has no idea about what life is in Nigeria.
Still another friend from the US had a
more humiliating story at a party he attended last week. After being
introduced as a gentleman from Nigeria, his would be friend let out a
loud hiss, refused to shake hands and just turned his back. That is the
humiliation Nigerians abroad irrespective of tribe and religion are
being subjected to – just because they are Nigerians.
I have written a couple of times on
these pages about Boko Haram. One Nigerian, a complete stranger this
time called me from France. He had faced embarrassing situations in that
country too and was reading everything he could find online about Boko
Haram. In the process he found a piece I published about a year ago
captioned “B/H and Ahmad Salkida’s Hijra”. He wanted to know about the
whereabouts of the young man and if it was possible for Ahmed to help
our security agencies sort out the Boko Haram mess. I told him the man
was in exile after the security agencies had threatened his life. I have
lost all contact with him.
Boko Haram is a product of intelligence
failure and monumental incompetence on the part of our security
agencies. As a reporter who covered a similar uprising – the Maitasine
in Kano (1980), Bulumkutu in Maiduguri (1982), Yola (1984), I can say
this without any fear of contradiction or even threat of elimination. If
as a young reporter I risked my life for the progress of my country, I
do not know why I cannot do so as a grandfather looking at the world
beyond.Maitasine could have grown into a more horrible monster if the
security and political elite at the time had bungled the way we are
doing today. Shagari for all the insults of incompetence heaped on him
before and after the Kano uprisings acted the way a Commander-in-Chief
should do. In fact, immediately after he was overthrown, the Maitastine
people regrouped in Yola to foment bloodshed. The military government
acted swiftly there and again in Gombe when the group drifted there.
You can say that it was easier to defeat
Maitastine because they were a rag tag group whose armoury did not go
beyond cutlasses, daggers, bows and poisoned arrows. But you get it
wrong. When Boko Haram started, they were even worse off than
Maitatsine; they went to battle with nothing but bare hands. I have
little inside information about Boko Haram. The ultimate authority on
the group in Nigerian journalism is Ahmad Salkida. Way back in 2005, he
sent the first ever news dispatch to be published anywhere in the world.
New Sentinel newspaper where I was the Managing Editor published it as
an exclusive. That was the trick.
Boko Haram leaders saw him as a friend
to get their message to the world and he saw them as the gateway to the
big story he had always dreamed of when he cut his teeth as my pupil
reporter at Crystal International Magazine where I was the founding
Editor. In the years to come, Ahmad became a confidant of Yusuf, the
founder of Boko Haram and Shekau his successor. He got good exclusive
stories for the Trust Newspapers and then the Blueprint for his efforts.
No Nigerian outside that group has the kind of information on it like
Ahmad. Comrade Shehu Sani and Dr. Datti Ahmad who have both tried
unsuccessfully to broker peace with the group will come to the stand as
my witnesses.
But here is the reality of Nigeria.
Ahmad who has precise information about the group that could be used to
end it has been bullied out of the country. Meanwhile Boko Haram has
become the biggest industry in town. Lean looking generals and security
spooks of yesterday have suddenly become potbellied and rosy cheeked.
Ahmad has fled his fatherland. With this type of country, what stops us
from hitting world headlines with blood cuddling stories where young
girls are herded away, the government cannot differentiate between right
and left and the Kidnapper – in – Chief – gleefully announces to a
shocked world television audience that the girls are up for sale in the
market?
These things are only possible in
Nigeria because we are very dishonest with ourselves and even the God we
pretend to worship. Boko Haram is committing all these crimes because
they say they are a puritanical Islamic group. I am not a Muslim but I
know that all good sources of Islam, beginning from Borno, the centre of
Islamic worship in Nigeria; Egypt and Saudi Arabia where Muslims from
all over the world derive inspiration from – have condemned their
actions.
As a northern Christian, I have always
been suspicious of CAN. It was founded by Jolly Tanko Yusuf who
appointed the Sardauna of Sokoto the life Patron. There couldn’t have
been a greater demonstration of political opportunism. The Sardauna was
not only a Muslim; he was a very, very proud one who preferred to be the
Sultan of Sokoto to being the Prime Minister or President of Nigeria.
How did he become the life Patron of CAN?
Over the years, CAN has refused to put
away this shabby betty coat of opportunism. I felt sad the other day
when I read a report by the CAN in northern Nigeria in which they
reduced the issue of the kidnapped girls to that of religious
persecution. Are the people writing this type of thrash Nigerians? Do
they live in Nigeria? Did they go to school? Are they different from
Boko Haram? Are they Christians?When the unfortunate girls come out
alive, they will come out as world citizens. Boko Haram has promoted
them to that enviable status. The whole world has stood up for them.
They are beyond what the Nigerian government and Nigerian Christians can
handle. Those of them who come out alive will be Citizens of the World.
Those who may lose their lives (I pray this will not happen) will
become martyrs for the freedoms we cherish as human beings, irrespective
of religious persuasion.
The leaders of Northern CAN should not
demote these girls to the lowly position of ‘persecuted northern
Christians’ so that they can ingratiate themselves to power – just for a
bite of the crumbs.
REF http://www.peoplesdailyng.com/chibok-girls-and-can/
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