Slippery Ceasefire with Boko Haram: Limits of Deceit

By Nkem Ekeopara

 

Glowing like a jobless Nigerian youth, who had just landed a job in an oil company, and exuding the confidence of an army general, who had secured a long sought victory for his country over his country’s arch enemy, Alhaji Taminu Turaki, Nigeria’s Minister of Special Duties and Chairman Presidential Committee on Dialogue and Peaceful Resolution of the Security Challenges in the North,  spoke to Aso Rock Press Corps on Wednesday July 10, 2013, on the ceasefire deal he said  the Nigerian government and the Islamic fundamentalist sect, Boko Haram, had reached. He had announced the deal with the Boko Haram on Radio France International Hausa service on Monday July 8 with someone he claimed was second-in-command to Boko Haram leader, Sheik Abubakar Shekau. But on Saturday July 13, 2013, Shekau not only flatly denied any knowledge of such a deal with Turaki and Turaki’s committee, but also supported the brutal killing of 30 innocent school children and a teacher at the Mamudo Secondary School, Yobe State, on Saturday July 6, 2013, and sanctioned all such acts. 

Shekau was very clear in his message spread by the mainstream and social media across the globe, when he said, “Let me assure you that we will not enter into any truce with these infidels. We will not enter into any truce with the Nigerian government. We believe in the massacre inflicted on the secondary school in Mamudo and Damaturu and other schools. We earlier warned that we were going to burn all schools. They are schools purposely built to fight Islam.” With this strong denial by Shekau that he neither knows Turaki nor the purported second-in-command that Turaki touted had the authority of Shekau to negotiate a truce with Turaki’s committee, the wind has blown, and everyone in Nigeria and around the globe can see the rump of the chicken.   

Even though Minister Turaki and his committee had since gone into damage control by trying to cast doubt on the authenticity of Shekau’s statement, I still insist that Nigerians and the people around the globe have seen the rump of the chicken after the wind blew. This is  because the effusive reaction of the minister when one of the journalists pointedly asked him if Shekau was involved in the ceasefire talks was unambiguous and was carried by the major TV networks in Nigeria with global reach. Everyone who monitored these networks heard Minister Turaki when he said, “When a minister speaks on behalf of the federal government, you wouldn’t say you must see the president or the vice president there. We’ve spoken with somebody who is second-in-command as far as Boko Haram is concerned, and he has informed the media that he has been discussing with us with full knowledge and authority of Imam Abubakar Shekau. So, we’ve no cause to doubt him. We’ve done checks on him just as they (the sect) have done checks on us also, and we’ve realised that yes, we’re dealing with the proper people and with the proper leadership of the organisation.”    

If Turaki were to be Japanese, he would be considering the honourable way out, perform hara-kiri. But this is Nigeria; Turaki, along with the members of his committee, will not even resign. And they probably won’t even apologise to the Nigerian people and the international community for that wholesome deceit. It is worrisome when one realizes that someone like Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, a former Director General of Nigeria Institute of International Affairs and Foreign Minister under Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s dictatorship, is a member of this committee. The Nigerian people and the international community indeed have cause to worry. 

Now, a world that already holds the view that Nigeria is a home of all manner of scammers would be gloating about their rightness on this perspective of Nigeria. The critical questions that need to be asked in the face of this twist are: How relevant is this committee on the War on Terror, which Nigeria is clearly fighting? Should the Nigerian people and, indeed, the international community continue to trust this Turaki-led committee? What are the motives for this sort of wholesome deceit? Or are the Nigerian people and the international community going to accept the damage control by Turaki and his committee that is in the works already? 

Does this development answer the series of queries, which I posed in my last article, "Ceasefire With Already Degraded Boko Haram: Whose Interest Does It Serve?" and in previous articles on the Boko Haram scourge? Did Turaki and his committee dramatize what the Nigerian people call eye-service, the usual overzealousness of state officials to please at all cost any higher authority that delegates responsibility to them to execute? Could this be done in a matter as serious as the one the committee is handling? Was this done to justify the possible huge resources earmarked and expended for the work of the committee whose duration is 90 days? 

The Nigerian people and the international community have been through this rigmarole before. On January 28, 2013, one Sheikh Mohammed Abdulazeez, a self-proclaimed second-in-command to the Boko Haram known jihadist group leader, Abubakar Shekau, declared in Maiduguri their willingness to lay down their arms after a meeting with Borno State governor Kashim Shetima. Like the current scenario, this fellow said he had the authority of their leader, Shekau. However, a few days after his pronouncement, Shekau strongly denied the idea of laying down their arms just like he did on Saturday. And their attacks escalated until the declaration of the state of emergency. 

From the beginning, the whole thing smelt like what Mr. Ahmad Salkida called a scandal, in his description of the January incident related above. Mr. Salkida is reputed to be the only Nigerian journalist who had made contact with the Boko Haram leadership. Currently, he lives in Dubai, United Arab Emirate, having fled to Dubai after the January incident. Mr. Salkida said he fled Nigeria because, “After my most recent expose on the scandal going [on] in respect of purported ceasefire negotiated between government and Boko Haram, the danger to my life has escalated to new heights. I have had to go severely underground for several weeks leading to my decision to flee Nigeria.”  

On the current “ceasefire”, first, we read that the minister, Alhaji Turaki, said that Boko Haram had signed a ceasefire agreement with the Federal Government of Nigeria. The next day the papers now reported that the government and Boko Haram had reached a “ceasefire understanding” and, of course, the Nigerian military authorities’ dissociation of itself from any ceasefire agreement with the fundamentalist group. The strong denial by the Boko Haram leader, Shekau, puts paid to the ceasefire issue and, indeed, should justify the disbandment of that committee, whose time for the assignment in any case, ends in about 8 days time. Obviously, the issue of amnesty should never be broached again; not with the latest unrepentant tone of Shekau, which encapsulates Shekau’s mindset and, in fact, the mindset of Shekau’s brainwashed members. Really, there should be a limit to deceit by the government or anyone acting on its behalf.

*This article first appeared on Nkem Ekeopara Website

The Talk of True Federalism By Northern Nigeria Governors in Rivers State is a Classical Case of Wanting to Eat Omelet without Breaking an Egg

BY NKEM EKEOPARA

nkem360@googlemail.com

First, let me underscore the fact that the military-baked Nigerian Constitution guarantees every Nigerian the right to freedom of movement. Therefore, the four Northern Nigeria governors - Babangida Aliyu (Niger), Murtala Nyako (Adamawa), Sule Lamido (Jigawa), Rabiu Kwankwaso (Kano) -  who visited their colleague, Chibuike Amaechi `of Rivers State on July 16, 2013, in what a section of the Nigerian media termed “Solidarity Visit,” are entitled to the right of freedom of movement as enshrined in that Constitution. That these governors ran into a swarm of protesters at the Port Harcourt International Airport was unfortunate but was quite in character with politics in Nigeria, which is a “do-or-die affair” and, of course, played not to render service to the people, but for personal aggrandizement, mostly.

That said, I think it is imperative that one reminds Governors Aliyu, Nyako, Lamido and Kwankwaso that onye ulo ya n’agba oku anaghi achu oke, meaning that someone whose house is on fire should not be chasing rats. It is imperative that one reminds the four Northern governors that what is happening in Rivers State is of less importance compared to the security challenges in their region. While one is not proud of what happened in the Rivers State House of Assembly on July 13, 2013, particularly the savagery displayed by one of the legislators, (dis)Honourable Chidi Lloyd, it is quite laughable for these governors to have described the events in Rivers State as “threats to peace, security and democracy” as reported by the Nigerian media.\

Perhaps, apart from Governor Lamido of Jigawa State, innocent people have been blown sky-high in the respective domains of the other three governors. The worst of this disregard for the sanctity of human life was the bombing of five fully loaded luxury buses at a luxury bus station in Sabon Gari, Kano, on March 18, 2013, in which hundreds of innocent lives, mainly Igbo lives, were lost. I don’t remember any of these governors describing such a horrific act and similar acts of terror apparently perpetrated by the Islamic fundamentalists, Boko Haram, as “threats to peace, security and democracy” in Nigeria. Governor Kwankwaso even went missing when that attack happened and drew the ire of members of the upper arm of the Nigerian legislature. We have only witnessed a lull in the inhuman activities of the Islamic fundamentalist sect after President Goodluck Jonathan belatedly declared a state of emergency in the worst affected states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa. It was belated possibly due to the opposition of the Northern “rulership”. Is it not strange that Governor Nyako was comfortable in being a party to the declaration of the events in Rivers State as threats to peace, security and democracy in Nigeria?

The governors did not only visit the Rivers State governor, but have also been reported to have visited former Nigerian military dictators, namely Retired Generals Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babaginda and Abdulsalami Abubakar. These dictators have had their time in ruling Nigeria. And I do not think that the Nigerian people consider what they achieved during their time as good enough. Therefore, for anyone or group of people to dress these former dictators in oracular robes through such visits, projecting those people as repositories of the magic wand needed to provide enduring solution to the Nigerian problems, amounts to insulting the collective intelligence of the Nigerian people.

Even more ridiculous and quite insulting to the collective intelligence of the Nigerian people is what was contained in the statement the governors were reported to have distributed to journalists before departing Port-Harcourt. In the said statement, they were reported to have said that recent developments in Rivers State had brought to the fore the question of true federalism and the need for institutions to be allowed to perform without undue interference. They were reported to have expatiated that, “As federating units, we must be allowed the space to guarantee our people’s sustainable development as provided by the constitution.”

As I read Nigerian newspapers’ reports of the visit of the governors to Rivers State, I found the mention of “true federalism” by the Northern governors less than soothing. I wondered what manner of true federalism the governors were talking about. And the questions that readily came up were: Does it really make sense for anyone or group to talk about true federalism without throwing the military-baked Constitution now under contentious review into the Atlantic and getting the peoples of Nigeria to come together to discuss if they want to continue to live together and under what terms? Really, should anyone or group of people be talking about “true federalism” without the federating states/zones/regions controlling at least 50% of their resources and contributing the other part of their resources to the running of the centre? Would an arrangement where people control their resources and contribute partly to the running of the center not be a better guarantee for “sustainable development” than the current arrangement where some states/zones/regions are stifling the growth and development of other states/zones/regions?

Regrettably, these governors did not visit the former military dictators to discuss the fundamental issues plaguing Nigeria, notably an unjust structure and a fraudulent federalism. It is obvious to even goat and chicken that Nigeria’s structure is unjustly skewed in favour of the North. There are unjustifiable number of local governments, constituencies and states in the North than in the South. Must we continue to move this historical injustice to every phase of Nigeria’s march to nationhood? Of course, it is as clear as a piece of crystal that the so-called federalism Nigeria practices is as fraudulent as the scam letters that originate largely from jobless Nigerian youths to all parts of the globe. As being reported by the media in Nigeria now as I write (Tuesday July 23, 2013), these governors went to visit these former military dictators to see if the crack in the Peoples Democratic Party, especially in the PDP in Rivers State, could be filled. A section of the media reported they had gone to ask the former military dictators to prevent President Jonathan from truncating democracy in Nigeria. Others believe they had gone on these visits to explore ways of ensuring that power returns to the North and, possibly remains there forever, in accordance with the comments made by the Northern Elders Forum spokesperson, Professor Ango Abdullahi.

Like many other keen watchers of events in Nigeria, one believes that the refusal to address the fundamental issues noted above is not just the greatest threats to peace, security and democracy in Nigeria, which the governors claimed took them to Rivers State, but also the nails that will ultimately fasten the coffin of the Nigerian state before the latter is buried. Therefore, the call for true federalism by the four Northern governors who visited Rivers State on July 16, 2013, should not be taken seriously since that call and their visitation to the former military dictators were not predicated on the aforementioned fundamental issues plaguing Nigeria. If anything, the governors should just be seen as a group trying to eat omelet without breaking an egg. Factually, that call is as worthless as their trip to Rivers State where the pronouncement was made as there are more problems in their states/zones/regions than in Rivers State.

*This article first appeared on Nkem Ekeopara's Website

Nigeria, Boko Haram and the US War on Terrorism, by Nkem Ekeopara, Part-3

By Nkem Ekeopara, Syndicated Columnist

The Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka towards the end of March this year warned that Nigeria is on the brink of another civil war and blamed the current Nigerian ruler Dr. Jonathan for the growing insecurity in the country. And Prince Bola Ajibola, a former Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of Federation, said mid April that the collapse of amnesty plan for Boko Haram may lead to another civil war. There had been other people voicing the same concern. Well, that’s an affirmation of what the American intelligence community foresaw a decade ago and were abused by those who insist that ‘One-Nigeria’ is not negotiable.

Where I differ from the likes of Prince Ajibola is when they say that the civil war can only be averted if amnesty is granted to avowed terrorists. It amounts to absolute lack of understanding of the nature of terrorism or feigning so, to insist that it (terrorism) will be curtailed if the Federal Government of Nigeria treats the Islamic North differently from other parts of Nigeria or other sections of Nigerian society. I have stated it before and I will restate it here, that Islamic Northern Nigeria remains poorer than others in Nigeria because they are impervious to modernity and change, which come from education. Although their leaders literally asked others to wait for them to catch-up, many Islamic Northern youths did not give a damn about getting educated. Many still do not give a damn.

Sure, their leaders invested in their education and provided amenities that were denied other parts of Nigeria, especially Igbo land. They have Nomadic Education fund, they have special cut-off marks for federal high schools, the so-called unity schools, and universities and they do not use West African Examination Council (WAEC) issued certificates as  standard for admission; in fact, the National Examination Council (NECO) with a standard not comparable to WAEC certificates was created largely for them. Many of them are not required to present either of the certificates issued by these bodies as they go through basic studies and are given automatic admission irrespective of their performance at the end of the basic studies programme. They have bursary from the Nigerian government that is channelled through their respective states, they have educationally disadvantaged states slot in Nigeria’s yearly budget and they have scholarships from their states to any level, if they want to study.

Furthermore, universities and other higher institutions sited in their part of the country have always been the best equipped. But many of them refuse to study. As if all these are not enough, the Jonathan administration is currently investing billions of naira in a new scheme, the Almajeri Education Scheme, an opportunity one is sure many of them will not take. While not demeaning any discipline, the percentage of them who study science, engineering and technology (SET) disciplines from those who bother to go to school at all, is scandalously low, compared to the population of the region.

No nation or society advances without education. Sometimes, one is left to wonder: How many more disenchanted Southern Nigerian youths does the Nigerian government want to create through all these lopsided policies? This sort of question is necessary, especially for many Igbo youths, who can’t be admitted to the so-called unity schools or federal universities because their cut-off marks are very high while fellow youths from say Sokoto or Zamfara State have to be admitted with ridiculously low scores because of where they come from? Such question becomes even more relevant when you consider that a generation of the Igbo youths lost three years of education during the Nigeria-Biafra War. Government must rethink some of these policies because wrapped therein are explosive mixes of anger on the part of the disenchanted and the indirect inferiorization of those that did not get admitted meritoriously. Regrettably, that’s what happens in employment into key sectors of the Nigerian economy too.   

Many people in Africa believe President Obama as an African American with a Kenyan root knows Africa more than his predecessors; he knows countries like Nigeria, which has the largest population of his kind more than any other country in the world, and from where as at the time he took power, America was still importing 10% of its oil needs. It is such belief that filled many Africans with the expectation that he would get more involved in African Affairs more than any of his predecessors. In many people’s assessment this has not been the case. Although the US and Nigeria did set up the US-Nigeria Bi-National Commission in April 2010, to ‘work together on issues of common and shared responsibility and to ‘support the aspiration of the Nigerian people for peaceful, prosperous, stable democratic future’ as the former US Secretary of State Hilary R. Clinton put it at the inception of the commission, there had been obvious missteps by the Obama administration with regards to the US perspective on the ongoing jihadists onslaught in Nigeria.

One did expect that after Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, son of a Northern Nigerian aristocrat, exported terror to the United States on no other day than the Christmas Day in 2009, and the re-emergence of the erstwhile ‘Taliban’ now notoriously known as Boko Haram that year, that President Obama should have looked beyond poverty as the motivator for terrorism ravaging Northern Nigeria now. That expectation heightened after the setting up of the commission with one of its four working groups being on ‘regional cooperation and collaboration on security, terrorism, and the Niger Delta’. This expectation was completely dashed when the Obama administration through the former US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Ambassador Jonnie Carson stoked fire in Nigeria by calling for the creation of a Ministry of Northern Nigeria Affairs by the Federal Government of Nigeria as a magic bullet for containing the jihadists seeking to Islamize Nigeria. To make a call for such a ministry using the creation of the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs targeted at oil producing communities who can no longer farm or fish on their ancestral lands as a result of the devastation of their environment and plundering of their God-given oil and gas resources to justify the call is absolutely wrong and unjustifiable. 

It is absolutely wrong and unjustifiable for several reasons. It is absolutely wrong and unjustifiable because the poverty in Islamic Northern Nigeria is self-inflicted. President Obama should know who has been in charge of Nigeria for the greater part of the country’s ‘independence’ from Britain in 1960. Northerners, especially Islamic Northerners, have! Between 1966 and 1999, they ruled as dictators, absolutes, for 27 years. Within this period, they promulgated decrees that dispossessed the former Eastern Region, today’s South East and South South geo-political zones, of those regions’ God-given oil wealth. During that period, they put all manner of measures to benefit their people to the disadvantage of other sections of Nigeria, especially the Niger Delta region and Igbo land.

They governments they headed by Northerners colluded with the international oil companies (IOCs) and flagrantly destroyed the environment of oil producing communities. One of them, late Gen. Sani Abacha, even murdered Ken Saro Wiwa, the Ogoni environmental rights activist and his 8 colleagues, for protesting against the destruction of their environment and plunder of their resources by Shell BP. The Northerners, who ruled Nigeria for most part of Nigeria’s years since flag freedom, used the oil money to invest massively not just in the educational sector in Northern Nigeria, but also made sure that more than 80% of the irrigation infrastructure in the country went to the North. These investments run into billions of dollars, not naira.  Yet their people are poor. Yet, their people are now in Southern Nigeria, seeking grazing land and constantly destroying crops, raping women, and murdering farmers in the latter’s farms.

Aside from the irrigation infrastructure, the World Bank gives their farmers grants for seedlings and fertilizers. So, why should people from that part of Nigeria be going about destroying people’s farmlands, killing them and raping their wives and daughters? But more than what the Northern rulers did for their people in the educational and agricultural sectors; they arbitrarily created more states and local government areas for their region to the disadvantage of other regions, especially the South East zone, thus, taking more revenues from accruals from oil revenues. They invented all manners of corruption, ranging from import licensing fraud, briefcase contracting to ‘settlement,’ etc. They are the ones majorly responsible for the fallen house that Nigeria has become (apologies to Karl Maier). So, why in the face of these incontrovertible evidences, indeed, injustices, should the Obama administration be calling for the creation of a Ministry of Northern Nigeria Affairs for them? Why should anyone, much more any government, be advancing poverty arising from discontent as a reason for terrorism?

It is unimaginable that the US government should exhibit that level of ignorance of these truths or was it feigned ignorance? If any region should be considered for the creation of such a ministry, outside the Niger Delta region, it should be the South East zone with less number of states and local government areas, and the main theatre of the Nigeria-Biafra War. Let us not forget that at the ‘end’ of that war Gowon declared to the world that there was ‘No victor, No vanquished,’ and proclaimed that ‘Reconciliation, Reconstruction and Rehabilitation,’ the so-called 3Rs, would begin in earnest to restore the former Eastern Region, completely stripped of its infrastructure by the Nigerian military, back to where it was before the war. Gowon’s pronouncement was the greatest act of deception, because as everyone now knows, rather than these being implemented, Gowon and those that came after him continued the war through infamous policies that challenged the resilience of the Igbo people.  

Today, the present South East zone, home to Igbo people, remains the zone without any remarkable federal presence, and no industries that could absorb its numerous graduates even when it produces the highest number of graduates in Nigeria every year. The South East zone has the most decrepit infrastructure in the fraudulent Federal Republic of Nigeria. The Northerners majorly, and the policies they evolved, made it impossible for any steel or steel-related industry to be sited in the zone even when a pre-war study favoured the development of such industries in the region. Their policies frustrated even Igbo people who tried to invest in that sector in the region. Anyone who cares to know the truth in this regard should go and interview Okpuzu Abiriba, Chief Onwuka Kalu, who tried to finance a nail industry in Aba in the 80s, but was deliberately frustrated. Among their reasons for that sort of policy, was that the Northerners were afraid of the resurgence of Biafra if heavy industries were allowed to thrive in the South East zone. So, the US call for a Ministry of Northern Affairs is absolutely wrong and unjustifiable.

I know my people. If we have had the kind of opportunities that the North or even the West had, the incidence of kidnapping, which started in the Niger Delta and is now ravaging the entire country, would have been the last option the South East youths would have taken to. Anyone who disputes this assertion should visit Nnewi and Aba to see how in the face of the aforementioned lopsidedness, Igbo youths are making the most of their brains and time. It is unfortunate these enterprising young Igbo men and women are hardly in the news.

It is even absolutely nonsensical for any government or person to aver that terrorism by Boko Haram and its splinter groups in the North could be solved by such unreasoned and completely undeserving rewards or with the implementation of an amnesty scheme for murderers. And this is not complicated. Nigeria is a place that jihad had been waged against ‘infidels’ before. It is on record that the first generation political leaders of the North did threaten their counterparts in Southern Nigeria that they were waiting for the departure of the colonialists, the British, to continue their march to the sea to ‘dip the Koran into the Atlantic Ocean’. This is a historical fact. Boko Haram and its splinter groups like Ansaru - Jamāʿatu Anṣāril Muslimīna fī Bilādis Sūdān (Vanguard for the Protection of Muslims in Black Africa) have just allied themselves with the global jihad movement to accomplish the dream of their forebears.

The situation is not complicated because as we saw in the infamous underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab’s case, someone with aristocratic root, and now, the alleged Boston bombers, terrorism is not fed by hopelessness and poverty. It is fed by something deeper. And as we are learning from the case of the two brothers that allegedly bombed Boston, soon jihadists will seek to gradually phase out suicide bombing. They would want to bomb, stay alive and party, and perhaps, go on to become ‘self-actualized’. Or how does one explain the fact that someone with the ambition of becoming a neurosurgeon, like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the younger of the two brothers that allegedly bombed Boston, could commit such atrocious act and without any intent of dying in the process or fear of being found out and brought to face justice? Every human being should be concerned, especially with the increasing and ongoing trend of radicalization of people through the Internet and the social media.

Furthermore, the fact that Boko Haram can afford sophisticated guns and mass destructive explosive devices clearly shows that they are not poor but rather well-funded religious ideologues ready to shed the blood of innocent citizens to promote their beliefs. That Boko Haram is ideologically driven is well known. Severally, they have clearly stated the objective of their campaign. They want a government based on the Koran in Nigeria and they forbid Western education, the very thing that liberates an individual or a society from poverty.  They want the Shariarization of the entire Nigeria and they do not give a damn how many lakes of blood and mass graves they create in the process. Only a government that does not understand its responsibility to its citizen can be talking about granting amnesty to such a group of people. Only people who are inhuman could be calling for amnesty for these mass murderers.

There is no doubt the United States government under President Obama has taken note of what is going on in Northern Nigeria. On June 21, 2012, the US included the leader of Boko Haram, Sheik Abubakar Shekau, and two of his lieutenants, Khalid el Barnawi and Abubakar Adam Kambar, on the ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) List’, a list that came to be after 9/11 as one of the measures to hunt down terrorists anywhere on the globe.

Also, recently, the government of the United States located a drone station in the Republic of Niger, Nigeria’s northern neighbour. Although said to be for gathering intelligence for the French intervention in Mali, the strategic location could serve the US interest in Nigeria, and indeed, in West Africa. The strident inhuman calls for amnesty to be granted to Boko Haram, especially by the Northern Nigeria religious and political leaders are not unconnected with the decision by the US to locate a drone base in Niger.

And last week, it was reported in the media that a US delegation led by Counter Terrorism Deputy Secretary, Ms. Anne Witkowsky, was in Nigeria to meet with Nigerian officials and offer them modern technology, which they can deploy to effectively secure their porous borders.

These are important steps for the war on terrorism in Nigeria. However, many Nigerians, especially the Igbo and Christian Northerners, are worried and regard as unfortunate and insensitive the call by the US government under Obama for the creation of a Ministry of Northern Nigeria Affairs as a key step for curtailing the terrorism in that part of Nigeria. The evidences related above make this not only unjustifiable and insensitive, but portraying the US as hell-bent on favouring one section of Nigeria to the disadvantage of other sections.  

Also, the deliberate insistence on the falsity that more Muslims have been killed since the Boko Haram attacks re-started in 2009 is quite repulsive and seems to be shrouded with dubious intent. Christians, preponderantly the Igbo people resident in the North, are the ones who have been bombed in churches, including on Christmas and on Easter Day every year. More than 400 churches in the North have been destroyed or closed, making it impossible for Christians to exercise their right of freedom of worship anywhere they are in the so-called One-Nigeria. There is no record of the bombing of any Mosque by these wilful murderers to date. Igbo people have been marked out and murdered en mass at a luxury bus station in Sabon Gari, the segregated part of Kano, where they live and conduct their businesses. They have been targeted and murdered at meeting place in Mubi, where they had gathered to conclude arrangement on how to bring home for proper burial some of their kind murdered earlier in their business locations. They are the ones whose blood constitutes the lakes of blood being created by Boko Haram. They are the ones whose skulls lie beneath those unmarked mass graves that litter Northern Nigerian cities as Muslims are said not to bury their members in mass graves. They are facing the same fate they faced when Sharia, the forerunner to Boko Haram, was introduced in 12 Northern states at the onset of Nigeria’s current democratic experiment. It is the same fate the faced in the post-election crisis in 2011.

Yet, this falsity is still emanating from some bodies in the US, that more Moslems have been killed. Most Igbo people based in the North have had their businesses destroyed. Many of them have been forced to leave the North empty-handed and relocate to the East, where they now live like refugees in their supposed country. No one takes account of these people. No one talks about them. There are no discussions on how these internally displaced people (IDPs) are to be helped. Those who are conversant with what preceded the Nigeria-Biafra War are seeing the ominous signs.

The warning by Professor Soyinka that Nigeria is on the verge of another civil war is real. But the US can do something. It should strengthen its capability to deal decisively with terrorism in Nigeria, since terrorism poses a serious threat to America’s interests too, by designating Boko Haram as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). The level Boko Haram is at present, in particular, the link it has with al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and al Shabaab in Somalia, and its techniques of operation, deserve that it be so designated. An organization currently led by a man, Sheikh Abubakar Shekau, who proudly says, “I enjoy killing anyone that God commands me to kill – the way I enjoy killing chickens and rams” and had been seen doing that deserves no less. This is not different from the motto of Ansaru- “Jihad Fi Sabilillah”, meaning "struggle for the cause of Allah". Such is the mindset of the Boko Haram that the Northern political and religious leaders are saying should be granted amnesty.

As a friend based in the States observed last year, Nigerians either in or out of government who oppose the idea that Boko Haram be designated FTO are those Nigerians who are afraid that the eagle eyes of the US intelligence officers might detect the funds the former have looted from Nigeria’s treasury. Certainly, it is a plausible reason. If it is, then, that is a more compelling reason why the Obama administration should expedite action in designating Boko Haram FTO.

The US, besides adding this to the steps she has already taken to combat terrorism in Nigeria and West Africa, should take a deeper and comprehensive look at the situation in Nigeria. That deeper and comprehensive look at the Nigerian situation if done in good faith ought to lead the Obama administration to the conclusion that Nigeria can no longer be sustained as one country. This is the hard and bitter truth. There is so much blood being spilled because of the ultra contestation for power and control of its resources concentrated at the centre in Nigeria. It is a time bomb that would still have gone off with time, anyway. Boko Haram has only shortened the explosion time.

Reflectively, I think this was what led the US intelligence community a decade ago, like I mentioned earlier, to predict that Nigeria might not endure beyond 2015. And those who think that Nigeria should be preserved at all costs so that they will continue to steal and squander the resources of others abused the agencies involved. Today, the reality is staring all of us in the face. The US and the international community should ask themselves this critical question: ‘Should we wait for new and perhaps, bigger Balkan Wars to happen in Africa?” Presently, Nigeria looks uglier than the picture Yugoslavia presented before Yugoslavia’s descent into the abyss of wars and genocide.   

It is about time the US acted in concert with the international community to de-activate that time bomb ticking away in Nigeria peacefully. Delay could be dangerous.

...Concluded

Contact Nkem Ekeopara: nkem360@googlemail.com

Ceasefire With Already Degraded Boko Haram Whose Interest Does It Serve

By Nkem Ekeopara

nkem360@googlemail.com

On Monday July 8, 2013, the British interior ministry announced that the Islamic fundamentalist group Boko Haram operating in Northern Nigeria is to be banned in Britain under anti-terror laws with effect from Friday July 12, 2013. To be banned too is Minbar Ansar Deen, also known as Ansar al-Sharia UK. The ban, which many believe will receive the blessing of the British parliament, “will make membership of, and support for, these organisations a criminal offence” according to the ministry. Explaining the rationale behind this move, the ministry stated that “The government is determined to work with the international community to tackle terrorism and take the steps necessary to keep the UK public safe.” The action of the British government may not be unconnected with the brutal murder of a British soldier, Lee Rigby, on a London Street in May this year by two British Nigerians, Michael Adebolaji and Michael Adebowale.

Hours after the British interior ministry made the above announcement; the Federal Government of Nigeria announced that it had signed a ceasefire deal with Boko Haram. According to the Nigerian Vanguard newspapers, the ceasefire agreement announcement was made by Alhaji Tanimu Turaki on Radio France International Hausa service monitored in Kano that Monday afternoon. Alhaji Tanimu Turaki is the Minister of Special Duties and Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Dialogue and Peaceful Resolution of the security challenges in Northern Nigeria, commonly derisively referred to as Amnesty Committee by many Nigerians, who are outraged by the plan of the government of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan to reward these religious ideologues that have murdered thousands of innocent Nigerians with amnesty. Alhaji Turaki was to be reported the next day to have modified his statement that what his committee and the terrorist group had reached was an “understanding for ceasefire” largely for the sake of Ramandan, which was to begin the next day July 10, 2013. As cogent as the reason for the ceasefire is, one still wonders if the statement made in London and that of Alhaji Turaki’s, surprisingly made on Radio France International Hausa service instead of the BBC Hausa service that Nigerians are so accustomed to, were mere coincidences.

In any case, besides the latest British move, the United States had on June 20, 2013, labelled the acclaimed leader of Boko Haram, Imam Abubakar Shekau, and two of his partners in perpetration of horrendous acts against innocent Nigerians - Abubakar Adam Kambar and Khalid al-Barnawi as global terrorists thus giving the US the leverage it needs to hunt down these terrorists. And on June 3, 2013, the US raised the stakes by posting a reward of $7m (N1.1bn) to anyone that would provide information that would lead to the capture of the leader of the Boko Haram terrorist group, Imam Shekau. It is hard to tell though if the US has abandoned its initial resolve of slipping in strange excuses for Boko Haram insurgency while attacks by the group were accompanied by silence from Washington. Both Washington and London have been known in the past and in recent times to robustly advance the cause of the North, the birth place of the Islamic group. There are enough grounds to believe America may have been worried over Boko Haram not being content with appealing to locals for support but engaging in what amounted to sacrilege by openly calling on the Afghanistan Taliban for help. And London may not rule out a passageway between the so-called Underwear Bomber and the latest Nigerian British attackers of the British soldier to the fundamentalists in Nigeria. Be that as it may, it all indicated that the door was closing for Boko Haram.

Of course, everyone in Nigeria and beyond knows that the Nigerian ruler Dr. Jonathan on May 14, 2013, finally found the courage to declare a state of emergency in three states in North East Nigeria; notably Borno, Yobe and Adamawa. Although Dr. Jonathan’s critics, especially the members of opposition parties, do not see the impact of that action, the truth is that Boko Haram has been significantly degraded since then. The fact is that many of these opposition members deliberately refuse to accept a well understood phenomenon that it takes just one successful operation by terrorists to create doubts in the minds of citizens of any nation  fighting terrorism with regards to the effectiveness of the action(s) their government has taken to protect them. It took the successful Boston Marathon bombings allegedly carried out by the Chechen brothers, Tarmerlin and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on April 15, 2013, to puncture the superb job the United States government had done in preventing terrorist attacks on in the US since the 11th day of September 2001. As it is commonly said, any government fighting terrorism has to be hundred percent successful all the time, while the terrorists just need to be successful once to create an impact.

Undoubtedly, the Nigerian security forces have inflicted a devastating blow on the Boko Haram terrorists. Therefore, it is pertinent that one asks, “Ceasefire with Already Degraded Boko Haram: Whose Interest Does It Serve?” It is important that this question be asked, knowing that Boko Haram is a spent force now. Therefore, the Nigerian people should not allow this government to take the wrong steps. 

One of the reactions which I found quite apt while reviewing the immediate reactions of some Nigerians interviewed by the Vanguard late evening of Monday 8 July, 2013 was a statement credited to Afenifere’s National Publicity Secretary, Mr Yinka Odumakin. Mr. Odumakin while offering his views to a Vanguard reporter on the development asked, “Is it a strategy to rule or what is it all about?” I found this statement quite appropriate in view of the fact that the previous day, Sunday July 7, 2013, the Governor of Niger State and Chairman Northern Governors Forum, Dr. Babangida Aliyu, had declared that the North would negotiate with those angling to become Nigeria’s president in 2015 in order to protect the interests of the North. Governor Aliyu stated this while inaugurating the office complex for federal workers in Enagi headquarters of Edati Local Government of his state. Hitherto, Governor Aliyu had spoken on the North’s quest for Nigeria’s presidency in 2015 in a manner that conveyed the impression that it was a core Northerner’s entitlement to become Nigeria’s president in 2015. He used the occasion to dispel that widely held impression.

Incidentally, in the early hours of the previous day, Saturday July 6, 2013, insurgents operating in the ruthless fashion of Boko Haram Islamic militants had stormed the Government Secondary School in the town of Mamudo, Yobe State, North East Nigeria and gruesomely murdered 30 innocent children and a teacher, with scores injured. I found it quite unsettling that Dr. Aliyu didn’t use that occasion to strongly condemn that inhuman act. Instead he found the occasion more auspicious to talk about the 2015 presidential election. It makes one wonder about what is actually important to Nigerian rulers. Is it the sanctity of human life or the quest for power? In bears reminding Nigerian rulers that the great Nelson Mandela once said that, “In countries where innocent people are dying, the leaders are following their blood rather than their brains.”

Not quite a few Nigerians believe that the upsurge of the activities of Boko Haram since Dr. Goodluck Jonathan was elected to rule Nigeria is a stratagem by some powerful core Northerners to make the country ungovernable for Jonathan. Such people point to the threatening statements made by some of these Northerners after the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) picked Dr. Jonathan to fly its flag in the 2011 presidential contest, as evidence of the Northerners’ complicity. Of course, the Northern leadership believes that poverty and not the above reason is responsible for terrorism in their region. However, the unvarnished truth is that Boko Haram members are a group of people who have declared on a number of occasions that they are fighting for the establishment of a Nigerian state based on the Sharia Law. Only a few occasions have they targeted Muslims. Their targets have always been Christians in churches on Easter and Christmas Day and, of course, a critical symbol of the Nigerian state, the security forces. The fact that Boko Haram never declared any truce during Easter and Christmas celebrations is a pointer to the fact that the principal targets are Christians and will always be.

But if one may ask; Which Boko Haram group has the government of Nigeria reached “ceasefire understanding” with? Does the government know how many splinter groups of the Congregation and People of Tradition for Proselytism and Jihad (Jamā'a Ahl al-sunnah li-da'wa wa al-jihād) widely known as Boko Haram that are in existence? At least, we know of one splinter group, Vanguard for the Protection of Muslims in Black Lands (Jamāʿatu Anṣāril Muslimīna fī Bilādis Sūdān), commonly called Ansaru. There could be several other splinter groups.

More importantly, whose interest is a ceasefire with a significantly degraded Boko Haram that unarmed kids who should be in school are now on the streets of Maiduguri trying to fish out going to serve?  Is it a strategy to rule or what is it all about as Mr. Odumakin penetratingly asked? Is it a way the North wants to use to get as much resources as what they think the Niger Delta region is getting? Is the ceasefire with a significantly degraded Boko Haram going to be used to blackmail the Jonathan government into allocation of huge resources to youth programmes or outright pay off to mass killers at the expense of Nigerian youth from other regions of Nigeria?  Is the ceasefire with a degraded Boko Haram going to serve some interests among the ruling class in Nigeria who are waiting in the wings for the dole outs to sustain their opulent lifestyle? Or is it a move to support Dr. Jonathan for a second term in 2015? So far, the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) through its spokesperson, Professor Ango Abdullahi had vociferously insisted that if Jonathan returns to power, Nigeria will breakup. Is this the point of the North’s willingness now to negotiate with any presidential aspirant for the 2015 election? How would a ceasefire with a significantly degraded Boko Haram serve the interest of the victims of Boko Haram’s years of murderous campaigns? 

Some people may point at the Taliban’s new move of trying to have direct talks with the United States by opening a political office in Doha, Qatar. Instructively, since June 18, 2013, when the Taliban opened that office and draped it with the flag of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, not much progress has been made. Recently, that flag has been removed to address the concerns of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Reuters of July 9, 2013 quoted diplomatic sources as saying that the move is “expected to be a difficult and unpredictable peace process”. And Taliban is not known to have a splinter group. Taliban were former rulers of Afghanistan. Even though the talk of negotiation is in the air, the Taliban continues to launch frequent and effective attacks on the Afghan army, the international military forces in Afghanistan and other targets of interest.

But this is not our case in Nigeria. Boko Haram has been significantly degraded. And Nigeria is not dealing with former rulers of Nigeria, who were ‘smoked’ out of office. Nigeria is dealing with a group that believes that Nigeria should become “Islamic Emirate of Nigeria” with them in charge. Nigeria is dealing with a group of demented ideologues who in the pursuit of their objective, massacred thousands of innocent Nigerians, maimed many more, displaced and destroyed the business enterprises of the victims.

On Tuesday July 9, 2013, a federal high court sitting in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, sentenced four members of Boko Haram to life imprisonment for killing 19 people in separate bombing incidents in Suleja, Niger State, near Abuja, in 2011, as well as an explosion that took the lives of 3 policemen in Dakina Village, Bwuari, Abuja. This is the first time any member of the Islamic fundamentalist group was jailed. Many Nigerians are disappointed that these people responsible for abruptly terminating the lives of their fellow citizens would be kept in prison to be sustained by tax payers’ money instead of having them executed. In the United States, one of the surviving alleged Boston Marathon bombers, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was arraigned in a federal court in Boston on July 10, 2013, for his suspected role in the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15, 2013. Dzhokhar, if convicted, will face the death penalty. If a terrorist who inflicted minimal damage on the American people could face death penalty why should terrorists in Nigeria, who have murdered thousands, have the luxury of life sentence? Is Nigeria more civilised than America? Knowing the way state pardon is granted to all manner of criminals in Nigeria, the possibility of these murderers being released after a few years in imprison is quite high. Is that the path Nigeria should take not to talk of granting them amnesty?

The blood of thousands of innocent Nigerians gruesomely murdered is crying for justice. That justice does not rest upon a ceasefire with Boko Haram, especially now that the Nigerian security forces have significantly cut down Boko Haram’s capacity to freely operate; now, that the United States actions and the UK move have made their invincibility extremely vulnerable. Therefore, what is required at the moment is that the Nigerian security forces be further encouraged to mop up the remnants of this group and for the Nigerian government to bring the captured to face justice like the four just sentenced for life.

*This article first appeared on  Nkem Ekeopara's website 

Tambuwal Ought to Lead the Revolution He Advocates for Nigeria

By Nkem Ekeopara

nkem360@googlemail.com

Sunday, July 7, 2013

There is nowhere in the world were the English proverb "You can't eat your cake and have it” ought to become a jingle played every second in the public and private electronic media outlets than in Nigeria. This should be so to remind top ranking Nigerian officials of the utter folly inherent in some of their public statements even when they remain a key part of the Nigerian problematic system they duplicitously attack at their convenience.

Also, the quoted English proverb needs to be made into a jingle to be played every second in Nigeria. This should be done to remind the Nigerian populace of the presence of these politicians already bitten by the bug of rapaciousness, but now seemingly seeking for a way to embed themselves within the consciousness of the poverty-stricken Nigerian people to achieve an end. The average Nigerian official wants to have it both ways. And this is quite shameful.

Last week, the Nigerian media was awash with news that the Speaker of Nigeria’s House of Representatives, Hon. Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, described Nigeria as being ripe for a revolution. As it is expected of one living in this age where information is gotten at the touch of a keyboard, upon encountering a statement as weighty as a revolution, the first thing one did was to read the various reports of that news from several sources, and to try and locate the Speaker’s speech. This was necessary to get the kernel of the speech to know the context in which the word was uttered. Regrettably, the extensive efforts made to locate the speech before concluding this article on July 4, 2013 did not yield any result.

However, several of the sources did quote Hon. Tambuwal as having said that, “The most compelling reasons for revolution throughout the ages were injustice, crushing poverty, marginalisation, rampant corruption, lawlessness, joblessness, and general disaffection with the ruling elite. You will agree with me that these describe conditions in our nation now, to a very large degree.” He went on, stressing, “That these conditions exist is well known to all persons in authority but the results of these successive efforts have failed to yield the desired results. This therefore is the justification for the radical change from the present approach to a revolutionary one.”

Hon. Tambuwal spoke on Tuesday July 2, 2013 at the 2013 Distinguished Management Lecture of the Nigerian Institute of Management in Lagos, and was represented by Hon. Opeyemi Bamidele, Chairman, House Committee on Legislative Budget and Research. The lecture whose theme was “The role of the legislature on the economic, infrastructural and ethical revolution in Nigeria,” was reported to have been kick-started with a welcome speech by the President and Chairman of NIM, Chief Michael Olawale-Cole, in which Chief Olawale-Cole stated that more than ever before, Nigeria needed an urgent intellectual revolution to tackle the many leadership challenges besetting her.

As someone who closely monitored the political process in Nigeria from the time the so-called cabal held Nigeria hostage - because of the late Nigerian ruler Alhaji Musa Yar’Adua’s health condition - right through the general elections in 2011 and, as someone who did in fact write commentaries for www.usafricaonline.com at the critical junctures of that era, I do know that Tambuwal is one of the beneficiaries of a much better electoral process when compared to the electoral heist that was superintended by Olusegun Obasanjo’s regime in 2003 and 2007. But for the current Nigerian ruler Dr. Goodluck Jonathan’s mantra of “one man, one vote”, with Dr. Jonathan’s appointment of Professor Attahiru Jega as the Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and with Jonathan’s refusal to deploy security forces to stand guard while already written results were being declared, as was the case in 2003 and 2007 and, of course, the resolve of the voters to protect their votes, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Tambuwal’s present party, would have won more than the 260 seats it won in 2007 instead of 205 seats it won in 2011.

In other words, if conditions that attended the 2003 and 2007 had prevailed in 2011, the PDP would have won an overwhelming majority. Were that to have been the case, Tambuwal would never have become the Speaker of House of Representatives, knowing PDP’s antecedent of the party’s hierarchy being the ultimate decider of who occupies such seats. This is not to say that the PDP is the only party in Nigeria where the hierarchy undemocratically makes the choice of who occupies which office as we continue to see daily that in parties like Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), one man, Senator Ahmed Bola Tinubu, does that freely in his party.

The point one is trying to make is that Tambuwal became the Speaker of the House of Representatives due to the support of the opposition members of the House, largely members of the ACN, the South West-rooted party, who did not want the choice of the PDP hierarchy to prevail. Already, the PDP hierarchy had zoned that office to the South West and had actually chosen Mrs. Mulikat Adeola-Akande, who is currently the leader of the House of Representatives, as the person to occupy the position of the Speaker.

Now, one would have expected Tambuwal, on assumption of office, to have persuaded his colleagues to forgo the insane emolument they consume annually from the national budget. If he is the change agent he now implicitly wants us to believe, that’s what he ought to have done. If the House over which he presides had taken the lead, the Senate members would have had no option than to slash their own emolument. If Tambuwal and his colleagues had taken that initiative then, they would have escaped the scandalous revelation in 2012 by the Governor of Central Bank, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, that the National Assembly of Nigeria consumes 25% of overhead cost of running the country. On September 20, 2012, The PUNCH even reported that each member of the House as at that time was being paid N27m per quarter as allowances, and the members wanted that sum to be increased to N35m per quarter.

Today, what the jobless Nigerian youths see is legislators returning to their constituencies and handing out motorcycles to the youths to enable the latter operate as cyclists on rural roads, since commercial motorcyclists are banned from operating in most cities. House members share just a little of the large chunk of the national wealth to these youths as though they’re doing the youths a favour, when such resources could be freed to set up cottage industries to absorb these army of unemployed people. Does one need to mention how this sort of action would stem the tide of rural urban migration, provide a less dangerous and more dignifying work to the youths as well as enhance the Nigerian manufacturing capacity? Does one need to say such actions would reduce the rising wave of crimes in Nigeria now, even though the flagrant demonstration of opulence in the Nigerian society lures some of the youths to crime?

If Tambuwal wanted to ‘radically’ change the way things are done in Nigeria, he would have capitalized on the pre-election utterances of many of the opposition members of the House, particularly those from the South West, and put the issue of the so-called fiscal federalism on the front burner. One is disappointed that these ACN members, 69 of them, have never mentioned something supposedly close to the heart of the “progressive” forces in the course of their legislative duties. It shows that the bag of the so-called progressives is filled with nothing but electoral gimmicks. Without doubt, it would have been more credible if Tambuwal was the person who initiated such a move. For anyone to be at one of the high positions and failed to do any of the above, which majority of the Nigerian people desire, makes one wonder what such a person considers to be more “revolutionary” than those? In my opinion, these are the sort of revolutionary legislative acts Tambuwal ought to have been executing or even making attempts to execute to profoundly impact the Nigerian state. My advice to Hon. Tambuwal and his likes is that the revolution they advocate should start with them. 

  

The article first appeared on www.nkemekeopara.com

International Day Of Reflection On The Genocide In Rwanda: What Have Biafra And The Death Of Thatcher Got To Do With It?

By Nkem Ekeopara, Syndicated Columnist

Rwandan children orphaned by a cholera breakout in the refugee camps of Zaire lie down facing the same way to save room at a tiny, crowded orphanage in Goma. Their parents died of disease after fleeing the civil war in their home country. Image: David Turnley.

Last week, the hazardous situation in North Korea and the death of the former British Prime Minister Mrs. Margaret Thatcher dominated the news around the world. Those two issues are still very much in the news. But there was the other news that didn’t capture the attention of the world the way it ought to – the commemoration of the International Day of Reflection on the Genocide in Rwanda. In 2004, the UN declared April 7 as the International Day of Reflection on the Genocide in Rwanda.

To commemorate it this year, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon used the occasion to honour the victims and survivors of that genocide in which more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus lost their lives in the hands of Hutu extremists. Also, Mr. Ban used the occasion to emphasize the fact that countries have shared responsibilities to prevent genocide from happening again. Of course, some members of the Twa ethnic group also lost their lives in genocide in Rwanda. It’s a shame that this group is hardly mentioned when the genocide is discussed for, even if only one member of this group died or survived that heinous crime, it is worth honouring him/her too.

The indifference of a greater section of our world to this annual event is quite appalling. Every year, when this event is marked, the indifference of the world to it makes one to remember the words of Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire, the former Force Commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), who made commendable efforts to prevent the genocide, but was frustrated by the inexcusable noncommittal attitude of Mr. Kofi Annan, the head of the UN peacekeeping forces at the time, and the coldness of the UN Security Council.

During the 2004 Memorial Conference on the Genocide in Rwanda held at the UN, Lieutenant General Dallaire made a memorable and profound statement, which ought to keep the world on perpetual vigilance and infuse in the members of the Security Council the willingness to act hastily to prevent genocide anywhere. He did say: “I still believe that if an organisation decided to wipe out the 320 mountain gorillas there would be still more of a reaction by the international community to curtail or to stop that than there would still be today attempting to protect thousands of human beings being slaughtered in the same country.” This statement made a decade after the genocide is truer today than when it was made.

At the time the genocide in Rwanda started on April 7, 1994, I had argued that what Mr. Kofi Annan as the head of UN peacekeeping forces and more importantly as an African needed to have done was to dramatize the situation by offering to resign his job with the global body if his reasoned advice, if any, was falling on the deaf ears of the members of the UN Security Council. Anyone who was following closely what was going on in Rwanda at the time knew that the situation was clearly like a tree that screamed before falling. Such a tree, my Igbo elders say, does not kill anyone.

Additionally, I had stretched the argument by positing that Mr. Annan ought to have known that because Africans were involved, the powers-that-be in global politics, nebulously subsumed under the tag “International Community”, which essentially are the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the other two permanent members of the Security Council outside NATO, Russia and China, would not act with haste and optimally to prevent the genocide from happening. I strongly believed and still do that the experience of the Biafran people ought to have taught him (Annan) the bitter lesson that the value placed on the life of an African is very much less than that placed on the Caucasian or indeed, any other racial group in the world.

The later events in Bosnia-Herzegovina on one hand and in Dafur on the other vindicated one on the assertion that the UN was indecisive on the Rwandan case because Africans were involved. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, NATO and the UN through close collaboration that resulted in a number of resolutions, brought to an end various acts of genocide and saved many lives. We saw a similar collaboration in preventing genocide in Kosovo. Whereas in Dafur, we saw the UN dithering in bringing to an end the unimaginable and systematic destruction visited on Africans by the Government of Sudan through its proxy Arab militia called Janjaweed. In September 2004, the former US Secretary of State Colin Powell declared what was going on in Dafur as genocide.

But in Rwanda, we had a Kofi Annan who failed to take a very important decision some would unfortunately argue an average Caucasian would easily have taken. He didn’t dramatize the situation by offering to quit, which could have altered the cause of events in Rwanda and changed our world. There were those who believed quite strongly then and their conviction became reinforced after Mr. Annan became the Secretary-General, that he didn’t dramatize the situation by resigning because he did not want to lose career progression in the global body. It is interesting to note that he also got a Nobel Peace Prize eventually.

To be fair to him, he was not the first African who found himself in such a situation. Before him, there was Mr. Emeka Anyaoku. Mr. Anyaoku was honing his career in the Commonwealth of Nations when about 50,000 of his Igbo people were slaughtered in Nigeria, especially in Northern Nigeria in 1966 following the crisis that engulfed that British contraption that year. Subsequently, during the Biafra-Nigeria War between 1967 and 1970, another 3.1m of the Igbo people and some members of the ethnic minorities like the Efik, the Annang and the Ijaw that constituted the former Eastern Region of Nigeria before it was declared as Biafra, lost their lives.

But rather than joining the rank of his contemporaries like Professor Chinua Achebe in the war efforts, Mr. Anyaoku remained with the Commonwealth of Nations where he later became Secretary-General. And this was a war in which Britain, the mother of the Commonwealth of Nations extensively collaborated with Russia, Egypt and the Arab league not only in arming the Nigerian side, but in providing them with advisers and the diplomatic support they needed at the UN and other international bodies. It was a war in which starvation was used as a weapon of war that led to the death millions of children.

The question is, how do all these relate to the “International Day of Reflection on the Genocide in Rwanda: What have Biafra and the death of Thatcher got to do with it?”

Let me first observe that during the Biafra-Nigeria war in which Nigeria was clearly the aggressor, the world was silent; the world abandoned Biafra; with the exception of Ivory Coast, Tanzania, Gabon, Zambia and Haiti that recognised her as a sovereign state. France and Portugal assisted Biafra covertly. Also, let me underscore the fact that at the time that war was fought, the world did not accept that what happened in Biafra was genocide. The world did not accept that the Nigerian rulers at that time like Rtd. Gen. Yakubu Gowon who was the head of the military junta, Rtd. Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo and Rtd. Gen. Theophilus Danjuma, who are still alive, perpetrated genocide against the Biafran people.

However, following the release of Professor Chinua Achebe’s memoir on the war, There Was A Country, which I consider a Nunc Dimittis of sort, the humane people around the world now acknowledge that the Nigerian rulers committed genocide in Biafra. The controversy that trailed the release of the book, in particular the weight of what Professor Achebe wrote on some of the key dramatis personae like the Yoruba leader, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, made it possible for highly respected individuals like the Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka himself a Yoruba, to strongly affirm that truly genocide was committed in Biafra.

Some people might say there is a difference between the genocide in Rwanda, which is today officially recognised by the UN, and the genocide in Biafra that is not so recognised. To such people, I would say yes. And there are two reasons for this. In the genocide in Rwanda, the perpetrators were not the victors, unlike in Nigeria where the perpetrators were victorious and have made every effort since the “end” of the war to erase the genocide from even our memory. Also, unlike in the Rwandan case where some of the perpetrators have been brought to justice, in Nigeria, no such thing has happened.    

Well, others might say one happened during the cold war era and the other at a time when there was the uni-polar supremacy of the United States and therefore could easily be recognised as genocide, especially as the US president at the time did not act to prevent it. But I will not agree, because even in that cold war era, Britain and USSR set aside their differences and collaborated to defeat Biafra to further their respective economic interests. The unconcerned posture of the US in the war might lead some people to believe that it tacitly supported the immoral role Britain played in the war.

In the wake of the passing of Mrs. Thatcher, world leaders have been pouring encomiums on her. The knocks she has received have come from the millions she pauperised in her country, Britain, and a few of us who as very young Africans felt aggrieved by her robust support for the Apartheid machine that jailed Nelson Mandela for 27 years. Yes, she has received knocks from a few of us who felt dehumanised by her effrontery in branding Mandela a terrorist. And yes, she got knocks from a few of us who felt aggrieved by her robust support for an evil system that massacred innocent teenagers in 1976 that protested against the imposition of an inferior educational curricular on them, and in which Afrikaans was introduced as the language of instruction.  

My impression of Mrs. Thatcher is that she, like P.W.Botha and Ronald Reagan, constituted the topmost trio on the list of those I branded as forces of darkness of that era. She in particular, was a metaphor for inhumanity.

It would be expecting too much from the world, in particular the Rwandan people, and Igbo people of a certain generation, not to give some knocks to Mr. Annan and Mr. Anyaoku respectively on their passing for their aforementioned despicable behaviour in the face of mass death of their kind. If it is an African tradition not to speak ill of the dead, I am sure there would be those who would consign that tradition to where it belongs-the cesspools, when the time comes.

The world leaders who lied through their teeth and engaged in loads of diplomatic niceties in Mrs. Thatcher’s case, instead of spicing their praises, which they think she so deserves with deserved knocks as well, must remember that if we want to breed a generation that respects and upholds truth as a necessary ingredient in tackling all sorts of evil that strip us of our humanity, then they must not fail to seize moments such as Mrs. Thatcher’s passing to build the culture of truth.

The above is even more so for leaders who appear to be role models to millions of young people around the globe that look at them as the essence of humanity.