EDITORIAL

Resolving the Boko Haram Issue …June 18, 2011

When authorities decide to take on any faceless group bound by some deep convictions, in lieu of two-way negotiative strategy that resolves the issue, it ends up being a drawn out war with no end in sight.   It usually ends up in no win for both, regardless of who has might, power, and resources.  Very soon the main reason behind the crisis gets lost, and all the headlines flash around for people to read are about casualties, and more casualties.  As time moves on, both sides play with people’s sentiments winning a section of the citizens to their side, and before long you get a civil strife, civil war, or rebel and government kind warfare.

The Boko Haram [also called Yusufiyya] issue resulting in the Thursday bombing in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital displays the failure of government to effectively deal with a simple problem that continues since then to grow into a threat. It is not playing brave and mucho for authorities to play politics with serious issues of security, thereby endangering more lives of its citizens unnecessarily.  It does not take genius to reach a sane decision that the best time to study serious problems like this genuinely and from all angles with the aim of resolving it is now.  Crises like the one between authorities and the Boko Haram group need to be deeply analyzed and genuinely tackled. 

We have to walk on from reality towards solutions. Such groups have similar mindset.  And regardless of them being religious, political, economic or social; and regardless of what they call themselves, whether militants, guerrilla warfare activists, freedom fighters etc., they tend to have the conviction and courage to fight and give up their lives, more than those operating from the side of the established authorities.  Governments usually misjudge them, and simplify the issue, thereby ending up with drawn out struggle that leads to serious loss of lives and property.

It is for this reason that most wise governments tend to objectively look at the cause of the menace, analyze alternatives and apply workable solutions.  Just like real battlefield wars, once you start them they get a life of their own, feeding on all vices present within the society such as any misunderstandings, divisions, misconceptions, prejudices etc. to sustain itself through years and years.

Our research, conversations, including monitoring of various media discussions including call in radio shows since the blast that occurred last Thursday at the National Police Headquarters Abuja, show that the situation is not as complex as many people would like us to believe.  It appears that a great majority of ordinary people you speak with, especially those who follow keenly the establishment of the Boko Haram group and its activities to date who also share the religion of Islam with them, do not believe in their religious ideology at all. 

Yet most of such people, including those who have lost family members to the crisis at one time or another believe that the government was very unjust to the group and have turned them into what they are today.  You do not have to believe in any religion or ideology, but in a country where the freedom of religion and its expression is part of its constitution, where cultists, Shriners and ritualists who daily kidnap and murder people down South operate without much hindrance, you cannot provoke, incite, or oppress any group for practicing what they believe in within the confines of law.  No one has that right.  

Though no one seems to know when precisely the group was formed, the movement with a pretty recent history began to be known in 2009 when they had their first encounter with members of the Police Force.  No one before then accused them of violence.  But the police were reported to deliberately begin to provoke them, including an incident where the police harassed them on their way to the cemetery to bury their dead colleague killed earlier by the same members of the police force in an incident for which again the police were reported to have provoked them without cause.  Thereafter the group, for the first time, was reported to have gathered and attacked a police station.

Since then, members of the group have always targeted the police only or highly placed government officials whom they believe were unjust and oppressive to them or their group members.  They have granted various interviews including some with international radio stations, and each time they have stressed that they are fighting the authorities only and would not endanger any civilian, at least not deliberately.  They decried the extra judicial killing of their leader Muhammad Yusuf in Maiduguri while in police custody. Their leader had a right which the constitution guaranteed him to stand trial, they asserted.

They decried the manner in which the police were displayed on television across the world carrying out house to house search of people they claim are members of the group without the benefit of providing authenticating proof to any other authority, lining them up and gunning them down execution style in front of their houses without benefit of trial. Finally they also decried the continued detention of their members without bringing them to trial.  While most of those extrajudicial killings by members of the police force has subsided [at least publicly], nothing was done about bringing their detained members to trial or else release them.  They were left languishing in jails without trial. 

When all attempts to make the authorities listen to their frustrations failed, they issued an open threat to the Former Governor of Borno State Ali Modu Sheriff who seems to be their number one target then, followed by the Bauchi State Governor Isa Yuguda.  Yusufiyya headquarters is in Borno State, with a large membership base in Bauchi.  They once blasted the Bauchi city prison and freed their untried members.  And it was reported that before they started that operation with machine guns, they calmly came into town, attended congregational prayer without being noticed, and thereafter brought out their arms and informed street vendors around the prison that they are safe they need not ran away for they will not harm anyone.  They just came to free their detained members held without trial.  They successfully freed them.

So, the group has for long placed before the people detailed reasons for what they do.  Contrary to pronouncement by the government that Boko Haram is after the people, Boko Haram has accepted responsibility for the Thursday blast, but have openly said they were after the Inspector General of Police. Days earlier the IG Hafiz Ringim had issued a public threat to crush them, saying their days are numbered; which they apparently took to mean annihilation once again execution style.  They understood that to mean the use of brute force against them once again, instead of attending to their grievances.  The group announced after the bombing that they want to teach the Nigerian authorities, especially the IG who issued the threat that the authorities are indeed vulnerable and could be targeted any time.

The most unfortunate thing is, to date there seems to be no sincerity from the side of the authorities to go after the most direct and decisive alternative that will put the fire out.  The government especially at the federal level appears to find the situation a convenient political game that it may use in finger pointing, point scoring, and possibly a stepping stone to joining the wider world in saying it also has terrorism threat within its midst, drawing to itself resources and the attention of the developed countries.  

The police force in Nigeria is run by the Federal government, regardless of their operating location.  They take orders from the federal government even while working locally.  It is for that reason that we place the responsibility for the exigencies of the police force squarely on the shoulders of the federal government; most especially for not reigning in the Police Force who have apparently taken a stance in making their job, when it comes to Boko Haram an egotistical vendetta that results in unnecessary causalities.  And for taking an unusually long time in bringing people to trial, and in finding other ways to resolve a simple crisis that place the authorities outside of the law, and the group, though ideologically awkward to many, and one that continues to grow into a security threat, drawing the sympathy of a generality of the people who know the issues.

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