The recent multiple bomb blasts that killed about 17 people in Maiduguri, Borno State underscore the staying power of militants who have continued to terrorise the country, despite claims by the military authorities that they have flushed the militants out. The problem has been described by President Goodluck Jonathan as worse than Nigeria’s civil war.
Since 2009, Islamic insurgents known as Boko Haram have caused the deaths of thousands, including an attack on the United Nations’ building in Abuja and churches in some parts of the north, which made the Federal Government to impose emergency rule in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states, since May last year. After a number of political activists made a case for it late last year, the United States designated Boko Haram as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation.
The military even claimed a major victory last June when it declared that it had killed the Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, the news which Nigerians took with guarded caution. And, just last Christmas, in a video posted online, Shekau reappeared, declaring himself alive. In the video, he was dressed in a military fatigue and abused the President. He did not spare the United States’ president, Barak Obama, France’s Francois Hollande and Queen Elizabeth, the trio of whom he said should be ashamed to have believed he was dead.
After this recent bomb attacks, elders from the north, traditional rulers, as well as someone from the Office of the National Security Adviser, who also hails from the north, met to find a “solution” to the Boko Haram problem.
Negotiation with the terrorists has been proposed, including an amnesty, which has all failed.
Islamic insurgency follows an ideology.
Shekau insists that what he was doing was written in the holy Qur’an and the Hadith and that he would not stop. He has sworn never to allow democracy to thrive in the country, and that Nigeria would never be able to defeat his group.
Although poverty and inequality are contributory factors to the militancy, and even though some northern power bloc had told Jonathan that they would make the country ungovernable for him, because he had “reneged” on his earlier promise not to contest in 2011, no one has considered that the earnest wish of some Muslims in the north to have an Islamic state has contributed to the survival of the militancy.
The desire for an Islamic state in the Muslim-dominated north did not start today. Muslim fanatics known as Maitatsine had a violent confrontation with the Nigerian police in Kano in December 1980 and in Maiduguri in October 1982. Before this, the Maitatsine uprising had killed over 4,000 Nigerians. This fight to Islamise Nigeria has its root in the jihad (holy war) of Sheik Uthman dan Fodio of Sokoto. He had launched the war against the corrupt Hausa ruling class and put in place the Sharia in Sokoto which ruled much of what is the present day northern Nigeria. Initially, the war was to purify the region, but was soon corrupted.
The northern political elite jumped at the opportunity to play with the sentiments of their people when Jonathan, a Christian Southerner, won the presidential election in 2011, considering that his predecessor, Umaru Yar’Adua, who was a northern Muslim could not complete his tenure, having died in office. But the present political equation is making it increasingly difficult for a northerner to get the top seat. And it does not help that one Jonathan’s kinsmen has threatened “bloodshed” if their man does not get a second term.
Sharia rule has long been the wish of many Muslims in the north, which has pitted the north against the “largely Christian South”. In some northern states Sharia law is used. And Sharia laws have been carried out, including amputations. Only last November, 240,000 beer bottles were destroyed in Kano by the state operatives enforcing Sharia, against what they called “immoral” behaviour by minority Christians who live there. As the bottles were destroyed, those watching shouted “Allahu Ahkbar”, meaning “God is great”, same thing said when militants are carrying out beheadings.
Having lived in the north, I have educated Muslims of northern extraction as friends, who would want to be ruled by Sharia, and who have extolled its virtues. I also know some who are indifferent. And there are still some who would say one thing when you are alone with them and say another thing when with their elders. But majority northern Muslims if given a chance for a referendum would vote to be ruled by Sharia. But don’t we have such dogmatic preferences even among Christians?
Perhaps, northern Muslims feel their quest for an Islamic state is a legitimate claim, and might feel there has never been a greater opportunity of actualising their dream than now.
The love a northern Muslim has for a fellow Muslim is incomparable with any among ethnic group in Nigeria. Once I went to a market place and I felt someone trying to steal my wallet from my back pocket. I held his hand and shouted. I saw an embarrassed young man in his early 20s. Down south, he would have been lynched, and even a car tyre placed round his neck and burnt to death. But people around laughed it away and did not even as much as chide him. There, Boko Haram means a brother, a husband, an uncle, a cousin, a neighbour, a friend, a fellow Muslim. This brotherhood even goes beyond the country as a Nigerian northern Muslim has greater affinity for another Muslim in neighbouring countries. That may partly explain Nigeria’s porous borders, which has helped worsen terrorism.
This year, Nigeria is celebrating 100 years of its amalgamation. And many who feel that the country’s problems came with the forced marriage wonder if it is worth celebrating.
Meanwhile, before the 2015 elections, which may be a “do-or-die” affair, there is a plan for a national conference in which Nigerians are to talk about how they will live together, but the problem is there are “no-go” areas which includes that Nigeria must not break up. In addition, whatever is deliberated will not go through a referendum and regrettably, it is not a sovereign conference, as the National Assembly has to ratify the recommendations. The opposition has called it a sham in the making.
Where no end seems in sight in the recurring loss of human lives and properties, it remains to be seen how long nationalism can survive.
As Boko Haram cannot be wished away, so too is the quest for northern Muslims to have an Islamic state.
The Soviet option therefore remains a valid option, so that those that want Islamic states may rule themselves. There is still the way of Yugoslavia, so that Nigerians can go their separate ways. I fear that the opportunity may be missed if the upcoming national conference is not utilised optimally. How much is “One indivisible Nigeria” really worth? The answer may be found in the wasted blood flowing in the land.
Dr Cosmas Odoemena
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