MOVING FORWARD: BOKO HARAM

A while back I wrote about how to stop Boko Haram, I who is NOT a war expert. At the time and up till now I felt it was somewhat presumptuous of me to do so. This was before both Nyanya bombings and the kidnapping in Chibok. One thing I pondered, perhaps after I wrote it and had not mentioned was why ECOMOG had not intervened. For those who don’t know, ECOMOG is an arm of ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African State. ECOMOG soldiers were in the past sent to deal with conflicts within these states. It seemed only fitting that Nigeria. who over the past years has deployed its troops to varying African countries even outside of its West African region would not have a problem asking for help from of all people, the ECOWAS community.

          

At first I thought maybe it was just us being Nigerian, too proud to beg, ask. Then I heard that ECOMOG soldiers don’t exist anymore. I was too lazy to research and besides I’m not a paid journalist, but that still doesn’t nullify the point I’m trying to make. So assuming ECOMOG soldiers no dey, what happened to the African Union, which I am quite aware still DOES exist?! You see the fact that we now have U.S and U.K troops in Nigeria, not to mention the Israeli counter-terrorist experts, the Chinese and a French president who thinks we now need to have a meeting with neighbouring African countries presumably in France, I’m worried.

           

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful for the help for what we ourselves seemingly CAN’T accomplish, but what bothers me is how did we pass ECOWAS and then the A.U to the point where I feel another carving of Africa is about to happen. PLEASE, do get our girls back. We ARE desperate, but in a world of political and NOT to mention economic interest, I am worried. Nigeria has perhaps never gotten so much attention in the past 5 years, that the only 2 good things about this is that 1.) Gladly it WAS started by Nigerians (no White Saviour complex here to complain about) and 2.) The world seemed to have responded to a timely issue when we needed them, though we can debate how timely and also point out the fact that we WEREN’T exactly doing it for the world to notice, but are grateful nonetheless.

           

The girls have been sighted and we do hope they are free soon, so all our government’s shenanigans and display of incompetence can well, no longer be on display till when next they become so callous. There are questions still to ask and suggestions to consider in the hopeful aftermath of Boko Haram like how does Shekau upload videos to YouTube in the Sambisa forest, while some of us in urban areas of Nigeria complain about internet coverage. What network provider is he using? As someone complained on Twitter, “I can’t watch this video on my network, but Shekau gets to upload videos anyhow! ANYHOW!” It seems funny, but if you can answer that question, then you might be able to explain how a group of men survive in a forest of what is mostly an arid state. What do they eat? How do they move 200 plus schoolgirls silently? And what happens when we bring them down? Who carries their camera equipment and how do they recharge their batteries? Why does Shekau come off as a Mandarin type a la Iron Man 3 like someone is paying him to portray all the negative stereotypes about Muslims and Islam? Why does he have the girls reading the Qur’an when there’s no inscription in it that says: This is strictly Eastern knowledge, NOT Western? I checked! Matter of fact that book makes it clear that this is knowledge for mankind, so which book has Shekau been reading? I hope he’s not getting all his information off the internet? If it’s not Western education per se that is the group’s enemy, but rather the Western educational system which we can all trace to the likes of Plato and Socrates, does he not know most of those early Greek knowledge might’ve been lost had the early Muslims NOT help translate them to varying languages? Should we know go and dig up their graves and scorch them since as he proclaims, “Boko Haram”? Was he not hugged enough as a child, because even his predecessor Mohammed Yusuf did not go to this extreme? Yusuf mostly attacked the law in the form of the police, primarily of the state of Borno.

           

Moving on, I hope the government will have a peace and reconciliation committee when all this ends and we bring an end to the terror, because they are just as complacent as the terrorist. There is already a generation of Nigerians who are now the product of a war and how this affects them in the aftermath of it will determine not just how their lives may turn out, but how the future of this country will as well. There is still some resentment brewing and NOT just against Boko Haram, but against a government that despite its earlier efforts had seemingly abandoned a region till the 11^th hour.

          
I do have to commend the army for when they captured Mohammed Yusuf and handed him to the state authorities who then tragically killed him without trial. The army has had a bad rep for being too high-handed. It’s funny that the one-time they did something right in a long time by capturing Yusuf and then handing him over, things got worse. Things like this make me wonder, can you do right in Nigeria without getting burnt?