Boko Haram

With pain and anguish, I decided to make this communication with your soul, which I believe is resting well. I must confess that I do not know you personally, as I was not born when you held sway as the Premier of the defunct Northern Region. However, I have heard so much about you from my late father. He narrated stories about how you conducted your political activities geared towards our region’s progress.

Today, things are no longer at ease in Arewa. The land of our great ancestors is in chaos and anarchy while life has become nasty, brutish and short. Arewa has been turned to a killing field by terrorists with the blood of innocent people crying for vengeance. The elites that took over the mantle of leadership from you have destroyed all that you laboured to build. They live in luxury and great comfort while most people are dying in poverty and hunger. Their children study in Ivy League schools in the West with public funds and return home to take the best jobs while the children of the poor are roaming the streets and eating from the dust bin. Many families can no longer eat three meals per day, as good food has become a luxury. The cost of living has continued to rise with stagnant wages.

Sardauna, you are known as a warrior who strived hard during your era to emancipate the poor by ensuring that parents sent their children to school, which was free those days. Your late daughter Hajiya Aishatu, whom I interviewed at her residence in Sokoto in 2013 during my stint with THISDAY Newspaper, spoke extensively on how you carried all along and worked tirelessly to ensure unity in the north irrespective of tribe or religious affiliation.

It is no longer at ease at the moment. The children of the poor that you trained free with the resources of the Northern region before Nigeria’s independence, and those who came after them, have ruined your efforts. They have become feudal lords and turned out to enslave us. They have sold all the assets that you and other great northerners toiled to build over 60 years ago, while organisations you set up like the New Nigerian and textile industries in Kaduna, among others, have all collapsed. They not only mismanaged these organisations but also destroyed your legacies. Many people in northern Nigeria have been homeless and are currently in IDP camps, frustrated and dehumanised. They have been sacked away from their villages by terrorists while vast agricultural lands have been left fallow without any farming activities.

Today our region is littered with many orphans and widows whose husbands have been hacked to death by bandits. We have so many children (Almajiris) roaming the streets without any future while the elites do not care. Some of the Almajiris, neglected by the society, lack basic education and opportunities, unleash terror on the society that neither cared for them. Your grandchildren no longer have access to what the people you earlier trained free in some foreign institutions enjoyed a few decades ago. Today the children of the poor no longer have access to quality education, as they study in dilapidated primary and secondary schools. At the same time, the political elites send their children to study in private schools both locally and overseas.

The painful aspect of this is that they now packaged a man without empathy and presented him to us as a messiah in 2015. Our people heeded the call and voted him into power, believing that he would usher us into prosperity. Since then, our region has never known any peace. Bandits have taken over our major roads in the north, especially Abuja-Kaduna road, kidnapping people for ransom. Families have been compelled to sell their properties to raise money for ransom. These hoodlums kill their victims, especially those whose families cannot pay the ransom, while their remains are thrown away in the forest.

Similarly, our farmers in rural areas can no longer go to their farms in peace for fear of being killed. Those who managed to plant their crops could not harvest them, as the crops were set ablaze by these urchins. The agricultural foundation of the region is being destroyed while those at the helm of affairs do not care.

Inequality is at its peak in Arewa. The political leaders are using politics and religion to balkanise our society. In fact, as a journalist who worked in the region for over a decade, I had it on good authority from a reliable source that some politicians are behind the killings in Arewa. I am, indeed, aware that you did not amass any wealth before your death. But the people that came after you have stolen our commonwealth and used the funds to purchase mansions and exotic houses in London, New York, Paris, Switzerland, Malaysia, Dubai and other top cities in the world. They do not care if our region goes up in flames because they believe they have a place to hide in case of an outbreak of war.

Today our people are being killed daily by primitive herdsmen while our women are raped indiscriminately in remote communities. The political elite in cahoots with the traditional rulers have neglected a large segment of the society. The clerics who are supposed to serve as a beacon of hope for the masses have been compromised. They have become silent and afraid to speak out for fear of the unknown. Those Islamic scholars, who had the courage to speak, admonished our youth not to protest but engage in fervent prayers. Allah will come down to fight our battle if our youth refuse to take action.

The painful aspect of this is that even the activists who protested a few days ago to create awareness about the ongoing genocide by Fulani bandits in rural areas of Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Nigeria and other northern states have been threatened by the officials of the Department for State Security Services (DSS). So, who will fight for the poor and downtrodden and fight for the orphans and widows?

Our people have become hopeless. The issue that has been bothering me is what the Arewa dream is? Of course, it won’t be easy to answer at the moment. An average Arewa youth is just focused on marriage. That is the dream for many of our youth. Illiteracy, drug abuse, unemployment has become recurring decimal. Is our society on the brink? Are we heading towards a state failure? Who will rescue our people and wipe away our tears? Should we take the law into our hands or hearken to the voice of reason? What is the way out of this misery?

History will always be kind to you, Sardauna, as all and sundry adore you due to the sacrifice you made for the development of Arewa. However, history will not be kind to the present crop of leadership in Arewa, as they have mismanaged your legacies and our patrimony, thereby plunging millions of our people into misery. May you continue to rest in peace, and I pray Almighty Allah to forgive your mistakes and grant you Aljannah Firdaus.

Yours sincerely,

Aminu Mohammed

The writer is at the school of Sustainability, Christian-Albrechts Universität zu Kiel Schleswig Holstein, Germany. He can be reached via gravity23n@gmail.com.

By Tahir Ibrahim Tahir

It is no longer news that on December 7, 2021, 42 innocent travellers were gruesomely burnt in a bus as they moved through Gidan Bawa village of Sabon Birni local government of Sokoto state. Thirty-five died instantly, and seven survived with very severe burns. May Allah shower their souls with his mercy.

The attack is one of the most horrendous and inhumane acts of the bandits that have since visited Northwestern Nigeria with an orgy of violence. I believe this barbaric act accounts more for Sheikh Gumi excusing himself from speaking on behalf of the bandits than the reason he gave – citing their proclamation by law as terrorists. This heartless, baseless and demonic act of burning a fellow human being alive has laid bare the true nature of what Nigeria has been fighting for so many years.

Fighter jets bombarded many enclaves of the bandits, east of Dumburoum forest in Zurmi, Zamfara, and also in Sokoto and Kaduna states, as well as ISWAP locations in far away Borno state, a day before this inhuman slaughter at Gidan Bawa. It is evidently a reprisal attack and an inadvertent confirmation of the nexus between ISWAP, Boko haram and Bandits – the same hydra-headed terrorism monster.

It is no longer news that northerners are moaning beneath the anguish of the mayhem that these ‘organisations’ have visited upon their people – annihilating human lives like they were crickets. More lives are lost to terror, and there doesn’t seem to be a decline. A 100 lives are lost in a week sometimes. Northerners are increasingly livid over the fact that PMB is a northerner. As President, he ought to secure his northern constituency – letting their governors, legislators, service chiefs and other top government functionaries off the hook for the bizarre and profoundly depressing situation of the North.

It is no longer news that the FG has made massive investments in security, purchasing no less than 60 fighter jets (fighter helicopters, FJ-17s, Super-Tucano, M346 Italian jets) along with battle tanks, MWRAPS, TAVORS, Armored navy vessels, and sophisticated surveillance systems. Bases have been positioned throughout the length and breadth of the war theatre. More boots are on the ground than ever, most definitely more than the civil war. All air assets have been deployed in the North to fight terrorism. So what in God’s name could be the problem?

It is no longer news that the weaponisation of poverty, in the long term, especially in Northern Nigeria, is mainly responsible for the hell pit we’ve found ourselves in. We watched our leaders dig us in and did us in while we egged them on for as long as it favoured us. We genuflected before them, made them take bows, applauded them – and allowed them to go scot-free. The masses and the village dwellers suffered this weaponisation with years of untold hardship, weeping blood. In contrast, we, the elite and the city dwellers, enjoyed all the blood money and whatever elitist pleasures therein. Now the shoe shiner is wielding an AK-47, so is the Maiguard. The herdsman is a warlord, so is the Vectra driver an informant. One of the Northern universities’ security chiefs is a kidnap kingpin, and a Hajiya in the village is the supplier of thousands of rounds of ammunition to bandits. The questions bang your scalp like the heavy August rainfall; who is not a bandit, or a terrorist, or an informant, or a kingpin or some helper of a sort to these terrorists? The North is hardly an image of its once prestigious self, now hunched with woes and barely a shadow of its erstwhile esteem. The hypocrisy screams to the high heavens, muttering sulky and morose invectives at PMB alone as the bane of our problems. Indeed.

It is no longer news that a foreign journalist, in an article titled, “The bandit warlords of Nigeria”, navigated the nooks, crannies and alleyways of bandits in the North, unharmed by these demons; inadvertently betraying the conspiracy of banditry in the North. He waxed politics with the bandits, claiming OBJ and Jona are far better than PMB, who the bandits say stifles Islam! Lord have mercy on our souls. He also erroneously put Fulani bandits as conquest driven Islamic extremists. This faulty description only further lumps Boko haram and Bandits together.

The news headline that should be etched into our consciousness is the reality of Nigeria long being marked as a state for Balkanisation. A proxy war is being fought out with our homeland as the battlefield. Eastern merchants versus western warlords are slugging it out, punch for pound. Islamic North, its idealistic and archaic ways are a thorn in their meal. As they carve their diamonds clean, our population suffers the brunt of their steel.

What is left for us is the Sunna of the Prophet (SAW), backed by his hadith, describing the bigger Jihad as striving for one’s cleansing and towing the path of righteousness – backed by Q22:78. The strange situation in the North is the duty of every northerner to un-knot, un-tie, and crack. Prophet SAW was the last one, so we have to be messiahs unto ourselves.

We must encourage ourselves to eradicate this phenomenon that has become the new Yahoo or money bet of the North. We must expose ourselves and fight ourselves by ourselves. No war ends with a gunshot. It can only start it. So we must sit together, back-benchers, frontliners, warts and all, voodoo if you like – and do the needful. As our faith is in our hearts, so is our fate in our own hands.

Tahir is Talban Bauchi. He wrote from Bauchi via talbanbauchi@yahoo.com.

By Uzair Adam Imam

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has promised Nigeria his support in fighting terrorism and countering religious extremism.

Receiving the Nigerian Ambassador to Russia, Professor Abdullahi Y. Shehu, the president gave his words.

President Putin made the assurance to Nigeria adding that a “very promising expansion on substantive dialogue on topical issues related to maintaining stability in the world hydrocarbon markets, combating terrorism and countering religious extremism.”

He stated that Russia was open to mutually beneficial partnership with all countries without exception.

Putin declared that “Russia is ready for multifaceted interfaces for mutual interests with the countries that their new envoys have come to represent in Russia.”

By Muhammad Sabiu

By Muhammad Sabiu

No fewer than 26 insurgents of the Islamic State of West African Province (ISWAP) have been eliminated in Gajiram town, Borno State, after the Nigerian military launched airstrikes on them.

Reports show that the military made the attacks after the insurgents, who came on their gun trucks, made an attempt to invade the town.

A military officer in the know of the incident, whose identity is made anonymous, reliably told journalists that 26 bodies of the insurgents were counted.

Confirming the heavy casualty inflicted on the terrorists, he said, “The aircraft arrived timely and bombarded the locations of the terrorists and burned some of them beyond recognition.

“We have so far counted 26 bodies of the terrorists, but unfortunately, we lost two gallant soldiers while tackling other fleeing enemies.

By Muhammad Sabiu

By Muhammad Sabiu

By Mukhtar Ya’u Madobi

Subject to its wider ramifications, the burden of maintaining security is too cumbersome to be single-handedly by a solitary institution in a heterogeneous country like Nigeria.

Thus, the multi-stakeholders’ approach is often more necessary where there is a rise in security challenges. Therefore, security should be a collective effort of the government plus other state and non-state actors, including the private sectors.

The word ‘security’ simply implies the protection of the lives and properties of people from various forms of threat. It occupies the highest level of priority in the hierarchy of responsibility by the government as one of the core values that the state cherishes as non-negotiable and that does not admit compromise.

The contribution of private sectors in ensuring security can be rendered through various channels, including the construction of security facilities, donations of logistics to security services and providing equipment at their disposal during emergency response situations such as fire outbreaks, accidents, building collapse and natural disasters such as flooding, earthquake, etc.

Other alternatives include community participation in securing their locality in collaboration with police, i.e. the neighbourhood watch or vigilante group, involvement of religious and traditional leaders in disputes resolution among their followers and services provided by the business enterprises to their host communities through corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives.

To that effect, the role being played by the famous Civilian Joint Task Forces (Civilian JTF), through collaboration with the security agencies in countering the violent extremism of Boko Haram terrorists in the North-East (Borno), is very commendable. Such volunteer groups provided invaluable intelligence that led to the uncovering of many deadly terrorist cells and their subsequent elimination.

Now that the terrorists are surrendering, community leaders, civil society groups and NGOs have a greater job to embark on sensitizing the mindsets of the public in de-radicalization, rehabilitation and reintegration of the repentant terrorists into society. This will go a long way in maintaining the security of lives and properties of people.

It is noteworthy that the CSR initiatives of the Aliko Dangote Foundation donated 150 operational vehicles to the Nigeria Police Force in 2018, which was described as the single most significant gift ever by a private sector operator to the police.

In the Niger Delta region, where the problem of insecurity is mainly attributed to the feeling of anger and frustration by host communities due to negligence of CSR initiatives, the oil companies have turned a good leaf by changing the narratives.

Multinational corporations are now actively involved in providing infrastructural facilities such as schools, hospitals, roads, and water supply to their host communities. In the long run, they also designed a special scholarship scheme for the indigenes. They are provided with tuition fees and reading and learning materials to further enhance their educational careers. This initiative has undoubtedly contributed immensely to reducing the militants’ activities and other security tensions in the oil-rich Niger Delta region.

Moreover, several societal figures and organizations were known for their efforts in constructing and rehabilitating security outfits across the country. Recall that, immediately after the #EndSARS protests in which several lives of both civilians and security personnel were lost, many properties were destroyed, police stations looted, their firearms carted away and subsequently destroyed.

The giant private sector-led Coalition Against COVID-19 (CACOVID) procured new equipment for police officers and pledged to rebuild the burnt police stations destroyed during the civil unrest to restore security to the affected locations across the country.

Even the traditional institutions were not left out as Oba (Alhaji) Dauda Ajolola Adebimpe Akinfolabi of Ayedade Local Government Area of Osun State built a divisional police headquarters and the office for the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) office. The monarch noted that the gesture was necessary to protect his people and ensure safety in his community, considering the rising insecurity in the country.

In addition, private security companies are also part and parcel of the security architecture of every country. The responsibility of a private security guard is ‘securing the lives and properties of the client’. The client may be an individual, organization, private institution, government, etc. However, experience has shown that guards can perform additional functions other than just protecting the lives and properties of the client.

Their large number and widespread presence make them a critical part of the security system of the nation. The NSCDC is the ultimate regulator of all private guard companies in Nigeria and has so far licensed over 1000 companies. Almost all residences, offices, schools, shopping malls, parks etc., especially in the city, are staffed by private guards securing their location. To that effect, their number has even exceeded that of the entire Police Force in the country.

Therefore, the government and the security agencies can take advantage of this opportunity to collaborate with private guard companies, especially in areas of intelligence gathering and sharing, training and joint task operations towards securing the country from the activities of criminal forces.

Sequel to that, Nigeria’s Policy Framework and National Action Plan for Prevention and Countering Violent Extremism, produced by the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), retired Major General Babagana Monguno have succinctly acknowledged the role of the prominent private sector in national security.

As they say, Emergency Management is everyone’s business.

Mukhtar sent this piece from Kano. He can be contacted via ymukhtar944@gmail.com.