New Telegraph

Benumbing questions about terrorism in Nigeria

Nigeria was recently pronounced the third
most terrorized country in the world after
Somalia and Afghanistan. That ranking did
not come to anybody as a surprise for Nigeria
has always been a land of terrors and outrageous
violence. Terror means “very great fear or dread” according
to Chambers 21st Century Dictionary and the
word derived from Latin root of “terrere” meaning
“to frighten.” Putting a person or group of persons
to fright requires some form of physical violence or
threat of it.

 

Nigeria was actually begotten of terror for the European
commercial buccaneers and adventurers especially
Taubman Goldie in Nigeria that sought economic fortunes
and consequent imperial possessions in West Africa deployed
terror to put the native African populations to fright
and thereby conquered and subjugated them. It is heartrending
to read the accounts of military expeditions carried
out against the Ijebu where over 1,000 Ijebu infantry
was mowed down within minutes by the rapid fires of
the British maxim guns. One also shudders at the gory
bloodshed that the sacking of Benin City, the long and
cumbersome campaigns against the Igbo communities,

 

the pitched cavalry battles the Sokoto Caliphate waged
against the invading Lugardian army that cut down
men and beasts that at the end of the war the Sultan had
to curse the British for such unspeakable violence and
bloodshed.

 

State terror continued with the modern state called
Nigeria as the slightest show of opposition to government
policy or protest against such was visited with unimaginable
violence as evidenced by the Akasa Raid, Aba
Women Riots, Agbekoya riots, Bakolori Massacres, Odi
and Umuechem and Zaki-Ibiam episodes. State terror is
known to beget terror among the people who learn the
hard way to get through in life in modern world the only
language the government knows and hears is violence and
so the oppressed and disaffected usually employ that tool
of violence to get the attention of government. Violence
or terror in Nigeria has been resorted to time without
number in Nigeria’s history to settle one issue or the other.

 

Terror may be used by individuals or groups as in armed
robberies that became rampant in 1970 having its roots
from the violent politics of the 1960s which encompassed
the political thuggery in the North, Western and Eastern
Regions of Nigeria between 1964 and 1966. The official
custodians of state-terror machine, the Nigerian armed
forces were drawn and exposed to this individuals’ and
groups’ terror when they were drawn to the quenching
of the Tivs riots in modern Benue, Nasarawa and Taraba
states and the Niger Delta revolts led by Isaac Adaka Boro.

 

The Western Region electoral violence emanating from
the Tafawa Balewa’s government’s open support for Premier
Samuel Akintola political faction’s bid to control the
politics and government in the Western Region snowballed
to the widespread terror in the Western Region known as
‘operation we tie’. The entire society of Nigeria was soaked
up in violence hence the military was drawn into it when a
group of army officers led by Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu
overthrew Tafawa Balewa government on 15th January,
1966 but his coup was aborted by Major General Aguiyi
Ironsi who went ahead to form military government to
stem the violence. But the military government became
embroiled in the disease it was trying to cure. Fears, suspicions
and distrust in the new military government and
between members of the officer corps and ranks and file
ignited a counter coup on July 29, 1966 which virtually
wiped out the officer cadre of the Nigerian Armed Forces
of Igbo origin and pogroms against Igbo populations in
Northern towns and cities. That pogroms cost the Igbo
over 50,000 persons according to Onyiuke Commission of
Inquiry set up by the Eastern Region Government.

 

Above all, the military plunged Nigeria into a civil war
called Biafra War which was best remembered as the worst
bush war in modern history as depicted by the atrocities
visited on civilian populations at Asaba, Akaeze, Calabar,
Port Harcourt and several other towns where ethnic Igbo
were massacred by rampaging soldiers. These atrocities
have been chronicled by Generals Akinrinade and Alabi-
Isama who fought on Nigeria side during the war.

 

By 1970 when Biafra has been clobbered to submission,
the victorious Nigeria army turned its attention to Nigeria
civilians whom it went on to conquer as well to establish its
overlordship not just of Biafra, but of Nigeria as a whole.
So, systematic terrors were visited on civilians by public
floggings, punishments in public places as chronicled by
Wole Soyinka in his autobiography, ‘You Must Set Forth
at Dawn’ and other writers’ accounts.

 

Having succeeded in seizing Nigeria by converting it
into privatized economic and political entity called the
‘Federal Republic of Nigerian Army’ and laid siege to the nation
as recounted by General Mohammed Chris Ali, the army
people visited themselves with humongous violence by means
of coups and on the people by corporal punishments and economic
terror of impoverishment and political enslavement.

 

The terror we see today are the direct repercussions from
state official violence from 1960 to date which has degenerated
to the terrorism now democratized under a constitutional
framework it set up under the 1999 Constitution. If you care
to study the trend of terror, be it the religious riots of 1980 and
1990s or the Niger Delta revolts or the Boko Haram insurgency
or the bandits and other violent marauders ravaging Nigeria,
you will not fail to see that they have their origins from the
economic and political dislocations caused by the Nigerian
governments from 1960 to date. Was it not the official introduction
of Sharia legal framework that bred Boko Haram? Was
it not the political thuggery by Nigerian political parties that
spawned kidnappers, armed robbers, assassins, bandits, etc.?

 

The benumbing questions about terrorism in Nigeria are
that apart from the seeming helplessness of Nigeria government
to stem it, there appears to be some kind of “collusion”
which General TY Danjuma talked about. Why should any
government (state or federal) publicly show itself helpless by
bargaining with bandits and kidnappers over their activities
to the extent that a government and a member of the armed
forces will pose in group photograph with banditry or kidnapping
kingpin? Why should it be suggested that apprehended
members of Boko Haram be absolved of the atrocities and
put up as “deradicalized” and so adjudged fit to be integrated
in the Armed Forces of Nigeria as objected to by Chairman,
Senate Committee on Army, Ali Ndume? Why? Why? Why…?

 

And now the Katsina welcome home gift to President Buhari
where ‘bandits’ kidnapped over 300 students and their rescue
was allegedly brokered by Miyetti-Allah Cattle Breeders Association
of Nigeria, a group whose existence and activities
the Governor of Benue State has repeatedly accused of perpetrating
vicious terror in the state? Are Nigeria’s intelligence
agencies capable of digging into these questions? What are
their findings?

 

Ah! I do not understand this Nigeria. There are certainly
benumbing questions about terrorism begging for answers
and there don’t seem to be any helpful answers. Please, this
violent culture is contrary to, and an anathema to many African
culture and I am sure of my Igbo civilisation. How can
anybody be comfortable with the bloodshed that has defined
Nigeria’s existence since 1914? Let government come up with
a constitutional framework and a legal system that discourage
terrorism and we see it die. The present system encourages
terrorism and so it festers.

 

Read Previous

Anambra governorship not for opportunists – Okwenna

Read Next

Looking with a sense of optimism towards 2021

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *