Published Date

Written by Naijatalk Nigeria

By Olusegun Adeniyi

police-headquarters-attack1 When the BBC published the photograph which showed that Mohammed Yusuf was alive when captured by the army, I knew we could no longer keep quiet and that the point had to be made that extra-judicial execution had no place under the rule of law. As, I however, waited to see the president who was in a meeting with the VP, I made the mistake of openly voicing out my concern about what I considered extra-judicial execution. This did not go down well with a PDP Governor from the North East who was also waiting to see the president. “Segun, I sometimes wonder on whose side you really are. This is someone who killed several policemen and innocent people and all that concerns you is what some human rights noisemakers would say?”

The Governor and I had a hot exchange on the matter and since he saw the president ahead of me, I was not surprised when my principal bluntly refused to discuss the matter. While I worried about the image of the government, I could also understand the anger of the police whose men were brutally killed. Photographs of the murdered officers were so gruesome that it was difficult not to comprehend the raw emotion that could have led some people into taking the law into their own hands. Some of these photographs were handed to the president. While I appreciated his feelings, I also believed that jungle justice, no matter the provocation, cannot be justified by agents of state. To compound the situation, someone posted on YouTube a video stream of the interrogation of Yusuf by the police after he was captured and shortly before he died…

The Boko Haram menace was one of the issues the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua had to confront in his last year in office as can be glimpsed from the above excerpt from my coming book, a recap of something that happened in 2009. While the jury may be out now on whether his approach was the correct one, there was no doubt about his determination to root out different forms of extremism from our body polity using carrot or by stick. In the light of last week’s attack on the Police Headquarters by a suspected Boko Haram ‘suicide bomber’, however, I believe the security agencies should adopt a more open mind in their current investigation. Except they do that, they are likely to continue to grope in the dark with dire consequences for the nation.

It is for instance baffling how someone could jump to the conclusion that it was suicide bombing a few minutes after the explosion just because the suspect also died in the attack. What about the more plausible theory that another person (standing at a safe distance) might have held the detonator to the bomb and decided to trigger the explosion on seeing that their man would be apprehended? If it was suicide bombing, why drive to the general car park when there were several policemen at the gate or the IGP’s car pack where there would have been more impact? And if it is not suicide bombing as claimed, has the entire investigation not been compromised?

These are some of the several questions begging for answers but there are far more fundamental issues to deal with if we must get to the root of the Boko Haram problem. The guiding philosophy behind this sect, as we have been told over the years, is opposition to all forms of Western education but the pattern of their attacks since formation in 2002 reveals something else. For a group supposedly opposed to secular education, not one single school or an institution of learning has been attacked. Rather, what the adherents have been attacking are police barracks and supposed supporters of the former governor of Borno State, Alhaji Modu Ali Sherrif.

While there have been several collateral damages–as it is common in instances like this where innocent bystanders get caught in the crossfire–the spokesmen of the sect have never minced words about the fact that they are after Sherrif and the police. Instructively, the newly elected governor of Borno state has proposed granting amnesty to Boko Haram faithfuls as a way of ending the problem. Whatever the merits of this proposition, it also conveys a profound message because amnesty (which cannot be a cure-all for every security challenge) is only given and accepted in a political dispute between two parties known to each other.

What that means in effect is that the Boko Haram leadership, like the Niger Delta militants, are known to the Borno authorities and their grievances are such that can be addressed. This is also fine except that it then brings us to one inescapable conclusion: this is not a religious crisis as being presented by the media and the authorities; Boko Haram, when stripped of all its pretensions, is a political crisis which could be resolved once the adherents find common grounds with the police authorities and the Borno state government.

That the late Boko Haram leader was given the Osama Bin Laden treatment by the police is now almost beyond dispute but they were not clever and for that reason nearly ruined the career of a brilliant military officer who commanded the 2009 Boko Haram operation which captured Yusuf alive. But for the timely intervention of one official, Col Ben Ahanoto would have been dismissed from service based on spurious reports from people who were looking for scapegoats to cover up for their own failings.

Even at that, I do not buy the argument that it is because of the killing of Yusuf that Boko Haram men are attacking the police. That cannot be the case given that policemen have been their targets since they came into public reckoning. To find a solution to this problem therefore, government must be able to ascertain what their real grievances are. This is important because the sect comes under the guise of religion which we all know is an easy recruitment tool in a nation with millions of idle youths and where doing God’s business is now the biggest business.

While Boko Haram, however, poses a serious challenge, I do not subscribe to the hysteria that Nigeria has become an unsafe place on account of their audacity of last week. I just believe what happened merely exposed the inadequacy many Nigerians have always suspected in our police. That security would be so casually breached at their headquarters is a profound message that shames the Inspector General of Police, Mr Hafiz Ringim, who must now know (assuming he did not know before) that he has a lot of work to do.
What is particularly worrisome for me is the reportage in a section of the media which tends to glorify the violence. Quoting imaginary sources within the sect who promise to unleash all manner of mayhem and giving such reports sensational treatment is very unhelpful under the current circumstance. It can only fuel the problem and even encourage political lone wolves who may hide under Boko Haram to perpetrate havocs just to destabilize the system perhaps to prove some sinister point against the current administration. That would not be in the interest of the nation we all call our own.

The security agencies definitely need to do more to engage senior people in the media. Slanting the Boko Haram narrative into the politics of North and South and the emergence of a Southern Christian president is just the kind of journalism we do not need right now. I don’t think that the heightened spate of attacks by Boko Haram has anything to do with the election of President Goodluck Jonathan though if care is not taken it could well be exploited by unconscionable politicians.

The point being made here is that there does not appear to be any religious underpinning behind the ‘suicide bombing’ of last week at the Louis Edet House. It looked more like a failed attempt on the Inspector General of Police, if only to send a message to his men and officers that they are not beyond reach. That explains why I am confident that a solution will be found to the Boko Haram problem the moment the authorities addressed the political element while dealing with the security challenge posed by the porous border between Nigeria and some of its neighbours, particularly Chad and Niger.
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Olusegun Adeniyi was the Special Adviser to Former Nigeria President, Late Umaru Yar’Adua on Media Affairs