By Rotimi Fasan
When Nigerians celebrate the Muslim festival of Eid-al-Adha next Friday, it will be exactly two weeks since the terrorists, now identified as a faction of Boko Haram, ended the peace of two communities in Ahoro-Esinele and Yawota, both in Oriire LGA in Ogbomoso, Oyo State. There these terror artists abducted about fifty Nigerians, mostly school pupils, students, and their teachers.
Among the abductees is at least one infant. Since this violent intrusion into the world of these hapless ones, two of them, Joel Adesiyan and Michael Oyedokun (not counting the Okada man killed earlier), have died, while more Nigerians have suffered a similar fate across different parts of the country. The two deceased were men. While one was killed during initial attempts to rescue the abductees, they beheaded the other in a blood-curdling moment designed to send a message to the rest of us watching from the sideline that they were in deadly earnest and would brook no interference from any quarter.
Their demands are to be met, and, going by the response from the authorities so far, the terrorists have certainly taken the initiative from the government and are now calling the shots. Two days ago, they were demanding to speak to the state governor, Seyi Makinde, and nobody else. That’s how bold we’ve allowed them to be. Everyone is nervous, if not confused, about what fate awaits the remaining abductees.
The government, like everyone else, seems to be waiting to know what next the terrorists decide about the people in their custody. If the first death occurred as an accident, the second certainly was not. If anything, it was probably to reduce the threat posed by keeping men around, although a report said it was upon the terrorists discovering that the deceased was a Christian. More or less the same reason Leah Sharibu was not released along with her schoolmates and has since that time in 2018, eight years in all, raised several children by at least three Boko Haram commanders to whom she had been married at various times.
Knowing what fate had befallen Mr. Michael Oyedokun, it would be a mindless effort in masochism to imagine what the others still held in the forest are going through after the heart-rending pleas of two of the women in the forest, Mrs. Temitope Mary Dahunsi and Mrs. Grace Alamu. Yet it is terrorists like these, the very monsters imported into or bred in the north, that some weird-thinking northerners like Sheik Ahmad Gumi say are their brothers and children, not mine. They demand clemency for them for crimes they have not renounced, claiming they are merely misguided men more deserving of rehabilitation than recrimination. These blood-thirsty fiends are the very ones some who speak in the name of the northern socio-political establishment, particularly the Fulani, mollycoddle and balk at calling by the names that best describe their macabre occupation.
It was only about two weeks ago, the first time in about two decades that the Sultan, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar, summoned the courage to use the word ‘terrorist’ to describe some of these criminal hounds. That, perhaps, was even to protect his faith. Terrorists and bandits, he said, are terrorists and should not be referred to as ‘Muslim terrorists’ or ‘Islamic bandits’. Even senior state officials like Nuhu Ribadu, the National Security Adviser, and General Olufemi Oluyede, Chief of the Defence Staff, struggle to call the terrorists what they are, when not seeking clemency for them.
In a bid to have them rehabilitated, Ribadu called the terrorists our brothers, while Oluyede compared them to the Biblical prodigal son, a sentiment that has been echoed by many other northerners in one form or another. These same northern leaders are loudest in their criticism of President Bola Tinubu’s handling of the country’s (in)security concerns. They have made this, among other talking points, a campaign issue for next year’s presidential election, demanding that the president should not be re-elected. They hide their disappointment at having to do business with a Nigerian president who appears to know the political game better than their entitled selves would admit by seeking regime change.
They connect the activities of the terrorists to the harsh effects of ongoing economic reforms that have worsened the economic status of ordinary Nigerians. This, as if terrorism only started in the last three years since Bola Tinubu became president. Discerning Nigerians, including some Fulani leaders and other northerners, blinded neither by prejudice nor bigotry, know very well that beyond the encumbrances of Nigeria’s peculiar federal structure, President Bola Tinubu has chosen to take it easy, turning a blind eye to the activities of our home-grown terrorists, in deference to the sentiments of northerners hostile to the deployment of the right kind of force necessary to make a difference in the country’s fight against terrorism. They pretend this is not the case and point rather at the harsh consequences of the fiscal and monetary reforms, smart at the President’s party, the APC’s, dominance of the political space, which they characterise as a drive towards a one-party dictatorship.
They also rage against what they call the marginalisation of the north, all of which boils down to a withdrawal syndrome, grave remorse for losing power to a southerner. But as I said last week and am repeating now, a president of northern extraction at this time, just four years after a Fulani-led eight-year rule, is a recipe for national disintegration. Many of these Fulani leaders know this despite their complaints. It is why Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso is open to serving as a vice-presidential candidate to a man he obviously considers his inferior by all metrics: academic, political, and age. It is even why the PRP chairman, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, would go for three lightweight southerners as aspirants for PRP’s presidential position even while he frequently rails against the re-election of Bola Tinubu, under whom he served as adviser for nearly two years. It is a Bola Tinubu who understands their game they don’t want, not any other southerner. Except, perhaps, anyone promising, gbajue-style, to serve a four-year term where the constitution allows two four-year terms.
Since the horror in Ogbomoso, both Abuja and the Oyo State government have been sitting virtually on their palms as they wait for the terrorists to act. By the time they pay the ransom that may eventually end the stalemate, the terrorists will be let off and we will all go back to sleep with empty promises to prevent a reoccurrence of the situation—until the next attack. Meanwhile, the terrorists get entrenched in the South-West and sustain their attacks in other parts of the country as they have since Ahoro-Esinele and Yawota took over the headlines. Unacceptable!
