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By Mobolaji Sanusi
Incontrovertibly, the north has become the infamous terrorism epicentre of this country. Ascribing this sobriquet to that region is nothing hyperbolic when its state of turpitude for several consecutive years of malignant banditry is put into consideration.
At its exasperating dimension, the execrable state of criminality in the north deserves an emergency declaration because there seems to be no hope in sight of an imminent end to the avoidable violence that is going on there, for now.
This week alone, on Monday, to be specific, the nation was befuddled with attacks of monumental proportions in the north. The Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in Maga town, Kebbi state, was attacked by terrorists around 4am, leading to the unfortunate kidnap of over twenty-five girls. The school’s vice-principal, Mallam Yakubu Makuku, was killed, and a staff member was seriously injured. Also, on Tuesday evening in Eruku town in Ekiti Local Government area of Kwara state, a Christ Apostolic Church(CAC) was attacked, and three worshippers were killed while the pastor and thirty-eight church members were kidnapped.
Equally on Friday, days after the Monday and Tuesday terrorists’ strikes in Kebbi and Kwara states respectively, these northern agents of doom stormed St. Mary’s Papiri Private Catholic Secondary School, Papiri, in Agwara Local Government Area of Niger State where they sadly abducted scores of students and teachers. Also, in far away Borno state, these curiously elusive insurgents wasted the lives of our gallant soldiers and a heroic officer, Brigadier-General Musa Uba, in the line of duty. The conspiratorial speculation surrounding the capturing of Uba by the terrorists is an issue of discourse for another day; if the country must get its security challenges right.
Questions must however be asked: What is it about the northern region’s proclivity for shedding innocent blood of inhabitants? In a region so developmentally retarded and educationally backward; with unfathomably high rate of almajiris, what could have been the motivation for the heinous targets of schools, especially girls’ schools when they ought to know that such criminal acts would further worsen the abject literacy rate and deprivations that are conspicuously bedeviling that region of our country. Could the violence going on in the north be consequences of unfurling solid minerals found in that region of our country which have been illegally explored, more for parochial benefits, than for collective national advantage?
Yet, revenues from natural resources derived from the Niger-Delta and other parts including the southwest have, for several decades been deployed to benefit the north without any commensurate developmental initiatives to show for it by northern elites. Agitations in the Niger-Delta, even though of criminal dimensions, were targeted at foreign oil companies and their collaborators despoiling their land.Their condemnable act has drastically abated but the ongoing northern mayhem with religious cum resource endowed colouration is anti-humanity, having inflicted unimaginable destructions on innocent citizens, thereby projecting the country in bad light to the world.
Between Y2014 till date, insurgents from the north have done more to destroy their human capital in the most egregious way possible. In that year’s April 14-15 midnight, the Islamist militant group called Boko Haram raided and callously carted away like goods, two hundred and seventy girls in their teens from their secondary school hostel in a Borno state northeastern town of Chibok. To date, more than half of these girls never found their way back to their parental homes. The criminals usually forced these innocent girls to satisfy their immoral sexual desires.
Equally, on December 11, 2020, three hundred and forty-four school boys of Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, Katsina state, were kidnapped from their hostel by a gang of gunmen on motorcycles. After several days of frantic search, luck smiled on them when they were rescued and handed over to their parents.
Again, on February 26, 2021, over three hundred Jangebe Government Girls’ Secondary School students were abducted at midnight by reportedly ‘unknown gunmen’ that stormed their hostel. The then United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) representative in the country, Mr Peter Hawkins, expressed global angst to what he described as “yet another brutal attack on school children in northern Nigeria.”
It is sad that four years after Hawkins’ lamentation, the country routinely continues to witness such condemnable atrocities in the same northern part of the country.
Whichever elites remain silent in the face of an undisguised wanton killing and dehumanizing their people are themselves inherently cruel elites. For the Fulanis, Hausas, and the Kanuris that mostly inhabit the vast northern lands, let it sink in to their heads that their cultural habits of wanton killings of innocently armless people has nothing to do with the Islamic religion.
It is absurd as a rational being to concur with insinuations that some northern elites covertly endorsed the ongoing satanic killings in their midst.
One bitter truth, however, is that northern educated elites can not extricate themselves from the ungodly misdeeds of the hordes of criminal elements inflicting anguish, pain and misery on their already impoverished communities.
The exposed and educated elites from the north should endeavour to better educate their people on what Islam as a religion stands for. The northern elites owe other Nigerians, including the current federal government, a duty, except they know something about what is going on, of educating their people on the fact that Islam teaches peace and stands for peace, not senselessly mindless killings and inhuman indoctrination through bogus preachings to create destructive mindsets. If the northern elites achieved all they have achieved because of western education, why are they shamelessly silent and not constructively effective enough in the battle against those killing the educational acquisition dreams of their children, most especially the female children?
As a Muslim, yours sincerely is not proud of the insurgency going on in the north; even as a citizen of this country, one is deeply saddened by the mischievous conspiracy of the northern political elites with some of them allegedly feeding fat on the anguish, despair and misery of their people.
Acquiescence to this northern criminality easily shows the elites’ secret goal of perpetually keeping their people in inextricable bondage of underdevelopment, resource endowed theft, hiding under the Islamic religion, as basis of their affront on humanity.
Why are the developmental exposures and global learnings of the northern leaders not rubbing off on the well-being and worldview of their people? It is clearly undeniable that they are routine pilgrimage to the land of Islamic culture, Saudi Arabia; and it’s pertinent to once again ask these northern elites whether the peace and development witnessed in Saudi Arabia do not have the same Islam practiced in the north as planks? The same begging inquisition applies to peaceful and infrastructural-inspiring Qatar and United Arab Emirates (UAE), where the country’s northern elites routinely visit to enjoy their wealth and peace, far away from the ongoing horrific atrocities in their ancestral homelands. Is it not the same Islamic religion that obtains in these model countries? The northern elites must answer these questions.
From the foregoing, the northern elites should note that Islam is not synonymous with mindless killings and inhuman battles against defenceless people. A barbaric person, whatever the colour of his/her skin, is not necessarily meant to be a Muslim. History has clearly affirmed that some of the deadliest global killings were not attributable to practitioners of Islam or any particular religion.
For example, mass murderers in human history are not Muslims. Adolf Hitler, who reportedly killed seventeen million people, is not a Muslim. Same as Mao Zedong, who decimated over forty-five million people. Joseph Stalin reportedly had around twenty million people’s blood on his neck; Leopold II of Belgium equally killed around ten million in Congo: Emperor Hirohito of Japan killed millions across Asia while Pol Pot murdered not less than two million of his people. Yet, these leaders’ atrocious misdeeds against humanity have no Islamic imprimatur. Where then did the northern insurgents erroneously hiding under the peaceful religion of Islam get their inspiration from?
The educated northerners had the best education money can buy; they were and till date still getting privileged employment placements, mostly at the expense of the Nigerian commonwealth. Yet, in empirical terms, facts have revealed that they are obviously contented with developmentally making their region the laughing stock of other Nigerians, and the world-at-large.
Privileged individuals, including yours sincerely, who have travelled to a few Western countries can attest to the fact that it is rare if not impossible to see a Nigerian of northern extraction, doing menial jobs abroad. Yet, the people from other zones of the country, while abroad, routinely do. Northerners abroad can be seen in choice institutions where, upon completion of their mostly government funded education, unlike other Nigerians, return home with choice employment/appointments already waiting for them.
In spite of this rare privilege, notwithstanding the ongoing global meltdown, these northern people’s exposure never reflected in the lives and wellbeing of the region. This self inflicted deficit cannot be President Bola Tinubu’s fault but that of northern-born conspirators who feed fat on their region’s calamities.
This is why in this contemporary age and time, we still witness the barbarity called resource endowed theft/violence and incessant kidnappings and killings for ransom in the north as a whole. Sadly, this culture of killings/wanton destruction is being exported to other parts of the country. The northern elites including their political leaders, traditional rulers, Ulamas, business leaders, retired senior military and security officers, academics, student union leaders, et cetera must speak out by publicly condemning the ongoing theft of resources and wanton killings.
Now is the time for northern elites to call on the people of their region to rise against this evil of abductions and killings. The northern elites need to demonstrate sincere willingness to join Tinubu’s battle to end this bloodletting and destruction, once and for all.
Yours sincerely beckons on the northern elites to shed the detrimental toga of bad politics and immediately join the president’s bid to return genuine peace to the entire north.
Except the northern elites embrace this sensible option of teaming up with Tinubu, the northern elites/political leaders will be shamefully recorded by history as having looked the other way when mayhem is being inflicted on their school children, particularly, in broad daylight by known but powerful bandits.
•Sanusi, former MD/CEO of Lagos State Signage & Advertisement Agency, is currently the managing partner at AMS RELIABLE SOLICITORS.
