What More Is Left Of Nigeria?
Nigeria is on the precipice of extermination. The country has deranged from the top echelon of its value for humanity. What is known to informed persons as Amoral justice has become a complete elusion. The country is plunged into a state of terror. The level of instability has constituted a national security threat. Hence, men are now settled with the bare fact that government seems inexistent in the country.
It certainly was not like this when Mister Muhammadu Buhari offered himself as the Messiah to Nigerians. Things were not like this, when he told the country that as a retired soldier, he had the skills to tackle the security concerns throughout the country. Things were never like this when the gallant General brought forth himself as the irresistible option to ensure peaceful coexistence among Nigerians.
And so they beheld their sorrows and took an option. They preferred an option of safety to that of uncertainty. Nigerians preferred an option of freedom to that of absolute oppression. They chose to live in their country than being terrorized by heartless religious sects who threw suicide bombs everywhere. They hoped their deliverer had come. But how wrong they were, when they voted Buhari as a sorrow ending leader.
No doubt, the tempo seemed punctured by the experienced gallant soldier. Indeed, Boko Haram was ‘technically defeated’. Their captured spaces in Borno State were reclaimed. Suicide bombings seemed reduced. The President, in December 2015 was confident when he proclaimed that Boko Haram was surely on the run. It seemed the proclamation was true, until not too long when situations became unbearable.
The Chibok story steadily waned when gradually, the abducted girls were being shown as rescued. On many occasions, some of them were being rescued. At some instances, the girls had escaped from their place of captivity and regained freedom. The big news had been the rescue of the girls on May 7, 2017, same night President Buhari departed for London for what eventually became the longest medical vacation of a sitting Nigerian President.
Soon after the rescue of Chibok girls, the story of Dapchi came to us. School girls in Government Girls Science and Technical College, Dapchi were abducted on February 19, 2018. While, in just a month, about 101 girls returned alive, about five of them were said to have died, even as one, Leah Sharibu, a Christian was said to have been retained by the Boko Haram sect, owing to her refusal to renounce the Christian Faith. Today, same Leah Sharibu has become a mother of a male child to a Boko Haram leader.
Surprisingly, the accusations leveled against President Buhari of intending to Islamize and Fulanize the country appear more substantial by the day. The incessant abductions and multiple stories of interceptions by bandits suffice. Activities of criminals who attack vehicles and persons on high ways lend credence to the accusations. Apart from the preelection bloody massacre in the middle belt, where killer herdsmen wrecked carnage on the land, undue killings and persecutions of Christians in the North make it very scary. Pastors are being killed. Just some days to the end of 2019, the chairman, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Adamawa State Chapter, Reverend Lawan Andimi was kidnapped. He was later beheaded by the Boko Haram, after they rejected an earlier requested 50 million naira ransom. Accordingly, Boko Haram had revealed that the clergy was being executed because he had an option of converting to Islam but refused. He was brutally murder and the photos sent to CAN members.
A few days later, the Islamic State West African Province released a video that showed a Christian man being executed by an Islamic State child “soldier” in Borno, Nigeria. The video was released by its news platform, Amaq agency, ISWAP showing how the Christian man was killed. Pieter Van Ostaeyen, a member of the editorial board of the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism based in the Hague, said the “kid is about 10.”
“Someone brainwashed that poor kid, deprived it of its innocence and made it believe it was justified to kill other people in the name of a sick ideology,” Tomasz Rolbiecki, a researcher on Islamic State’s attacks worldwide said. The killing came weeks after ISWAP released a video claiming to show the killing of 11 Christians. They stated that it was part of its recently declared campaign to “avenge” the death of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, during a US raid in Syria in October. One captive in the middle was shot dead, while the other 10 were pushed to the ground and beheaded.
“We killed them as revenge for the killing of our leaders, including Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and [IS spokesman] Abul-Hasan al-Muhajir,” said a member of the group’s media unit, according to Ahmad Salkida, a journalist who was first sent the video.
Just recently too, a video of a Nigerian lady who was raped by members of the Islamist sect in Nigeria also went viral. Obviously confessing in a Church, the Lady who cursed Nigeria for bringing a lifetime woe on her and the family was raped, along side her nine year old daughter and her husband. She told the congregation that she was in Nigeria for a holiday, only to be abused by the Islamic sect. She vowed never to set her feet on the soil of Nigeria.
In a recent reaction to the killings, Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari condemned the apparent killings and urged Nigerians not to let themselves be divided along religious lines. “We should, under no circumstance, let the terrorists divide us by turning Christians against Muslims because these barbaric killers don’t represent Islam and millions of other law-abiding Muslims around the world,” he said in a statement.
To the president of the Senate, Armed Lawan, the killings show the inefficient and ineffective security system. His words, “Presently, the story is not good. In many areas, we have so much happening that is destabilizing our communities and killing of people. Apparently, the system has not been working efficiently and effectively and we have to do something. This time around, there should not be buck-passing, we have to be forthright. We have to say it as it is and we have to do it as it is required”, he said.
Meanwhile, the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN has called on the president and the security agents to ensure the safety of lives of Christians. Looking at the damage so far done on the integrity of the Nigerian Armed Forces in protecting Nigerians, one is left with the option of believing that they are indeterminate.
If lives and properties of Nigerians are not projected, it shows that government may have misplaced its priorities. If a common man does not have the liberty of worship, what more is left of Nigeria? Simplest of all the questions is, if President Buhari does not have the will power to eliminate insecurity, which was topmost in his agenda, what more remains of Nigeria? If Nigeria cannot boast of a leader who can flush out corrupt practices and ensure equal rights and opportunities for all manners of citizens, what more good thing is left of Nigeria?
