The terrible death that is killing Nigerians

Sir: The ikúdẹ̀dẹẹ̀gbò (terrible death) that has been killing Nigerians horribly since 2009 is no other than Nigeria rulers with effect from 2009 when the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua abused his presidential powers to attack the Boko Haram Islamic sect-community of men, women and children that did not attack anybody until attacked by government forces. How can a community that includes women and children be described as a terrorist organisation? No, it was simply a Muslim community until the presidency of Yar’Adua/Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan demonized it as preaching that Western education is evil. The presidency of General Olusegun Arẹmu Ọbasanjọ (OBJ) lasted from 1999-2007. The community was created in 2002, and it made no headline until Yar’Adua/Jonathan started campaign of calumny against it, and eventually attacked it with plethora of security operatives.

Being genuinely Muslim, Boko Haram responded with counterattack, because the Quran enjoins counterattack. The leader, Mohammed Yusuf was captured and killed extra-judicially in police headquarters, together with some of his followers, handcuffed and leg-chained, as barbarically as they do in Saudi Arabia. Since then till date, it has been carnage and economic destruction of Nigeria, because when Yar’Adua died in 2010, Jonathan took undue advantage of his death to truncate rotational presidency in 2011, against Yar’Adua’s northwest and the Boko Haram crisis became compounded. That led to the birth of the expression “political Boko Haram,” even though the actual beginning of “political Boko Haram” was 2009 when Yar’Adua abused his presidential powers to attack the sect. Note that even if you interpret boko haram to mean, as Nigerians were told, that “Western education is evil”, Boko Haram did not attack anybody or any school and it was not a violent community until attacked by the Yar’Adua/Jonathan presidency.

Why then was Boko Haram attacked? It was attacked not because of its opposition to Western education, but because Muslim imperialists were opposed to the community and it too was opposed to the mainstream and status quo that was comfortable with the rot in Nigeria, where the rich were (and are) getting richer and the poor getting poorer. That precisely was the reason the sect described Western education (boko in Hausa language) as haram (Arabic for misappropriation and embezzlement), because Nigeria rulers who possess Western education were (and are) using it to perpetrate haram, resulting in the gross underdevelopment of Nigeria and mass abject poverty.

That was the antagonism between Boko Haram and Nigeria’s Muslim imperialists who took undue advantage of the presidency of Yar’Adua/Jonathan to attack the former, and Nigeria has not known peace and progress since then (2009) till date. While Yar’Adua and the current President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (GMB) represent the heirs of the jihadist warriors of ancient times, Jonathan, David Mark, Yakubu Dogara, and Fẹmi Gbajabiamila represent the heirs of the crusade warriors of ancient times. That is the danger inherent in politicization of Islam and Christianity. Nigeria has not known peace and progress 2009 till date, because the Quran “disapproves of sects and divisions,” as insisted by the Nigeria Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) and the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) supported Jonathan’s truncation of rotational presidency, and not that Boko Haram started off as a terrorist organisation. Nobody and nothing is killing Nigeria and Nigerians worse than Islamic and Christian imperialists; they are the ikúdẹ̀dẹẹ̀gbò that is worse than any other thing, including coronavirus. Their repentance will be the end of the Boko Haram crisis and the beginning of religio-political sanity and economic resuscitation of Nigeria.

Prof. Ọlọjẹẹde Oyeniran Abiọjẹ wrote from University of Ilorin.