We spend intellectual capital
analysing the character of Boko
Haram in terms of ideological
radicalism and/or subsequent
politicization. In the face of non-
receding attacks and ever
increasing suicide-bombing
recruits, it is essential that when
we do a top-down examination
of theories (from balkanization,
to deadly local political games)
we also consider the negative
social dynamics and likely impact
in terms of ideological appeal and
spread of the phenomenon,
particularly suicide attacks. Say,
how does it fit in the context of
politics, and if you were able to
establish that suicide bombing in
northern Nigeria was indeed
politically induced, how would you
attempt to curtail a bottom-
level appeal of its misguided
heavenly promise, also, will it
cease to exist the moment
politicians turn off the tap?
Consider though the negative
psych-impact of a video clip
showing the grinning face of a
would-be suicide bomber right
before he crashes his explosives-
laden vehicle into people with
the firm conviction that that’s
his ticket to heaven. Also the
satisfaction gleaned from the
now too familiar voice of the
narrator as he prays for the
heavenly acceptance of the soul
of that suicide bomber on the
fulfilment of God’s will. Right
now, you might be thinking
‘come on woman, all of that
could be politically engineered,’
but think instead of the net
effect of both actions on morally
weakened, ideologically
corruptible and persons. Could
the courage exhibited in that
divine sacrifice appeal to more
people? Which still begs more
questions, is heaven or politics
the motive for suicide bombing, if
heaven, how do we prevent
impressionable heaven seekers
from being impressed and
impressive? If heaven, how do
we disincentivise the path to
heaven through suicide? Politics,
heaven, or both, what leads a
man to that radical end?
Case in point, they continually
leverage Islam which is gut
wrenching and unacceptable.
That is why we need to soul-
search, and while or when we
finger-point, we need to also
begin to lay down a new kind of
social and moral infrastructure
that would douse the message
of the path to heaven through
suicide, or any form of killing
(both very un-Islamic by the
way). We have to promote
simpler but heaven-worthy
examples like that of the
prostitute that has been
promised heaven for only being
kind to a dog (!), or how a smile
is the best form of charity and
earns you heavenly favours, or
how ridding a path of harmful
objects (that could harm
someone/anyone/anything)
makes Allah happy with you. We
need to frankly ask ourselves
about the consequences of our
collective and sequenced
disengagement from our
communal morals. For the love of
God and regardless of motive,
how did we graduate from
clutching the Hadeeth and
degenerate to wielding
explosives?
BH is all shades, arguably one of
the most inexplicable
phenomenon in the life of our
country today, defiant even to
the most astute or discerning
mind in its religious, economic and
political colorations (the
president, Goodluck Jonathan
says the group has infiltrated
the government – a senator, Ali
Ndume, has been indicted and is
cooling his heels in the senate
chambers of NASS(?) - the
president himself was fingered in
a bombing activity). Inundated as
we are with this confusion, we
should not lose focus of the
danger posed by the likely
spread of the ideology of suicide
bombing or terrorism as a whole.
And for that, we need more
social than political will/focus to
begin an incremental but
onerous process of rewinding
the depraved appeal of suicide
bombing. A social strategy/
focus synonymous with cutting
off a tree from the roots, that
is, through efforts of positive
messaging and re-messaging
made at the grass-roots by
families, mosques, communities,
you and I. And of course political
will too, which is tantamount to
killing a snake by chopping off its
head or just ‘bringing the
perpetrators to book’, once
and for all. Easy to do, since the
government claims to know who
they are, - but a tall order still.
If we do both and with some luck
we may not have any residual
transmissions since both edges
i.e. the head and the roots would
have been clipped. Lets note
that doing only one, or the
latter would be hopeless, we
tried that when we summarily
executed Muhammad Yusuf, and
look where that has led us. More
and not less body count. The
truth (or a theory) sometimes is
inconvenient, scary or not the
truth at all, but faced with an
iota of reasonable doubt, you/we
may want to be cautious. There
are certainly more questions
than answers, more ‘who’ is
behind it, but not enough
‘how’ to prevent the next
grinning kid from becoming canon
fodder, (or more critically)
‘how’ to generally try to kill
the appeal of suicide bombing
and terrorism. If we want
relative everlasting peace, we
may need to consider more of
the ‘hows’.
I will leave you with a quote from
an article by Mallam Nasir el-
Rufai in relationship to the case
of Mutallab, the young Nigerian
that attempted to blow up
himself and 289 people aboard
an aircraft belonging to
Northwest Airlines:
‘It is right that Nigeria and the
global community should seek to
understand how a single wealthy
student could become so
radicalised as to be deployed as
a pawn in an attempt to bring
down an airliner on Christmas
Day. We must dissect the incident
and explore its roots, the
enabling network and the
systemic and human errors that
nearly cost 300 innocents their
lives. We must shut down the
teaching of hate and we must
strip extremists of their tools of
destruction and make sure our
freedoms are not exploited by
our enemies.’ (Emphasis mine,
and that’s exactly what we
need to do).
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