USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Reality of Religious Warfare and Ethnic Cleansing and Colonization in Nigeria by Islamic Terrorists and Fulani Imperialists and the Way Out through National Restructuring by McTuval Nwoko

The Reality of Religious Warfare and Ethnic Cleansing  and Colonization in Nigeria by Islamic  Terrorists and Fulani Imperialists and the Way Out through National Restructuring 

               McTuval Nwoko

We are Nigerians. We know what is happening in this country. Boko Haram and its offshoots are not fighting for economic grievances. They are prosecuting ideological and religious wars. Their primary targets are Christian communities and Muslims who do not accept their extremist interpretation of Islam. 

The Fulani herdsmen crisis is not about grazing routes either. When entire communities are wiped out, you are no longer talking about pasture, you are talking about conquest, occupation, and religious or ethnic cleansing. 

Yes, many Muslims have also suffered in this violence, but the pattern is clear, Christian communities are disproportionately targeted.

The tragedy is deepened by the fact that we now have vast ungoverned spaces where terrorists and bandits operate freely while the state is absent, indifferent, or compromised.

 In some states, governments negotiate with terrorists and pay them to suspend attacks, while allowing them maintain their weapons. 

Meanwhile, ordinary communities who are being slaughtered are not permitted to own weapons to defend themselves. That contradiction alone tells its own story.

There was the case of the farmer who was attacked on his farm, overpowered the terrorist and killed him in self-defense, yet he received a death sentence. 

Yet mobs have lynched Christians in the North for alleged blasphemy, and no single person in those mobs was ever arrested or prosecuted. 

We also have leaders of Fulani herdsmen issuing demands and conditions to the Nigerian state before they will stop killing. 

This is supposedly a sovereign nation. Something is fundamentally broken.

I am glad America and the international community are observing and speaking about this. 

But the solution is not an American invasion of Nigeria. An American invasion will not bring the relief people are desperate for. 

It will only create new layers of chaos, radicalization, occupation, and fragmentation. Just look at Iraq and Libya. These places have regressed by centuries and may never recover unless a homegrown force eventually defeats all others and rebuilds the nation from within.

Nigeria's problem is structural. Until we fix the political and security architecture that leaves whole populations defenseless while terrorists roam with sophisticated weapons, peace will not return.

This is why I have proposed a six to eight regional system under a confederation. Each region should have a Regional Guard similar to the U.S. state guards, with army, naval, and air components.

 Each local government should have its own local police force for community level issues, and each region should have a regional police force to handle inter LGA crises. That kind of layered security architecture is how plural federations survive.

Nigeria needs structural redesign, not foreign invasion. Only a Nigerian, decentralized, regionally empowered security structure can break this cycle of violence. 

From Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BYRsmF3jR/

Title by myself 

 

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