Boko Haram is an Islamic terrorist group currently active in Northern Nigeria.
From: Kunle Ibirogba <ibirogbak@yahoo.com>
Date: Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 10:39 AM
News report on the last Sunday of March, 2013 indicated that the National Youths Service Corps (NYSC) Directorate has redeployed the corps members originally posted to the north-eastern part of the country the hotbed of the Boko Haram terrorist activities – to the less volatile parts of the South. Many Nigerians are angry and unhappy with the news that the NYSC directorate not only contemplated, but actually mobilised some corps members to the crisis-ridden and violence prone parts of the country; even with the daily disclosures of the internecine bloodletting unleashed by the insurgents against fellow Nigerians.
It makes you want to wonder about and question the type of human beings that run and direct the affairs of the NYSC. After the 2011 merciless slaughter of the corps members posted to some parts of the North, why would any officer of the Directorate want to mobilise youth corps members to those trouble parts of the country? Have the insurgents stopped hating and killing educated and civilised Nigerians in the north-eastern part of the country that the Directorate mobilised the corps members? To what intent and purpose did they post the youth corps members to the north-eastern part of the country? What point did they wish to make with that sort of vicious posting? Why did they not post their children, wards, and relatives to Borno, Gombe, Yobe, Kano and Kaduna states, if they are truly committed to national unity?
Why must it always be the other people's children and wards that state officials should use as cannon folders; to sustain the opportune falsehood that all is well, even where everything appears hopeless? Why are the state actors, the politicians, colluding with their deceptive civil servants to jeopardise the lives of innocent Nigerians? Isn't this wicked practice of letting the other people's children take the bullets for the ambition and miscalculations of power seekers that has bred the Boko Haram Frankenstein monsters? When will state actors and officials stop endangering the lives of Nigerians?
Successive regimes in the northern states since the attainment of political independence in 1960, have neglected to institute real governance and mobilise their people for civilised progress. The elite in the North sent their children to good schools at home and abroad; and looked the other way when the other people's children roamed the streets, begging for alms, and receiving instructions from demonic twists in some religions, that enlightenment and education were evils to be treated with disdain and askance. They remained aloof and kept their distance; failing to realise that injury to the psyche of one Nigerian is ultimately injury to all.
Nation states that have risen to the pedestal of goodness in the realm of social welfare, social service, and security to life and property provisioning, have internalised the canon that "injury to one is injury to all"; and that for there to be an "I" , there must be a "thou". The Jewish Martin Buber's classic in human relations is, indeed, entitled "I and Thou". The challenge of the Humanities Division in institutions of higher learning is how to effectively teach the skill and communicate the culture of open, free, and dialogical human relations; in which there must be a responsibility of an "I" for a "Thou".
It is half way cleverness to suppose that we could get it right with our children without showing concern for what happens to the other less privileged people's children. That thought nurtured and nourished a tradition of violence and vengeance in the history of man. It is that tradition that mankind have been striving to overcome with various intellectual creations and devices, such as the phenomenological culture; which insists that whichever theory or principle that we wish to apply to others should first of all be applied to ourselves. That is how the Western European man liberated his kind from the tribal mindset; which he is now preparing the rest of humanity to imbibe as quickly as possible, without realising that the thought habits requisite for the thriving of that culture has not yet been rigorously and painstakingly inculcated in the homo sapiens of our clime.
Even so, that is where we must begin to retrieve our sinking humanity. The true standard of morality which works like good medicine is to use the self as the measure of right actions by extending it to others; for human existence is a shared existence, and the life of the "I" is meaningless without the life of the "Thou". Let the NYSC Directorate and all Nigerians learn from this: that we should not wish others what we could never wish ourselves; we should not apply to other people's children what we could never apply to our own children; for what goes around comes around, and what we wish others ultimately bounces back on us.
Consequently, our thoughts and wish for others must be well intentioned and considerate; lest we should find ourselves in the same quarters in hell with the other people that we wish evil.
Sent from my iPad
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