Still on target: 2000 Blacks got to be free
No expert on Nigeria am I, but that doesn't disqualify me from observing that some of the explanatory features in that opinion piece show that it was specially written for the New York Times and not, say, for a Nigerian newspaper. My aim here is not to comment on everything that he said about these matters of great national importance.
Only now is poor ignoramus aware that there has been an escalation in terrorist affairs since the Boko Haram leader Mohammed Yusuf was murdered in cold blood on 30th July, 2009. I had thought that it had only been business as usual since the beginning of the Boko Haram insurgency. Please forgive my ignorance –at least you don't have to understand it, but what I can't understand is that in addition to bombing churches and killing both Christian and Muslim college students, the Boko Haram has also been targeting some of their own innocent Nigerian Muslim people up there in the North.
In his the telling of it as it is Adewale Maja-Pearce has provided Nigerians with much food for thought. His first five paragraphs amplify the mystery surrounding Abubakar Shekau and the only things that are not mysterious are the body count – the exact figures that he provides for the number of heads that have been translated from life to death - "some 3,000" - and the bounty prize money put on Mr. Shekau's own head, a paltry $7,000 000 – no mention of the deaths and casualties suffered by Boko Haram itself – perhaps because we are not in any doubt that the Boko Haram has also been severely decimated and such reports don't have to be verified or further authenticated - the Baga Massacre for example, and other reports of massacres perpetrated by the Nigerian military which has been on several shooting sprees, on mission shoot -to-kill in reprisal attacks - even on civilians in areas said to be support bases of Boko Haram, less talk about taking any prisoners of war as bargaining chips.
One way of looking upon the mystery that's supposed to surround AbuBakar Shekau is that the Nigerian military might be in a hurry to say that they have killed the new Boko Haram leader as they are no doubt anxious to claim the reward of $7,000, 000 cash – a much greater sum than twenty pieces of silver...
However, no matter how hungry the military may be for the bounty money, they have not yet gone all the way in making staking their claim - "might have died" clearly states a probability or a possibility – not a certainty - and this is all the more reason why in spite of Maja-Pearce's charge that "the government has provided no proof of this claim" – only such proof (the body) could guarantee their bagging the reward money. They're still saying Shekau "might" have perished. If they had certainty at the end of the gun barrels they would have presented the body bag as proof.
Since Maja-Pearce wrote his opinion piece another possibility has emerged - that like Jesus of Nazareth, Mr. Abubakar Shekau of Boko Haram had died but has now resurrected! But what is more probable (Islamically speaking) is that just as the Quran in which the Boko Haram believes – asserts that Jesus did not die on the cross – so too we must conclude that in the case of Mr Shekau no death means no resurrection – however in both cases the legends may persist – in Shekau's case that could attest to claims of supernatural power possessed by Boko Haram's charismatic leader – a rumour which could soon spread - so that in time we read that his fame/ infamy " had grown like a bush-fire in the harmattan."
( During the Sierra Leone rebel war there were those whose flesh and bone bodies were rumoured to be impervious to bullets - simply impenetrable to gunshots and such miracles were achieved through the use of local " juju" /"charms" - when Wole Soyinka stopped over in Stockholm for a few days during his world tour against the dictatorship of Sani Abacha he did regale us with tales about Abacha's superstitions and I had heard similar stories about Murtala Muhammed and that his assassins got the better of him because he did not wear his good luck charm on that fateful Friday, 13th February, 1976...)
Well, we're still here today, but by definition, all men are mortal and death - "the certainty" is the final equalizer.
Chidi Anthony Opara has posted what he dubs "Boko Haram's Latest Video" Are these some post-resurrection declamations by their leader – or declamations by the man who is still feeling very well and very much alive?
This morning, I watched the inimitable Zeinab Badawi talking to counter-insurgency expert, David Kilcullen on BBC Hardtalk at 9.30 GMT - waited in vain for just a mention of Boko Haram but the Boko Haram were not on his radar - however, what David Kilcullen said this morning and has said elsewhere ought to be taken seriously by Nigerian authorities and my assumption is that before the next elections, the Boko Haram insurgency would have dramatically moved South – to shopping malls and churches in urban areas in the South and it stands to reason that if it is as Maja-Pearce says that it's essentially "the power struggle between the largely Islamic north and the largely Christian south" then that "struggle/ jihad" will soon be moving South - as David Kilcullen suggests Islamic based insurgencies are based on "religious ideology and other factors" in the struggle for power.
The secessionist claims being made in paragraph eleven are serious. Sounds like that area of Nigeria is going for a repeat of the Biafra idea - a déjà vu in the making
Mwalimu Maja-Pearce glosses over much, although in a short opinion piece of that nature we shouldn't expect him to say everything that he would normally say in his magnum opus, anyway let me take up this one vital point (I think it's vital) and some piercing explanations are called for. In his synoptic view (a synoptic history of political Nigeria) he says that "From independence in 1960 until the return of democracy in 1999, Nigeria was ruled almost exclusively by elites (largely military) from the north, who practically believed that they had a divine right to govern."
If "the North" has always been statistically in the majority – in the electoral registers, then that feeling or belief about having "a divine right to govern" must be based on numbers, that's how democracy works - through the ballot box - and so Mr. Adewale Maja-Pearce I suggest that they certainly don't believe that their "divine right" is based on their being in the minority or any kind of minority status calculation – only in divine mathematics. The integrity of their judgment must be based on an identity that unites them - an identity that is ethnic and religious and a shared history that is regional. As for demographic nightmares, time is slowly showing that polygamous families produce more family members and that it is these family members that contribute to making Nigeria Africa's most populous nation!
All sincerely said,
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