Genocidal Self-Incrimination by Danjuma

By Biko Agozino

In an interview with the Vanguard Newspaper, Danjuma confessed that he lost control after arresting the head of state, Ironsi, that he was sworn to protect and that he conspired to assassinate him in retaliation for the January coup of 1966 that even Danjuma acknowledged that Ironsi helped to end, that Ironsi arrested the suspects and jailed them to await trial. Danjuma claimed that they assassinated Ironsi and his Yoruba host, along with numerous Igbo army officers, in retaliation because it was taking too long to bring the suspects to trial and the press were clamoring for their release as national heroes. 

Danjuma did not confess that he has since also lost control of his village and that the same narrative of retaliation is being used to justify the genocide against innocent civilians all over the country. He wondered why the coup makers also killed military officers if they were only after corrupt civilians as if military officers were immune to corruption (no excuse for the assassinations) but he did not say why his retaliatory coup did not go to the prisons to get the coup suspects if their motive was retaliation. He did not spare a thought for millions of civilians killed in his so-called retaliatory coup that he confessed to in self-incrimination. 

There is evidence that more of the Igbo fleeing the initial pogrom from the North were waylaid in Gboko (home area of Danjuma) and systematically massacred as Soyinka recounts in many of his works in different genres and as documented by Obumselu in the massacre of NdiIgbo in Northern Nigeria. The genocide against the Igbo was led by Christian army officers from the Middle Belt and from the West but then blamed on the Muslim Hausa Fulani who are yet to brag about it like Jack Gowon, Theophilus Danjuma, Mathew Obasanjo, Benjamin Adekunle, Anthony Enahoro, and Jeremiah Awolowo with the rare exception of the boast attributed to Buhari that he was ready to kill the Igbo again with no regrets. 

Contrary to the claims by Danjuma, it was not an Igbo coup that killed leaders of other regions and spared Igbo ones (if they also killed Igbo leaders, that would not make it less treasonable). Officers from other parts of Nigeria participated in that coup and their plan was to free a Yoruba leader from prison and put him in power, something that Danjuma and co fulfilled. Yet, the genocide singled out the Igbo for total destruction, forcing the East to secede even though they were the ones persuading other regions not to secede earlier. What have the Igbo done to Danjuma to deserve such unrepentant genocidal hatred when everyone knows that genocide is never justifiable? Other coups have been done by officers from other regions (including the region of Danjuma) and yet no one has tried to subject the people from such regions to the final solution. Why the Igbophobia?

The questions that The Vanguard journalists should have asked the self-confessed genocidist Danjuma are what was the retaliatory cause of the riots against the Igbo during the colonial rule in 1945 in Jos when the war-time scarcity imposed by the British was blamed on Igbo traders and on the NCNC-supported general strike by labour led by Michael Imoudu? How about the Kano massacre of the Igbo still during colonial rule in 1956 following perceived insults to Northern leaders by politicians from Western Nigeria arising from the motion for immediate independence and the amendment of independence when practicable, was that also retaliation against the Igbo for what? 

The use of 'starvation as a legitimate weapon of war' and the indiscriminate defoliation with abundant supply of weapons by the UK Labour Party government and the indiscriminate bombing with jets supplied by the Soviet Union and flown by Egyptian pilots against Biafran civilians, were they also retaliation, for what? How about the extra-judicial killings of innocent youth who have only ever called for a referendum on the future of the country and for the democratic right to stay home and mourn their dead by flying a Black Nationalist flag (that is actually more beautiful than the lame green-white-green imposed by imperialism) in honor of their dead ancestors, how about their proscription as terrorists while 'foreign' cattle herders who have massacred civilians all over the country remain legit? Where are the responses of the Nigerian pseudo-intellectuals to the admission of fascist genocide by Danjuma and co?

As Achebe, Ekwe-Ekwe, Jacobs, Adichie, Emecheta, Uzoigwe, Nzimiro, Soyinka and a few others documented, the genocide against the Igbo was premeditated by ethnic warlords who feared that the Igbo would dominate the country in open and fair struggles for scarce resources and it was orchestrated by the British who sowed the fear of Igbo domination due to the fact that the Igbo led the struggle for the restoration of Independence in Nigeria as Shagari admitted in a 1945 poem urging the North to join the struggle to show Waka to Boko. The Igbo have since demonstrated that they are not interested in dominating anyone but only in pursuing their livelihood through their own efforts despite systematic efforts to deindustrialize their home region, quit notices from other regions, and their exclusion from top political positions. Unlike Danjuma and his fellow self-confessed genocidists, the Igbo are not looking for retaliation but they will welcome reparative justice any day as the Justice Oputa Panel on human rights violations recommended. Other Nigerians will not lose anything when the government finally admits that a great wrong was done to the Igbo and atonements are made.

Recently, Obasanjo was reported as surrendering in his efforts to conquer the Igbo when he allegedly admitted that the Igbo cannot be conquered because they are democratic and not constrained by feudal institutions in their tireless efforts to uplift themselves and their communities against all odds. Colonial anthropologists advised Obasanjo to subjugate the Igbo by imposing traditional leaders on them after the war to make them more submissive like people from other regions, a thing that the colonial authorities had attempted before being defeated by the Women's War of 1929, leaving the East with no House of Traditional Rulers unlike the North and the West.

Obasanjo got it wrong because the other sections of the country never had a single leader compared to the Igbo who supposedly have only individualism. There have always been majority and minority politicians in every region of Nigeria (Aminu Kano in the North West, Waziri in the North East; Tarka and Lar in the North Central; Akintola, Agbekoya, Fela, Soyinka, and Falae in the South West; Boro and Ita in the South South; and Chike Obi, SG Ikoku, CC Onoh, Arthur Nwankwo and even Ojukwu in the East) in line with democratic rights to freedom of association. 

The Igbo have consistently voted their conscience for presidential candidates from other regions even against Igbo candidates in the cases of Shagari, Obasanjo, Yaradua, Jonathan and Atiku (they also elected a Fulani man as the Mayor of Enugu and appointed a minority Eyo Ita as head of government business in Enugu while Chimaroke Nnamani included a Yoruba man in his cabinet from 1999-2007 in Enugu). 

Apart from the Plateau State support for Azikiwe in the second republic and the initial victory of Zik in the Western region, no other region can boast of a similar detribalized record in supporting presidential candidates and yet the Igbo are still suspected of being a threat to Nigeria (the appointment of Okonkwo Kano, Ojukwu's uncle, to the Northern Legislative Council, the alliances that Zik formed across the country, and the election of Igbo candidates to the Federal House of Representatives from Lagos - that attracted threats of drowning in the lagoon if the Igbo did not vote a certain way preferred by a traditional ruler - notwithstanding). 

It is the genocidist generals who have dominated the misrule of Nigeria who should apologize to Nigerians for scapegoating the Igbo while giving self-confessed terrorists oil blocks, hundreds of billions, and political appointments to placate them. The result is that when the rain falls, it will not fall on Igbo rooftops only. Danjuma has since lost control of his village after leading the genocide against the Igbo. 

The solution to the genocidist states that imperialism foisted across Africa is the dissolution of the colonial boundaries to make way for the United Republic of African States or the Peoples Republic of Africa for which the people have voted with their feet as they transgress the imaginary lines drawn at the Berlin conference in search of their livelihood. The neocolonial states in Africa beg to be restructured in Pan African directions to prevent any group of genocidal trigger-happy killers trained by imperialism to attempt another genocide in any part of Africa without being stopped by the people who will be busy rebuilding Africa in leaps and bounds. Do Not Agonize, Organize!

BUHARI ON EXISTENTIALISM

By Biko Agozino

In rationalizing his suspension of the Chief Justice of the Nigerian Supreme Court, President Muhammadu Buhari stated without explanation, ‘This is an existential policy’. What is the ‘this’ referring to? Within the context of the speech, he could be referring to the fight against corruption as a fight that must be won if the country must continue to exist. However, since corruption is found in every existing country, it is doubtful that fighting corruption alone could be ‘an existential policy’. Perhaps, Buhari’s speech writers were giving us a hint of his ideological or philosophical orientation by invoking existentialism to define the man and his policies as guided by the fear of the end of existence. What is existentialism?

Existentialism is the European belief that existence comes before essence. A country exists before the essential policies of the country can be shaped and implemented by individual social agents. An individual exists before the subjective opinions of the individual can be interpreted by other individuals. Existentialists, therefore, see the world as absurd in the sense that the actions of individuals or the policies of nations do not always make rational sense especially when such actions and policies go against the interests of the actors or policy-makers. Existentialists wonder why some policy-makers pursue goals that may threaten the existence of the nation state or why some individuals indulge in actions that would harm them personally even while experiencing thrill, angst and dread about the consequences?

It is probably flattering to suggest that Buhari is philosophical in any sense of the term but his speech-writers may be individuals who strongly believe that what matters is the existence of political power and not the essence of good and evil policies. The speech-writers are indicating the obvious existentialist dogma that what makes a person like Buhari is the past existence of the individual and Buhari, having been a dictator in the past, is bound to continue existing as a dictator; irrespective of the essence of the present presidential constitution. It is possible that if Buhari understood this self-mocking implication of the concept of existential policy, he would fire the speech writers with what he called ‘alacrity’ in his judge-jury-executioner speech.

Buhari wants us to believe that he was only obeying the order of the Code of Conduct Tribunals by suspending Chief Justice Walter Nkanu Onnoghen and replacing him with an interim Justice. Critics shout that coming only weeks before a presidential election, Buhari is trying to hedge his bets that the election results may be determined by the Supreme Court. Thus, appointing an interim Chief Justice who happens to share his own religious affiliation, ethnicity, and regional origin on the existential ground of being the next most senior Justice of the supreme Court, is just what it is, neither good nor evil, according to existentialism. Being, perhaps, the only Supreme Court Justice with a doctoral degree and having been a Justice of the Sharia Court of Appeal in the past are just existential facts that should not be confused with the essence.

The essence of the policy of rule of law is that the suspended Chief Justice remains innocent before the law until proven guilty. The allegations against him are heavy and if found guilty following a proper investigation and fair trial, Buhari is right that he should not return as the Chief Justice because no one is above the law. However, if the Chief Justice is proven to have been corrupt, it is likely that the Associate Justices of the supreme court share in his guilt. 

Unknown to Buhari’s speech-writers, it is not the Chief Justice alone who determines cases that come before the court and so if people suspected of corruption have been freed by the Supreme Court on ‘mere technicalities’ as alleged, is there evidence of dissenting opinions and concurring opinions to show how the Chief Justice could over-rule the jury of his peers? 

By the way, the Supreme Court usually considers ‘mere technicalities’ or points of law and not the facticity or substantive evidence that may have been examined by the court of first instance. The rule of law uses such ‘mere technicalities’ to ensure that it is better for ten guilty persons to escape punishment than for one innocent person to be punished. Nigerian courts may be corrupt but they are clearly more accountable than the legislative and executive arms of government perhaps because of the relative security of tenure that should not be undermined.

If all judges are tainted in Nigeria, as many suspect, then where would the country find the angels to preside over court cases under a corrupt neocolonial regime? Kwame Nkrumah also removed the Chief Justice of Ghana from office after people suspected of plotting to kill Nkrumah were acquitted by the apex court. Buhari points to undeclared assets worth millions of dollars that the Chief Justice himself admitted that he mistakenly did not declare or failed to declare correctly and the postponement of the National Judicial Council that could vote to suspend the Chief Justice. Critics say that if the same existential policy is applied to Buhari himself and to his nepotistic appointees, there would be a government shutdown in Nigeria.

One of the greatest weaknesses of existentialism as a Eurocentric philosophy is the over-emphasis on the individual who interacts with other individuals in arts and philosophy. Greater attention to the structure of an unjust society would need to go beyond existentialism and individualism to address the on-going generational ethnic-religious-gender-class struggles. 

Buhari must be commended for fighting corruption but he must be reminded that he cannot fight corruption by targeting individuals who may not be loyal to him while turning a blind eye to his cronies. His existential policy of giving more to areas that gave him 95% of their votes and less to those who wisely gave him 5% of their votes with knowledge of his unrepentant chauvinism may not be challengeable in corrupt courtrooms but voters still have the limited power to hold the politicians accountable to some extent if they bother to vote.

In the final analysis, it is not the law that will determine the nature of the society; it is the society that will determine the nature of the law in Nigeria. So long as Nigerian politicians and the masses refuse to address historic wrongs done with the support of the law against millions of the people in the past and the present, for so long will the existential policy of fighting corruption remain a smoke-screen. Buhari does not need the Supreme Court or the Code of Conduct Tribunal to order him to apologize to the survivors of the genocide that he helped to lead against the Igbo in Biafra, of which he was reported as saying that he had no regrets and that he was ready to do it again. 

Nigeria should offer reparations to the survivors as recommended by the Justice Oputa Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights Abuses in the country. Many survivors of other tragic wrongs in the country have been offered some atonement but not the Igbo who still feel unwanted by a country that dreads letting them go to build their own nation. There is no need for a court order before the politicians wage a war against intolerance, illiteracy, disease, and poverty in the country in concert with other African states towards the Peoples Republic of Africa in which no existential individual will be able to impose his free will on the masses ever again.

OBASANJO’S BLOODY FINGERS

By Biko Agozino

“The lice of poor performance in government - poverty, insecurity, poor economic management, nepotism, gross dereliction of duty, condonation of misdeed - if not outright encouragement of it, lack of progress and hope for the future, lack of national cohesion and poor management of internal political dynamics and widening inequality - are very much with us today. With such lice of general and specific poor performance and crying poverty with us, our fingers will not be dry of ‘blood’.” – Obasanjo

The press release by General Olusegun Obasanjo concerning the state of Nigeria is full of evasions and half-truths. It is not ‘lice’ that make the lousy ‘fingers’ of Obasanjo and his fellow genocidists ‘not to be dry of “blood”. Their fingers are dripping with fresh blood because the killings have continued unabated since the launch of the genocide against the Igbo who wisely voted massively against the Buhari regime that Obasanjo helped to impose.

For full disclosure, Obasanjo is expected to admit his complicity in the ongoing genocide and offer unconditional apologies to the Igbo in particular. He should join all well-meaning people to demand for atonement in the form of reparations. Obasanjo should admit that the gruesome killings by security forces, terrorists and herdsmen that he lamented follow the pattern of the genocide against innocent Igbomasses. Unless Nigerians admit and make atonement for this foundational genocide, the culture of genocidal violence will continue to wet the fingers of genocidist rulers with ‘blood’, according to the laws of karma.

However, despite all his human limitations and with all his involvement in crimes against humanity, Obasanjo remains exceptional for being the first head of state in Nigeria to hand over power to an elected successor and he did so twice though he has been accused of imposing flawed successors. He is also the first head of state to appoint more women to offices in his administration although some suspect that some of those women may wear the #MeToo pin against him.

He was able to settle the dispute with Cameroon over Bakassi without plunging Nigeria into a wasteful war with our African neighbors, though he could have better planned the resettlement of the Nigerians expelled from there or negotiated the admission of Cameroon to the opoen borders of ECOWAS. Similarly, Obasanjo had a magical way of resolving some political crises in other African states by, for example, persuading militarists to yield power back to civilians just as he persuaded Charles Taylor to step down in Liberia, though some suspect that he bargained corruptly with bags of public funds.

Despite the massive corruption in his administration, Obasanjo was and remains the only head of state to establish a special economic and financial crimes commission, EFCC, with which a sitting Inspector General of Police from his own ethnic group was convicted of corruption and jailed and some governors from his own party were indicted, though the EFCC under him allegedly went after mainly his perceived political opponents.

It is exceptional that apart from Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Dr. Obasanjo is the only Nigerian head of state to publish books even if they were allegedly ghost-written for him by his research assistants; nothing stops other politicians from appointing their own research assistants. He is the only Nigerian head of state to initiate a presidential library even if the funding involved massive corruption by governors who donated public funds, according to Gani Fawehinmi. Obasanjo remains the only Nigerian head of state, with the exception of General Yakubu Gowon whose arranged Ph.D. yielded no publication so far, to recognize his own intellectual limitations and return to school to pursue an advanced degree.

Obasanjo is also the only former Nigerian head of state to call for Nigeria to beg 'agitators to stop' because there is enough cake to be shared. Obasanjo should go ahead and lead by example by offering a personal apology of his own and by calling on his fellow genocidist commanders to join him in offering reparations from their fabulous ill-gotten wealth. Obasanjo should call on Britain and Russia which facilitatedthe genocide against the Igbo to offer apologies and reparations to the Igbo too.

The call by Obasanjo for a Coalition of Nigerians is too little too late since he also recognized how crucial it is for Nigeria to be involved in the leadership of Africa. The coalition-building should involve all other states in Africa towards the United States of Africa that the first president of the country, Azikiwe, called for in 1959 and which Nkrumah and others echoed. With almost all Nigerians demanding the restructuration of the country, focusing exclusively on the internal colonial boundaries of Nigeria is unsatisfactory.

As Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe and Chinua Achebe remind us, the genocidal culture that was initiated against the Igbo in Nigeria has since spread throughout post-colonial Africa. Moreover, the African masses have transgressed the porous colonial boundaries in search of their daily livelihood in spite of heightened insecurities and genocidal threats. We need to recognize this reality and urgently build the Peoples Republic of Africa to guarantee the freedom of our people and collectively protect the masses against the imposed genocidist states ruled with blood-stained fingers across Africa.

PYTHONS DANCE IN THE JUNGLE

By Biko Agozino

The declaration (or ‘proclamation’, according to the Chief of Army Staff, Gen. Buratai) by the DHQ of the Nigerian Army that the ‘Independent’ People of Biafra is a 'militant terrorist organization' and the staging of war against IPOB supporters and their leaders amount to an apparent coup attempt. It is ‘unconstitutional and unlawful’ as the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, stated; it is an extra-judicial overreach of the sort condemned by Amnesty International in 2016. It is not the DHQ that declares war even under a military government. That is the prerogative of the legislative body that makes the law defining what is terrorism and it is up to the courts to follow the due process to determine if any group can be declared terrorist subject to appeals by the group. Nigerian courts ruled in March 2017 that IPOB is not an illegal organization. The executive arm of government has the power to deploy the military to quell an insurrection under Section 217 of the constitution. But the proclamation of the right to self-determination by the masses all over the country, not only in the relatively non-violent Southeast that is singled out for Operation Python Dance II, is not insurrectional unless accompanied by violence. No army is entitled to unilaterally declare as terrorists nor to proscribe, unarmed citizens who are calling for a plebiscite to decide their future relative to imposed colonial boundaries. It is fascistic to attempt to subject citizens to acts of war and threats to wipe them out for exercising free speech or even for throwing stones at military vehicles that tried to 'crush' them as directed by the president in a public speech after his return from over 100 days sick leave in London.

Agwuncha Arthur Nwankwo who won the case that deleted sedition from the Nigerian criminal code in 1983 has consistently warned that the Nigerian ruling classes are playing an ‘end-game’ that he called ‘terminus’ because they operate ‘cimilicy’ through the empowerment of civilianized military officers and militarized civilian politicians to perpetuate unjust political structures and thereby provoke national disintegration. Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, has called for dialogue with leaders of the Southeast to remedy the marginalization of the region instead of adopting the unlawful act of deploying the military against peaceful civil disobedience, contrary to constitutional case law precedents and contrary to the adoption of dialogue and amnesty by ex-PresidentUmaru Yar’adua in response to even more militant crises in the past. Ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo also recently cautioned against another war in the Southeast and called for dialogue just like former military president, Ibrahim Babangida, given their leading roles in the genocidal war alongside the incumbent, President Muhammadu Buhari.

Nigeria is not a Zoo republic, contrary to the unexamined njakiri or joke by Nnamdi Kanu and his cantankerous IPOB followers. A zoo is one of the most orderly spaces that human beings structured and continue to restructure to accommodate new specimens, to save endangered species, and to add new attractions. No zoo will allow pythons to dance in triumph over the fee-paying public that have gathered for edutainment about the animal republic or kingdom. If a python escapes from its enclosure as was the case in Harry Porter where little Harry used his psychic powers to free it from a glass cage, the very shy python would slither away into hiding to avoid being caught and beheaded by the zoo keepers or by ordinary moguls. Zoo animals have never declared war against zoo visitors without being put down like the chimpanzee that dragged a child like a doll in a US zoo.

Far from being like a zoo, Nigeria is remarkably zooless because the zoo keepers have since starved the zoo animals to death while probably stealing the meat and food that they were supposed to feed to the captive animals. When the big or even tiny beasts died of hunger, the greedy zoo keepers most likely butchered them and shared the meat among themselves to see what lion, reptile or elephant meat tastes like. When the zoo was emptied of specimens, the politicians swooped and scrambled for the real estate which they cornered for themselves and their families after selling a big chunk to companies with huge kick-backs for themselves.

Nigeria is more like a jungle where might is right and where life is nasty, brutish and short, as Thomas Hobbes would put in Leviathan. The exception is that the jungle is often better than Naija because the jungle animals never have access to weapons of mass destruction with which to kill millions of their own species and or starve them to death while bragging that starvation is a legitimate weapon of war. Jungle animals rarely kill another animal that they would not eat as food but Naija cultists kill and humiliate one another for money medicine, intimidation, or for fun. Jungle animals never issue quit notices nor circulate hate songs nor wage sectarian religious wars. Of course, Nigeria claims to be more civilized than the jungle because they actually have a written constitution, universities, elections, motor cars, mansions and airplanes, they dress fashionably, have many billionaires and they are very religious. But for all of that, Naija is more like a jungle than a zoo and so, maybe, the name should be changed to Naijungle.

Nigeria has cultism enshrined in Schedule 7 of the constitution with reference to the oaths of office that elected officials, judges and political appointees are required to take. They swear or affirm their loyalty to Nigeria and commit themselves to upholding the principles in schedule 5 regarding the code of conduct for public office holders. They also promise to perform their functions ‘without fear or favour, affection or ill-will’. They ask God to help them to perform their official duties. If Nigeria is not a jungle, then the cultist Schedule 7 should have been amended by now to remind elected officials that they are expected to perform their duties with fear for the wrath of the masses if not for the punishment of God; in favour of the long-suffering people and not just to the benefit of their families and cronies; with affection for the innocent masses, not without affection; and with ill-will to the enemies of the people such as poverty, diseases and illiteracy. Do Nigerians even know that this schedule 7 in the constitution sounds like cultism? How can you require elected representatives to swear that they will govern the people without affection? That is a devilish oath crafted with the good intentions of making public officials objective and impartial but it is flawed like the paved road that leads straight to hell.

Governors of the Southeast states erred by proscribing the non-violent Indigenous Peoples of Biafra instead of advocating on their behalf with affection to legalize the flying of the flag of Biafra as free speech in memory of lost ones, by building infrastructures, and by demanding reparations for past wrongs.

IPOB erred by threatening to boycott elections in Anambra andthe rest of the Southeast. The referendum that IPOB is calling for could come in the form of elections through which the people of the Southeast can elect representatives who speak for them rather than against them. IPOB supporters should brave the electoral process and campaign for a party or candidates of their choice. If their supporters turn out to vote in support of their preferred candidates, they may elect officials that will advocate for them and help to negotiate the ‘unnegotiable’ towards the resolution of the crisis of legitimacy facing the country. If they lose or after being elected the officials sell out and turn against the people, they could be recalled or impeached.

After the federal government declared war on the people of the Southeast for proclaiming their rights non-violently, human rights attorneys should bring writs for crimes against humanity to the international courts of justice, for adjudication and for reparations.

The people of the Southeast have suffered unwarranted genocide in the hands of Nigeria. Never again, to echo the press release of Ambassador Bianca Ojukwu. Instead, offer the masses the choice to erase the colonial boundaries and join their African brothers and sisters to build the United States of Africa and terminate the genocidist state structures imposed by colonialism across Africa.

Dr. Agozino is a Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Virginia Tech.

Policy Impact of This Blog

By Biko Agozino

Sometimes the authorities listen to good ideas but the implementation often skews the ideas away from success. Finally, President Buhari has bought the idea that I blogged in April calling for ranches to be set up as a way of modernizing beef and dairy productions while avoiding clashes between herders and farmers. The retired General Buhari has just announced that soldiers would be sent to Argentina to learn ranching and return to set up ranches in Nigeria. Why only soldiers when the army of unemployed youth could be mobilized and empowered by being funded to be trained and enabled to run ranches as cooperatives across the country. Here is my original blog on the issue:

http://massliteracy.blogspot.com/2016/04/in-praise-of-nigerian-cattle-herders.html

 

and here is the news of the proposal to train soldiers on ranching:

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/12/nigerian-army-set-cattle-ranches-nationwide/

Buhari: From Boko Haram to Boko Halal?

By Biko Agozin

In his April 14 2015 NYT Op Ed, General Muhammadu Buhari, the President-elect of Nigeria, appears to respond to some of my comments on what I called Buhari’s Chatham House Silences. He is still silent on some other silences but his Op Ed is an indication that he has attentive speech writers around him ready to respond to current affairs on international media platforms. However, it would have been more appropriate for him to publish such policy opinions in the Nigerian media first and let foreign media outlets pick up the stories from there (as Professor Obi Nwakanma opined in his Orbit column for The Vanguard. In my earlier comment the very day he made the Chatham House campaign speech, I had this to say on my blog:

‘This sounds like a speech written by Tony Blair with emphasis on militarism as the solution to insecurity and to its 'causes', without acknowledging that militarism is a big part of the problem. Nowhere in Buhari's Chatham House speech today is there a single recognition of the importance of education even though Boko Haram poses its challenge primarily as an educational one! This contrasts with the speech of Azikiwe, Nigeria's first president, to the colonial Legislative Council sitting in Kaduna in 1948 in which he disagreed with those who spoke out against education on the assumption that educated children tend to be disobedient. And by education, is not meant only text-book education, important as that is in a country with mass illiteracy, 80% failure in high school exams and no university ranked among the top 1000 in the world. Buhari also said that Nigeria has never been as insecure as it is today except during the civil war. So the question arises, which candidate for president has the courage in leadership to apologize to Nigerians for the atrocities committed by the Nigerian state during the civil war and commit to pay reparations to the survivors of the war that cost us 3.1 million of some of our most industrious, creative and intellectual youth in 30 months of carnage supported by Britain and the Soviet Union and led by soldiers like Buhari? Without admitting the wrongs done against the Igbo and making amends, Nigeria will continue to send the message to groups like Boko Haram that the mass killing of our people and mass abduction of our young girls are heroic acts to be rewarded with ill-gotten gains. Making atonement and allowing the history to be taught in schools, building monuments to the victimized, allowing the flag of Biafra to be flown on private property without the risk of extra judicial killings that go on with impunity unabated, authorization of commemorative car license plates and holding re-enactments of the war to re-educate the people and to attract tourists (one of the things that Buhari promises to stimulate), will be part of the necessary political education to emphasize to Nigerians that never again will any government wake up and slap the buttocks of soldiers, then send them into a genocidal rampage against fellow Nigerians. The cooperation of the neighboring countries' armies in fighting Boko Haram should also have been acknowledged by Buhari and a visionary leadership should seek to rebuild the larger polity that Nnamdi Azikiwe attempted to build with his National Council for Nigeria and the Cameroons.’

In his NYT Op Ed, Buhari maintains that he plans to ‘Stop Boko Haram’ terrorists with the force of the Nigerian military first before addressing the underlying causes of the terrorism - including poverty, ignorance and illiteracy. To accomplish the first task of stopping Boko Haram, he plans to renew the training of Nigerian soldiers by the US military that the out-going administration cancelled after the US curiously refused to sell weapons to the regime that could not guarantee not to use them to commit human rights violations. Buhari also promised to equip the military with the necessary weapons that corruption apparently denied the troops and to coordinate with neighboring countries to avoid each country pushing the terrorists beyond their borders into the borders of their neighbors, only to have to fight them again another day.

I caution the president-elect against over-confidence in militarism as the solution to terrorism in Nigeria. The most powerful military in the world, Pax Americana, is yet to defeat terrorism militarily in any country and the deployment of US military might tends to escalate rather than diminish terrorist threats around the world. This is probably because the war on terror inevitably destroys numerous innocent human beings that are called collateral damages, resulting in some of their sympathizers, friends and family vowing revenge for the killing of their innocent ones. As a result, a big part of the US war on terror relies on diplomacy and to a smaller extent, on amnesty for enemy combatants who have been freed from detention after many years of being held without trial and also for active combatants who are offered dialogue. General Buhari needs to revive the amnesty program that President Umaru Yaradua adopted and which President Jonathan used to help to disarm the Niger Delta militants. No one believes that militarism, no matter how powerful, is enough to defeat terrorism, nor that you need to stop Boko Haram first before addressing the roots.

The solutions to the second task of tackling the root causes of terrorism were not outlined in as much detail in his NYT Op Ed. Nor is there a clear indication that Buhari's speech writers understand that a major part of the root causes is the normalization of mass violence since the Igbo genocide in Biafra and that part of the solutions to the current terrorism is to openly apologize to the survivors of the Igbo genocide and offer them reasonable reparations, as I suggested in my comment on his Chatham House speech. 

Given that Igbophobia still thrives in the country as indicated by the cruel threat of a Muslim Yoruba chief to commit genocide against the Igbo in Lagos unless they voted for his chosen governorship candidate (a rationalization of xenophobia cited by Zulu king, Goodwill Zwelithini to justify his refusal to apologize for inciting mass violence against African 'foreigners' in South Africa), Buhari needs to address the Igbo problem urgently as part of the efforts to turn a new page in the country. Other ethnic groups that have suffered lesser historic wrongs in Nigeria have been offered reparations but the big Igbo elephant in the room continues to be ignored at the expense of Nigerians.

Furthermore, the problem of education and poverty, though more acute in the North East base of Boko Haram, is a nationwide problem that cries out for enormous allocation of resources across the country. If Buhari succeeds in eliminating illiteracy from all parts of Nigeria in the next four years (turning Boko Haram into Boko Halal, as Professor Ken Harrow suggested on USAfricadialogue news group moderated by Professor Toyin Falola); if he has the courage to apologize on behalf of Nigerians for the Igbo genocide and if he offers reparations to the survivors, authorizes the teaching of the history of the genocide in schools, and amends the constitutional amendment that Jonathan vetoed to allow the creation of the sixth state in the South East for geopolitical equity among the zones, his legacy will stand out in the history of Nigeria without a doubt. If he adopts militarism as his major strategy and succeeds in making matters worse as militarism tends to do, history will not be kind to him because this is his second chance to do the right thing for the suffering masses of Nigeria.

 Dr Agozino is a Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA.