The fight to save Nigeria, by Rotimi Fasan

Last week ended on another note of triumph for the terrorists who are sworn to make life unlivable for Nigerians while the rest of the country mourns. We all came to the sad realization of the death in captivity of General Rabe Abubakar. He had been abducted with his wife about four weeks ago by terrorists along the Marabar Musawa-Kafinsoli highway in the Matazu LGA of Katsina State.

General Abubakar was from Katsina, a state whose government was quick to let the whole world know that the unlucky general died of natural causes, namely a deadly combination of high blood pressure and diabetes. In the skewed logic of the government’s definition of what constitutes a natural ailment — the ‘tag-team’ disease of hypertension and diabetes has been so described — it makes no difference to them that these ailments might have been either complicated or triggered by the General’s detention in the forest without access to medication.

As things stand, General Abubakar’s family has rejected the government’s account of how their father died. An untreated snake bite, not diabetes or hypertension, was the cause of his death, they say. Whose word do we believe in this situation? That of a grieving family or a government that has shown itself helpless in the face of a home-grown terror, one that has not done enough to deserve our trust? At any rate, a man with General Rabe Abubakar’s health condition, if not his age, would probably be on some kind of medication. If then he dies without access to those medications under the conditions in which he was held, such death cannot be described as natural. It was inflicted. But it is in the nature of a government and a people who mollycoddle terrorists and call them family to downplay the heinous crime of terrorism with euphemistic language.

Katsina State was one of the first states in the violence-ravaged north to inaugurate the ignoble practice of negotiating with terrorists by paying them huge amounts of money in exchange for peace. 

They flung the door wide open for them to walk back into society without first accounting for their crimes. These official acts of criminal negligence and abdication of responsibility were executed in the name of rehabilitation. Under the administration of Aminu Bello Masari, as was and is still the case across many states in the northwest and northeast, terrorists were periodically and systematically let loose on society. Many of them are now grazing well beyond their regional breeding ground, to other parts of the country where they have exported their peculiar input of criminal contribution to the economy of the north.

That was the case in Borno State this past week when the state government let loose another set of at least 720 criminals, reconditioned terrorists, offering them everything to make their so-called reintegration into society smooth. Babagana Zulum, the Borno State governor, it is now clear to me, is fixed on a Sisyphean mission in his so-called fight against terrorism. He has obviously been fetching water with a basket. Otherwise, he would not be going on the frontline, supposedly fighting terror groups, while trying to provide the best for the displaced populations in his state, and then returning to periodically set absolutely free people found culpable or caught in compromising acts of terror. Let him keep splitting hairs about who is a terrorist or what constitutes terrorism; the fact remains that his behaviour leaves much to be desired and raises suspicion about his real attitude to terrorism.

There is no doubt that granting freedom to terrorists, as has become state policy across the north, is giving them license to commit more atrocities. It is a failed policy that has yielded no gain. Since the commencement of this wrong-headed policy, we are yet to see any reduction in the number of properties destroyed, communities sacked, people abducted, or murdered. But there is documented evidence of many of the freed terrorists in the north returning to their life of crime and terror in the forests. It is a trite fact of crime history and psychology that criminals, especially hardened ones who have either shed blood or participated in ideology-driven terrorism, hardly change course or renounce their faith quickly.

These are the kind of people for whom the northern political and religious elite demand amnesty and insist can travel anywhere in the country as Nigerians, even travel in their hundreds, loaded as cargoes in trailer vehicles across regional and ethnic boundaries. So today, 45 Yoruba schoolchildren and their teachers are spending their first month under the captivity of Boko Haram terrorists who are demanding the release of their comrades-in-arms held in prisons for crimes committed in the north supposedly against the Nigerian state. Why should the southwest pay for crimes committed in the north? Why should a Babagana Zulum who is opposed to a decentralised police system insist on the Nigerian state taking responsibility for the security of a state where terrorists are welcome with open arms?

These are extreme acts of provocation that are disguised as calls for equity — for the President, who just happens to be a Yoruba man at this time, to take responsibility for the deliberate failures of mostly Fulani politicians. To say this is for some to promote bigotry. Yet the truth needs to be told. Bigotry is hating a man for his ethnicity and holding him accountable for the actions of others. This is not speaking for Bola Tinubu, but if what we are seeing — this dangerous politicking disguised as demands for accountability — is what some Nigerians call the cluelessness of the president, then they’ve got something else coming. They are making the disintegration of Nigeria a tenable proposition. Bola Tinubu has been indecisive in fighting insecurity for reasons of regime protection. It is to please the same people tormenting Nigeria. If that’s cluelessness, then it begs a new name.

There are different ways to destroy a country. Some do it bearing arms like the terrorists across the country. Others adopt apparently harmless tools like words. This is where terrorist sympathisers come in. The likes of Sheikh Ahmad Gumi are easily identified. But so are governors who set terrorists free in a careless re-victimisation of all victims of terror. Their action amounts to a rebuke of our men and women in uniform — the military, the police, and other security agencies who have paid the ultimate price of citizenship or are constantly in the line of fire. 

In this fight to save Nigeria, there cannot be fence-sitters.

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