30th July, 2014
Nigeria has been on tenterhooks in the past few days following serial suicide bombings in Kano, Kaduna and Adawawa states. Scores of lives were lost to this unprecedented orgy of violence across the northern states. In spite of heavy security presence in these volatile states, Boko Haram terrorists have taken their attacks a notch higher, in some cases deploying female suicide bombers to carry out their dastardly acts.
It is very worrisome that the hitherto precarious security challenge is taking a dimension that puts the nation at a great risk of disintegration. This could have been the case last week if the terrorists had succeeded in killing General Muhammadu Buhari (retd), a national leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC; and a prominent Islamic cleric, Sheikh Dahiru Bauchi, on Wednesday, 23 July, 2014. Buhari and Sheikh Bauchi narrowly escaped death along Alkali by Isa Kaita Road in Kaduna when their convoy was targeted by Boko Haram bombers. Over 100 people were killed in that attack. It would have been a different story entirely by now if Buhari and the monarch had been killed by the terrorists.
Just as the nation was yet to recover from that gruesome attack in Kaduna, the terrorists turned the Eid-el-Fitri celebration into a bloody one with multiple attacks in Kaduna, Kano and Adamawa. As things appear to be getting out of hand, the time has come for northern clerics, leaders and monarchs to rise up and mediate between the Federal Government and representatives of the terrorists to bring this violence to an end. Nigerians cannot afford to witness further bloodshed.
It would amount to a lone voice in the wilderness for only one religious leader to speak out against terrorism while others pretend as if nothing is happening or bury their heads in the sand like ostriches, oblivious of the danger creeping in on all. It is time the Federal Government adopted the dialogue option to bring an end to the bloodletting. It won’t be seen as a sign of weakeness if the Federal Government holds talks with the representatives of the terrorists.
Besides, nothing stops the government from swapping the detained family members of Boko Haram with the Chibok schoolgirls that have been held in captivity since 14 April. As part of prisoner exchange, on 31 May, 2014, America swapped its soldier, Bowe Robert Bergdahl, who was held captive by the Taliban-aligned Haqqani network in Afghanistan in June 2009 for five Taliban members who were being held at the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay.
There are those who say terrorism has become such a big industry in Nigeria because people are profitting from it and would not want it to end. But we believe that if the Federal Government could muster the necessary will to tackle it, and with the willingness of the international community to lend a helping hand, terrorism could be defeated.
With thousands so far killed by Boko Haram since its insurgency began in 2009, Nigeria is fast attaining the ignoble tag of a nation with the highest number of casualties of terrorism globally. This has to stop before it spills out of control.