Let’s begin where Henry Okah started

With my husband away and all the children at home, I decided that the day was too significant to be spent in bed because it was work and school-free. I summoned them all and said we were going to watch the live transmission of the Independence Day celebrations on the NTA.That was around 10am on […]

With my husband away and all the children at home, I decided that the day was too significant to be spent in bed because it was work and school-free. I summoned them all and said we were going to watch the live transmission of the Independence Day celebrations on the NTA.
That was around 10am on October 1st 2010. I’m not sure how long we watched but it was obvious to me the children were getting bored with the events, thanks largely to NTA’s poor picture quality.
In these days when television pictures speak to you with such colour-perfect clarity, one wonders why our national TV network produces such sub-standard outside broadcast that looks more black-and-white than coloured. Anyway while wondering how much longer I can keep those restless young minds glued to that low-quality coverage, I suddenly heard a loud noise.
My eldest child, Fatima turned around and asked me what that noise was. I answered that it must be a knock-out being cracked because there’s a big celebration going on out there. A few minutes after I answered her, a second loud noise was heard, this time our house actually shook. Fatima quickly voiced her doubt when she asked me whether a knock-out can make a building shake. I told her that I didn’t know. Anyway we all gave up on the viewing when the picture quality got worse. Not even the show by the Nigerian Air Force could keep us watching.
Though we had no clue as to what was really going on around the Eagle Square, I vaguely remember seeing President Jonathan being led back to his seat before the parades were over and thought that he had grown tired of standing. It was not until three hours later that a phone call I received from concerned relatives outside Abuja, made me realize what we heard was a bomb blast. Apparently international media had been agog with the news of the deadly incident but because we had decided to go NTA that day, we ignored Aljazeera, CNN and the BBC World.
From that day on, as The Whispers would say, the beat goes on. Today no one can tell how many bomb blasts have been heard and recorded in this country since 1st October 2010. What was supposed to be a historic milestone had heralded a deadly phenomenon with which we are still struggling. According to informed sources, Maiduguri residents have grown so used to bomb blasts they call them ‘ring-tones.’ This is the story of our new Nigeria.
But a day after the October 1st bomb blast, something else happened that almost overshadowed the bombing incident except for the fact that they were closely related. Henry Okah, the exiled leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta told the press in South Africa that an aide to President Jonathan had called him the day before, to ask him to withdraw the claim of responsibility for the blast that was issued by his organization earlier. Okah claimed that the man said they wanted to pin the blame on Northerners so MEND must disown their responsibility claim. All through that day Okah’s assertion was the lead story on Aljazeera and other cable TV networks.
The Nigerian government quickly denied making any such move. Various officials mentioned as having something to do with Henry Okah, on the issue, all defended themselves vigorously by telling the press they didn’t know what he was talking about. But in 2012, having spent two years in detention, Henry Okah made another application for bail during which he presented a 145-page affidavit in wherein he repeated his claim that a presidential aide, by the name of Moses Jituboh, had called him on October 1st and demanded that he should get MEND to retract its statement of claim for the bombings so that the government can blame certain prominent Northerners for it.
His actual words in the affidavit were ‘On the day of the bombing of 1st October 2010, I received a call from Mr Moses Jituboh, the head of personal security to President Jonathan, who solicited my assistance and continued cooperation with President Goodluck Jonathan towards shifting the blame for bombing to the North of Nigeria.’
Later in the same affidavit Okah had claimed that another presidential aide, one Mr Uranta had sent him two text messages on the same day repeating the same requests. The messages asked Henry Okah to ‘Ask J G (Jomo Gbomo) to withdraw statement.’ ie claim of responsibility. While the second message simply stated ‘The government will blame on Northern elements.’ But Okah himself had said that when contacted by the Nigerian media, Mr Uranta had claimed that his mobile phone had been stolen and the messages must have been sent by the thief who stole it.
Okah believed and said so in the affidavit, that the aim of the government in blaming Northerners for the bombing was both to scuttle the presidential ambitions of prominent ones like former president Ibrahim Babangida and also to create a feeling of disaffection against Northerners from other sections of the country.
Whatever the truth of these claims, we must remember that as at the time of the October 1st bombings there was no trace of Boko Haram anywhere in Nigeria. Its leader, Mohammed Yusuf, along with most of its top leadership, had been dead over a year. He was killed early in August 2009. Most of the followership had been killed both during the encounter with the Nigerian military and extra-judicially after it was over. The rest had been arrested and sent to prison. Even the phoenix-like Shekau was believed to be dead at the time.
Suddenly, after this failed attempt to get MEND to retract its responsibility claim so that the deed can be pinned on Northerners, Boko Haram rose from the dead. It came back stronger and more vicious than ever before. It embarked on incessant killings and bombings  and was now literate enough to issue statement of claims. Boko Haram returned well-trained, well-armed and sophisticated enough to render our military the laughing-stock of the continent. Shekau resurrected to say he survived the assault that killed his colleagues and we never knew peace ever since.
Perhaps the worst of Boko Haram’s exploits was the introduction of suicide bombing on the African continent. On June 16th 2011, this nightmare was launched on our home soil. This despicable of all war strategies was first pioneered by the Japanese, to whom suicide is an honourable thing, during the Second World War. The Tamil Tiger rebels soon took over in their war of independence against Sri Lanka and it only came to the Arab world in late 1993, ostensibly as an attempt by hardline Palestinians to stop the Oslo Accords from being signed by Yassir Arafat and Yitzak Rabin. In actual fact, according a research by American analyst John Kaminski, the earliest Shahada bombers were not willing subscribers to the philosophy. In his famous treatise, The Deepening Darkness, Kaminksi said that they were Palestinian youths who were abducted by Israeli security agents and drugged to oblivion.
Unconscious of their circumstances these drugged boys will be taken to buses and be planted there. Someone from a distance will detonate the bomb that was tied to the young man’s body and the poor murdered chap will go down in history as a suicide bomber. Of course some bombers that followed, offered themselves willingly, thinking that if the others could sacrifice themselves for Palestine, why not them? But the first few souls detonated to inspire others were not willing to kill themselves in order to kill others. Indeed no Muslim, who knows the place of suicide in Islam can subscribe to so-called shahada bombing.
As people who believe in life hereafter and who wish desperately to go to heaven, we will not embark on an act which our religion categorically states will prevent one from going to heaven. In Islam whoever commits suicide dies a disbeliever.
This is why we must return to Henry Okah’s deposition if we want answers to the spate of bombings in different parts of the North. It might sound preposterous to say that President Jonathan was aware his aides had asked Okah to pressure his boys to retract their claim of responsibility for October 1st bombings, but the fact that they used his name and the office they held as his aides, makes it imperative on him to order these people investigated.
If we are genuinely worried over the insecurity in the country and are looking for ways to end it, then the first step will be to find out how bombing became a Northern phenomenon. There are more than enough clues in Henry Okah’s affidavit of May 2012.