Nigeria’s curious ‘war on terror’

According to the report in the Sunday Trust (August 10, 2014), the women barricaded the gate of the military facility in Maiduguri. This is indeed a very strange occurrence and definitely a new dimension to this war! The question is how did we get to this sorry state?Terrorism in this form may be new to […]

According to the report in the Sunday Trust (August 10, 2014), the women barricaded the gate of the military facility in Maiduguri. This is indeed a very strange occurrence and definitely a new dimension to this war! The question is how did we get to this sorry state?
Terrorism in this form may be new to Nigeria, but it is not new to the world. Why is ours different? Where is our unity in facing this enemy? This is where I feel, the government started the fight against terrorism on a wrong footing, and we are now paying the price. The first major terrorist attack under this present dispensation was the October 1, 2010 bombing in Abuja, and due to what I will call “political naiveté”, the government of the day politicised it. Notable amongst those fingered then was IBB, who seem to be the most visible opponent to the then acting president. In fact, Raymond Dokpesi, his campaign director was briefly detained for questioning, the rest as they say, is now history. As several other missteps happened in rather “not so” quick a succession, chiefly amongst them was exoneration of the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND) by the government, though MEND had earlier claimed responsibility.
This created the first major foundation for “conspiracy theories”, which was indeed alien to us. It was rather strange, to even consider thinking that our political elite class would ever contemplate bombing in order to blackmail or weaken the government politically. This naturally gave birth to the general perception of conspiracies amongst the populace, with each block creating a fairy tale narrative to its own advantage. Then came the Boko Haram bombings and other dastardly and evil acts in the North east and some North western states. Though a state of emergency was declared in three states, but further utterances notably from the government of the day and its sympathizers clearly aggravated this mutual suspicion! This does not in any way exonerate the opposition, who may also have been less circumspect in terms of criticism, but the onus lies with the government to unite rather than to segregate the general populace to face the real enemy. Now the chickens are finally coming home to roost; for where in the history of war have we ever heard of spouses of military men coming out to protest against deployment of their men to the war front? Have they not been tutored, that the military are, in part, social engineers prepared to work in the most dangerous places on Earth?
But, it is not shocking, because we were probably thinking our military are robots, or better still extra terrestrial who are impervious to our normal day to day feelings. But no, they are not immune to all this sinister conspiracy theories, because they are part of us, and most importantly, think like us. Such stark divergence between perception and reality is common in wartime, when people’s beliefs about which side wins and which loses are often driven by psychological factors that have nothing to do with events on the battlefield. To put our present predicament in plain and simple language, there is a total loss of confidence and trust by the military and by extension the general populace, that this government is capable of winning this war. And how do we rebuild this trust and confidence? Only a change of military commanders that are cloaked in political garb may alter this equation.

Aliyu can be reached at: [email protected]