Nigeria’s road to Afghanistan

Unlike wailers, you can’t imagine how happy I was seeing the long lines of ‘ex-Boko Haram’ combatants streaming freely into towns and villages as redeemed prodigals. The sight of wives carrying their entire earthly possessions on their heads while their husband’s walked behind them; of children mostly conceived in rape and encountering normality for the […]

Unlike wailers, you can’t imagine how happy I was seeing the long lines of ‘ex-Boko Haram’ combatants streaming freely into towns and villages as redeemed prodigals. The sight of wives carrying their entire earthly possessions on their heads while their husband’s walked behind them; of children mostly conceived in rape and encountering normality for the first time, is as piquant as it is picturesque.

We all know what follows after such charade. They are granted freedom to reintegrate with the communities they have victimised, settle down among the casualties of their bloody rabid campaigns with unmerited and unqualified privileges.

Weeks before the ant-like lines of families began to form from every open crevice in the North East, an early set of commanders lined up for photo-ops with placard-carrying insurgents imploring Nigerians for forgiveness, donated foodstuff and materials at their feet.

Their victims were never offered such privilege or their new ‘hosts’. These insurgents didn’t preach to convert their souls; they believed that the earth belonged to them to do as they please and bombed their victims to death, slaughtering escapees of the blasts like rams.

Now, these ‘repentant’ commanders and their born-again troops would soon queue up for chunky government allowances and rehabilitation programmes and projects as rewards for their crimes against the people and our sovereign state. Pensioners would die on the queue waiting for their allowances and workers would have to go on strike to get what they deserve. This is evidence as they say, that in Nigeria, life is not balanced.

We are supposed to believe that these people have seen the futility of their evil way. That they no longer want to bomb and slaughter us to hell. That they want to sit with us and build with us. What happens to the rest of patriots and victims that have borne the brunt of these evil campaigns aimed at plunging us back to the salafist Hobbesian state of their textual interpretations?

Our government and the commanders of the troops whose lives are daily wasted by these killers want us to embrace them. Of course we know that these bloody brutes are only walking on the road to Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban changed tactics when the coalition of forces sent to despatch them to hell became overwhelming. They ‘repented’ and moderated their campaign to bide time. They left a few fighting forces scattered across the mountains and the areas they stridently controlled but they lay low like a receding ram in combat.

It has paid off. Once the so-called allied forces became battle-weary, the Taliban re-emerged from hibernation and began a push that forced their former enemies into the negotiation table. Trump promised a withdrawal if they stopped killing American soldiers. But unlike the Americans, who could fly back home with their tails in between their legs, Boko Haram terrorists were born Nigerians, they want a chunk of Nigeria to practice their retrograde ideology.

They would do anything to achieve their aim of establishing a so-called Islamic State and Nigeria looks like a fertile ground for such a system. We lose our sense of reasoning when religion comes in. The Taliban held on to its fake promise, watched the invaders begin withdrawal and sprung back into action this time overrunning their country in no time at all.

By Sunday morning, Kabul, the seat of government had fallen to the Taliban. It did without a shot fired. The born-again Taliban have achieved their aim, all the world needs to do is wait and see its sympathisers come out of hiding.

It is a story that elder Afghanis have told to their children for generations. They have defeated, always defeated every army of occupation from classical era through the middle ages and recently the attempt by the Soviets. The Afghans have taken on seemingly stronger  powers with sheer doggedness.

The Taliban waited until the rest of the world became vulnerable before it re-struck, regaining and extending its sphere of influence. Now the world would have to reckon with another terrorist regime in control of the lives and destinies of people whose ambition is just to march forward at its pace instead of retrogressing.

Ashraf Ghani, the man who won a narrow election not too long ago has had to be ferreted out of the presidential palace while archenemies took over his bed and chambers.

Is Nigeria learning any lessons from Afghanistan or would it capitulate at its weakest moment to Boko Haram and its affiliates? That is not a difficult question to answer giving the current scenario in Nigeria. Only those playing the ostrich would say that this is a victory against insurgency. Nigeria is bleeding from every orifice.

In the East, there is an alternate government that determines when citizens go to work or stay at home. Eastern insurgents have declared that there would be no elections in Anambra for instance. They have shown that they could do more than threaten by serially burning electoral offices and police stations. Like Boko Haram and the Taliban, they have overrun prisons and released dangerous prisoners who now hold their allegiance to their leaders.

In the creeks of the Niger-Delta, wealthy ex-brigands that constantly threaten the regime in Abuja with strikes against oil facilities ruffle the pyrrhic peace in that region.  They warn that oil exploration, the vanishing backbone of the rest of the nation could be stopped at any time they feel like. Abuja responds with pleas to sustain the status quo. It no longer has either the influence or the power to enforce the instruments of coercion.

The so-called Middle Belt region is a senseless killing field. When it suits the operators at that end, they enter the road and slaughter every passenger they could find. At other times, they raze down entire communities. In the other part of the North, schools are being forced to close systematically because any parent sending their kids to school knows that its only a matter of time when it would have to find the cash to bail its children from ruthless kidnappers who make patterns of torture on the broken backs of nubile children.

In the South West, Nigeria is trying to retain control because of the rising tide of malcontents who want their own country notwithstanding the cracks within.

Only Aso Rock is safe. Insurgents are in control of the suburbs and constantly make incursions into the city itself. On its part, Abuja reacts by enacting decrees stopping the bad news from going viral. The Pegasus technology that government acquired is used to harass journalists, opinion writers and bloggers and any unrepentant member of the opposition, not the enemies of the nation.

It may be far from looking real, but indeed, except it wakes up from its slumber and reprioritize; Nigeria is indeed walking the road to Afghanistan. By its blanket pardon of insurgents who are subsequently free to roam and gather intelligence for their comrades active in the trenches, the entity called Nigeria is surviving on borrowed time. Except that the guys in Abuja do not want to hear it and their supporters believe that they are running on a divine mandate.