The hunt begins (infiltrators beware)
Anyway these aren’t the only questions begging for answers in the Kabiru Sokoto arrest and escape saga. There are many others, but suffice it to say that we must learn to ask questions on issues like this or else we will all live to regret the haste with which we swallow any official story and […]
Anyway these aren’t the only questions begging for answers in the Kabiru Sokoto arrest and escape saga. There are many others, but suffice it to say that we must learn to ask questions on issues like this or else we will all live to regret the haste with which we swallow any official story and police report. Right now heads have begun to roll over the suspect’s dramatic escape. A police commissioner was suspended from duty and the nation’s number one cop has been queried by his minister over the incident. Then Kabiru Sokoto has a price of N50 million on his head, as offered by the Nigeria police for information that could lead to his arrest.
If the Madalla church blast was a suicide bombing, and we were all led to believe it was, then who was it that identified Kabiru Sokoto as the mastermind of the attack? Surely we can’t expect so-called Boko Haram, which allegedly claimed the Christmas Day atrocity, to name him to the authorities. A man who can plan such a deadly mission and have it accomplished has to be a dream asset for any terror group. Yes, the police and other intelligence agencies are not obliged to disclose how they got their information to the general public, but in a case where there was no one caught at the scene of crime and where the perpetrator had died executing his plan, who could have known that Kabiru Sokoto was the mastermind? We need to know how the authorities zeroed in on this particular suspect.
What is now obvious is that the government is sparing no efforts to make some people scapegoats in an affair that might just prove to be the case of a lucky escape. As if the query handed over to the inspector general of police is not enough, the minister of police affairs had to add that the IG’s job was on the line and ‘if he is found guilty of complicity, he himself will have to account for his mistakes.’ Now why would the minister assume that the IG could be complicit in the suspect’s escape? Why couldn’t he hand the query with an open mind hoping to establish a case of negligence rather than complicity against the police boss? Is it because after President Jonathan’s ‘infiltrators’ wolf-cry they are already on the hunt for them?
Clearly we need to be wary of any attempt to drag top-ranking northerners and religious figures into the Boko Haram fishing net because so many innocent people will fall victim. In the search for Boko Haram sponsors, sympathisers or agents-in-government, anyone who ever had cause to smile at a suspect might end up in custody. We have seen all this before in the US and other countries which subscribed to the war on terror at the height of that aggression during the last decade. For instance way back in 2004, Nigerian-born American basketball legend Hakeem Olajuwon was arrested on charges of being a sponsor of terror. His only sin apparently was that he had been donating his Zakat (annual Islamic compulsory alms) to the Holy Land foundation Charity organisation. Over the course of a few years he was able to give out a total sum of 80 thousand dollars to the foundation as a way of discharging his religious obligation.
When the war on terror was started by the Bush administration in October 2001, the powerful Jewish lobby in Washington lobbied the government to include the Holy Land Foundation among the organisations sponsoring terror just because it was an Islamic charity dedicated to sending relief aid to Palestine. The organisation had been credited with the building and maintenance of hospitals, schools, libraries and the provision of food aid to Palestinians in refugee camps. It took a dedicated legal representation for Olajuwon to clear his good name. But the foundation he aided had no such luck; it was closed down and some of its officials actually deported to their home countries in the Middle-East.
Another instance was that of Indonesia after the bombing of the Sari club on the island of Bali. This happened on October 12th 2002. Though it’s always been a mystery how the two men who were captured and tried for the bombing were able to survive the blast when they had the explosives tied to their bodies and had killed over two hundred people, it nevertheless led to the travails of Sheikh Abubakar Bashir. A revered Muslim cleric who led the Jema’a Islamiah for over forty years, Sheikh Bashir was said to have been named by Ali Imron and Amrozi during interrogation. The organisation he led which has been in existence long before anything like Al-Qaida was heard of suddenly became known as an Al-Qaida affiliate group.
Never mind that independent investigators had since found that the Bali bombing was a nuclear bomb attack carried out by using a micro-nuke called the suitcase bomb. The extent of the damage and the huge crater at the basement of the Sari club all showed that. But because the Indonesian authorities wanted an excuse to go after the cleric, they bought all that junk about him being a terror mastermind and had him jailed for years. His only sin in reality is that he leads the most influential Islamic group in the country which engaged in establishing and maintaining schools as well as charity works. A government that wanted to be secular ant force secularism on its citizens believed it could not co-exist with an organisation that fosters Islamic awareness and knowledge. After serving the Bali-related prison term, Sheikh Bashir was back in court recently- this time charged with a plot to assassinate the Indonesian president. It seems there is no end in sight for a righteous man’s travails, if he is within sight of a government determined to fight phantom enemies.
This is where I fear we are headed in this country, as long as this government believes it is hunted by Northern Muslim bigots. If we do not begin to ask the right questions now and demand satisfactory answers to them, then more terror plots will be staged and more of our opinion leaders and notables will be grabbed and jailed. Isn’t it too much of a coincidence that the week after the president said his government had been infiltrated right down to its security apparatus, then a high value suspect was caught and allowed to escape? Is this not a typical case of trying to prove ‘what I said was true.’
We must not forget that when the first case of bombing occurred in Nigeria on October 1st last year, the leader of the organisation which claimed the bombing, Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta MEND, Henry Orkar had disclosed attempts by a presidential aide to get him to withdraw their claim of responsibility and pin the blame on northerners. Well, since then a chain of high-profile bombing has continued all claimed by the faceless Boko Haram. Despite such claims however all the people caught red-handed committing or attempting to commit arson in churches and other public places have not been Muslims. The latest is that Governor Murtala Nyako of Adamawa state had told the VOA Hausa service that the attacks on Igbos in Mubi, in which 28 people died was carried out by other Igbos in a money-related dispute. So there, where is your Boko Haram now?