Femi Aribisala

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We are all Boko Haram| By: Femi Aribisala

I was fifteen years old when the civil war broke out in Nigeria. Although we were living in Ibadan in the South-west at the time, my sympathies were totally and unequivocally with the Igbos. When a people have been so brutally butchered by their countrymen as happened to the Igbos, I felt they had no choice but to insist on leaving the country. Therefore, I understood why the Biafrans went to war and what they were fighting for. But I could not, for the life of me, understand what those on the federal side were fighting for. Why would anybody fight for Nigeria?
I lost a first-cousin fighting on the federal side during the civil war. I wish I could have found out first-hand from him why he gave his life “to keep Nigeria one.” Did he really believe in Nigeria? I doubt it. Why then did he join the army after the war broke out and die in the war? What about those who fought and did not die? What was in Nigeria for them? How did Nigeria justify their sacrifice of blood and gore after the war?
Fighting for Nigeria
The question is still pertinent today as we mobilize to fight the scourge of the Boko Haram. Why would anybody fight for Nigeria? What is in Nigeria for us? There is a difference between joining an army for career purposes and believing in Nigeria. There is a difference between joining the Nigerian army because you need a job and dying for Nigeria. There is a difference between going to war and getting killed and dying for Nigeria. For a man to die for Nigeria, he has to believe in Nigeria. For a man to believe in Nigeria, Nigeria has to mean something for him. Nigeria must have something to offer him.
John Kennedy said: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” That is all well and good; provided we have fulfilled the first requirement which is to identify our country. Most Nigerians have yet to do this. We are Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba and every other possible abridgement or classification but not Nigerians. We are Christians and Muslims but not yet Nigerians. Even after 54 years of Nigerian independence, and after 100 years of Nigerian amalgamation, most Nigerians still do not really consider themselves to be Nigerians.
We can acknowledge the assistance of the Americans, the British, the French and others. But the truth of the matter is that only a Nigerian can fight for Nigeria against the Boko Haram. Only a Nigerian can have the necessary commitment to endanger his life in fighting against the insurgents. However, there are few Nigerians in Nigeria. As a matter of fact, most Nigerians are Boko Haram in one fashion or the other.

Nigerian foreigners
I was upset when I read about a Nigerian who died fighting in the U.S. Army in Iraq. He not only became an American, he fought and died for America. Every year, thousands of Nigerians play the American lottery, hoping to relinquish Nigerian nationality. Every week, thousands mass at European, American and other embassies, hoping to travel out of Nigeria for good. I even met a Nigerian barber in poor Gambia and wondered what he was doing there. What was he doing in Gambia when there are better business opportunities for him in Nigeria; unless anywhere else is better than home?
The Lamido of Adamawa threatened that if things don’t work out in Nigeria, he would simply pack his bags and move to Cameroon. It would appear then that the Lamido is actually a Cameroonian living in Nigeria. Most countries go to war to secure more territories for themselves. The Russians recently used the opportunity of a little crisis in Ukraine go annex the Crimea. However, Obasanjo gave away a big chunk of Nigeria’s Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroon. It did not matter to him that the people of Bakassi are Nigerians and not Cameroonians. While we are shouting “Bring Back Our Girls” today, we forgot to ask Obasanjo to bring back our Bakassi Nigerians yesterday.


Hatred of Nigeria
So many theories have been adduced as to why the Boko Haram prevail in Nigeria. Some attribute this to the acute poverty in the Nigerian North-east. However, there are countries in the world far poorer than Nigeria, and they don’t have their own versions of the Boko Haram. There are countries with greater income disparities than Nigeria, and they don’t produce the Boko Haram. No matter how poor are the states of the North-east, they are not poorer than the adjoining countries of Niger, Chad and Cameroon. And yet, there is no Boko Haram in these poorer countries.
There is also nothing really Muslim about the Boko Haram. Other Muslim countries in Africa and beyond don’t have Boko Haram. When the Boko Haram plant bombs in market-places; the bombs are not programmed to differentiate between Christians and Muslims. Recently, the Boko Haram attacked some Emirs, killing one of them. Surely, the Emirs were not Christians but Muslims.
In effect, the Boko Haram is a wonderfully Nigerian phenomenon. There is something in Nigeria that provides a fertile ground for the Boko Haram. That thing is not limited to the North-east. That thing bedevils the whole of Nigeria. That thing is lack of national identity. That thing is hatred for Nigeria and for other Nigerians. The hatred of Nigeria by Nigerians is so deep and ingrained in us North and South; East and West. We are Nigerians, but we hate Nigeria. We are Nigerians, but we see nothing good in Nigeria. We are Nigerians, but we would rather be something else. If push comes to shove, we would have no qualms picking up a gun and killing another Nigerian in the name of whatever other allegiance we hold dearer.
Battle for independence
Because there are actually very few Nigerians in Nigeria, it is difficult to fight against the Boko Haram. To fight against the Boko Haram is to fight against ourselves. Every Nigerian is either a Boko Haram or a potential Boko Haram. A Boko Haram is a Boko Haram because he does not believe in Nigeria. The rest of us are Boko Haram because we also do not believe in Nigeria. We hate Nigeria with a passion. Murtala Nyako can fight for his citizens of the North. Femi Fani-Kayode will readily call his Oduduwa Republic to arms. MASSOB will easily rally the troops for Biafra. But there is practically no one left to fight for and defend Nigeria.
Only Nigerians can fight the Boko Haram, but there are few Nigerians in Nigeria. That is why it has been difficult for us to close ranks in the face of the Boko Haram onslaught. That is why it is easy for the Boko Haram to get new local recruits in the fight against Nigeria. That is also why it is difficult to identify the Boko Haram among us. The Boko Haram and the potential Boko Haramite is anyone and everyone who hates Nigeria and does not wish Nigeria well. That means the Boko Haram are practically every one of us.
The fight against Boko Haram is a belated fight for Nigeria’s independence. In order to fight the Boko Haram successfully, we have to become Nigerians. Other countries fought for their independence but we never did in Nigeria. Suddenly, we are now saying “Bring back Our Girls.” But these Chibok girls were not “Our Girls” before they were kidnapped. And even if, by the grace of God, we were to secure their release tomorrow; they would immediately cease to be “Our Girls.” This makes us no different from the Boko Haram. The Boko Haram kidnapped these girls because they are not theirs. Neither do we consider them to be ours. They cannot be ours as long as we do not believe we are all Nigerians. Therefore, all our “bring back Our Girls” posturing is just for show.
Nigerian Boko Haram
Nigerians only become Nigerians in the rarefied context of a national football match of short duration. But even while we are united in supporting the Super Eagles, we equally support Arsenal and Chelsea football clubs in England. There was no report of any Spaniard dying as a result of the recent Champion League football match between Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid. Nevertheless, two Nigerian supporters of Real Madrid died out of anxiety arising from the match. Because we are Boko Haram, we even kill ourselves over matters that don’t pertain directly to us. I am still waiting for the day that I go to London and find Britons wearing T-shirts with Enugu Rangers or Kano Pillars football clubs emblazoned on them.
Because we are not Nigerians, we readily adopt foreign “nations” that don’t recognize us and call them our own. Because we don’t believe in Nigeria, we are easily seduced to take on other “nationalities.” Because we are don’t believe in Nigeria, we can easily be led to believe in another “nation.” We are easily persuaded to become Boko Haram. Because we hate Nigeria, we become Boko Haram instead of Nigerians. We plant bombs in the market-place. We bring Nigeria down instead of building Nigeria up. Since the children of Chibok are not our children, we steal the money meant for enhancing their education and use it to send our children to school abroad.
The Boko Haram is not only the man who blows up buildings and kills the innocent. The Boko Haram is also that man who ensures that fake drugs are sold in our pharmacies, and that our hospitals are places where people go to die and not to be healed. The Boko Haram is not only that man who says “Western education is a sin.” The Boko Haram is also that public official who sits while our universities are closed down for six months over an industrial dispute. The Chibok incident has brought all these tendencies into sharp relief. We are the Boko Haram and the Boko Haram are us.
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Femi Aribisala is a writer, preacher and co-ordinator of Healing Wings, a Pentecostal Christian fellowship
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Why is there no regard for human life in Nigeria? | By: Femi Aribisala

I JUST returned last week from a short visit to London.  One of the major news-items there was the re-opening of an inquest into the Hillsborough disaster of 1989 when some spectators died during the F.A. Cup semi-final football-match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.  When I heard this, I shook my head.  These “oyinbos” are still concerned about deaths that took place 25 years ago.  But here in Nigeria, there is no serious inquest into the deaths of job-applicants to the Nigerian Immigration Service in several cities just this year.
A Senate Committee spent a perfunctory two days paying lip-service to the disaster.  The Minister of Interior, Abba Moro, refused to resign.  His understanding of his responsibility did not go beyond mouthing vain platitudes.  The government imposed no sanctions on those who turned our stadiums into death-traps simply in order to defraud the poor unemployed of 6 billion naira.  A court-verdict ordered that 50 million naira compensation should be paid to the suspended Central Bank Governor for his unlawful detention for 24 hours.  How much compensation should be paid for the senseless deaths of innocent job-seekers?
Official neglect
 
The government has passed legislation criminalising homosexuality in Nigeria without regard for the implication of this for fighting the scourge of HIV/AIDS.  After South Africa, Nigeria has the highest number of HIV/AIDS patients in the world.  Who cares if by criminalising homosexuality, homosexual patients are discouraged from seeking such medical treatment as are available locally?  Let them die; and if they don’t, we can certainly stone them to death if we ever discover that they are homosexuals.
The Boko Haram go to churches to kill Christians.  Christians go to church prayer-meetings to kill their enemies.  Atheists go to “babalawos” to negotiate death-sentences for their rivals.  It is no longer a big deal to hear of Fulani herdsmen killing the innocent, or of area-boys executing jungle-justice in our streets.  It is now all par for the course.
Let us face it:  there is no regard for human-life in Nigeria.  In Nigeria, we love life, but promote and encourage death.  We lavishly celebrate births, but disregard children after they are born.  The Israelis would move heaven and earth to protect and defend the life of one Israeli.  But governments in Nigeria don’t give a damn whether a Nigerian lives or dies.  Over three million Nigerians were slaughtered in a three-year civil war; and yet there is no national memorial commemorating our loss.  The victims are gone, what else is new?
Murder incorporated
 
How much is a human-being worth in Nigeria? Not more than the cost of a hearty meal in a “mama-put.”  If you want someone killed, you don’t have to break the bank.  You can get a contract-killer for as little as 1,000 naira and the job will be done.  The list of unresolved murders is so long, you begin to wonder what exactly the Nigerian police are doing.  From Dele Giwa, to Alfred Rewane, to Anthony Ikhazoboh, to Bola Ige, to Harry Marshal, to Funso Willams; Nigerians continue to get slaughtered without any reprieve.
If someone were to kill you today, the only people who may blink an eye are members of your family.  Even they may be more concerned with sharing your property than with prosecuting your killers.  As people come ostensibly to commiserate with your relatives about your death, so would they be asking if they can have your spanking stereo system.
When I was living in a block of flats, our “maiguard” got drunk one night and was killed by a hit-and-run driver.  His friends sent a delegation to the tenants, saying they needed money to send him home for burial.  We contributed money and gave it to them.  But as we watched from the window, they gathered round and shared the money among themselves.  Who cares?  The man is dead.
 
 
Medical deaths
 
By the law of averages, if you are a Nigerian the chances are high that you will be dead before your 40th birthday.  It is amazing how many people kick the bucket after proverbially “brief illnesses.”  We have hospitals where doctors can go on strike for months, while the government dilly-dallies.  Indeed, hospitals are places where Nigerians go to die: and not to be healed.  If a relative of yours has to undergo surgery in Nigeria, it is time for fasting and prayer.
You can even go to a hospital for vaccination against a disease and end up dead from that very disease because of an overdose of the vaccine.  That is what killed my only sister, Yemisi, at the tender age of eighteen.  It should be against the law in Nigeria for government officials to seek medical treatment abroad for any ailment whatsoever.  Let them improve the medical facilities here at home or face the music with everyone else.
We keep discovering new ways to send as many people as possible to early graves.  We sell fake drugs, knowing they can either kill the sick or ensure that they die of neglected ailments.  We live in unsanitary neighborhoods, where rubbish piles up high in the streets, not caring that this makes us prone to diseases.  We pump oil out of the Niger Delta, without regard for the pollution of the environment.  The oil companies know they can get away with murder in Nigeria, doing things in our country that would bankrupt them if they dared to do them at home.
 
 
Wasted lives
 
In Nigeria, we produce children, without sparing a thought for how they would be cared for.  You can have a messenger in an office, earning 18,000 naira a month; nevertheless he is the father of 12 children.  How does he expect to take care of them?  He does not!  He expects them to take care of him.  From an early age, he distributes some among his relatives.  He sends out the “leftovers” as sellers of chewing-gum and groundnuts on the streets.  They become street-urchins and beggars required to make daily returns to him.  What does it matter if they grow up to be kidnappers and armed-robbers?
Because human life is disregarded, a whole segment of our population still cannot read and write; and yet we are in the 21st century.  Because we have no regard for life, our policemen are as equally likely to shoot you and kill you as they are to protect you.  If you are more fortunate, they might arrest you merely for walking on the streets and lock you up somewhere for 10 years without trial.
Let me ask you this: how many men have you ever heard of going to jail for raping women in Nigeria?  It is not because Nigerians are not rapists like other people, but that in Nigeria rape is not that big a deal.  Neither is marrying under-aged girls.  That actually happens to be the preferred pastime of our distinguished Senators in the National Assembly.
University lecturers go on a strike for six months.  Nobody seems to care that this is six wasted months in the life of hapless students.  In serious countries, such neglect might be enough to bring down a government.  Not in Nigeria.  We all know our university education is largely useless anyway.  Most graduates in Nigeria cannot write a sentence of English correctly without “firing bullets.”  What does it matter if they waste six months while lecturers and the government stare each other down?  Everyone knows when they graduate they will waste even more time looking for non-existent jobs.
Nobody cares
 
In our cities, you can go to work in the morning and find a dead man lying on the street.  When you come back in the evening, you are likely to find him still there.  Nobody really cares. Nobody cares that, as a result of being the highest users of generators in the world, we are killing ourselves with the fumes.  Nobody cares that our women are dying by the tens of thousands from ingesting the smoke from cooking with firewood all day long. 
Nobody cares that our orthopedic hospitals now have glorified “okada wards,” full of people maimed and crippled by naira-drunk motorcyclists.  Nobody cares that our flea-markets and supermarkets sell expired foods and our so-called pure water is responsible for the high incidence of typhoid. When they discourage the smoking of cigarettes in the West because of medically-proven research that it causes a lorry-load of deadly diseases, the tobacco industry finds a high-growth market in Nigeria with every encouragement from our easily-bought legislators. 
Our mechanics put fake spare-parts in our cars, not caring a hoot if that makes us vulnerable to accidents.  In Nigeria, if you are not killed while driving on the road, you can be killed while walking on the sidewalk because the okada-rider or the “Keke Marwa” driver does not believe the sidewalk is reserved for pedestrians.
Corruption deaths
 
Can you imagine it if the  missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 had been a Nigerian plane full of Nigerians?  Would the Nigerian government be particularly bothered to spend money in search of the plane, after all, what are 239 missing Nigerians in a country of 170 million?  There are so many Nigerians, we are easily expendable.  Even if the government were to budget funds to search for the missing plane, it would not be amiss for some officials to chop the money.
In 1992, a Nigerian Air Force C-130 transport plane crashed in Ejigbo near Lagos, killing all 200 passengers including top military officers.  A government-sponsored memorial service, coordinated by Vice-Admiral Babatunde Elegbede, was organised in Abuja, and the widows of the dead were specially invited.  However, instead of spending the budgeted money on the widows, it was pocketed. 
Instead of housing them in hotels in Abuja, they were dumped en masse and made to spend the night in an airport hangar.  While there, they cursed Admiral Elegbede with one voice and prayed that he should come to a bad end. In June 1994, Admiral Elegbede was assassinated by unknown gunmen.  Over 70 bullets were pumped into his body.  His assailants have never been found.
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Femi Aribisala is a preacher and co-ordinator of Healing Wings, a Pentecostal Christian fellowship
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