Boko Haram’s Borno massacre

ON Tuesday, the Boko Haram terrorist group admitted to the killing and decapitation of 76 rice farmers in Maiduguri, Borno State. It said the attacks were carried out in retribution, as the slain farmers had been cooperating with the Nigerian military. Members of the terror outfit, riding on motorbikes, had reportedly attacked Zabarmari village outside Maiduguri last Saturday, slaughtering dozens of labourers in rice fields. The farmers, Boko Haram said, had arrested and handed over one of its ‘brothers’ to the Nigerian Army. For days, local teams searched for bodies, an exercise which proved extremely challenging because of the difficult terrain and the proximity of the area to Boko Haram’s enclave in Sambisa forest.

Naturally, the Borno ‘rivers of blood’ shocked the nation, with a beleaguered President Muhammadu Buhari insisting that he had given the military everything it needed to succeed. On his part, the state governor, Professor Babagana Zulum, canvassed the hiring of foreign mercenaries to tame the Boko Haram menace. Sadly, as in previous cases, the government’s response left much to be desired. Nigerians were left shell-shocked when the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr Garba Shehu, claimed that the slain farmers had not obtained military clearance to visit their farms. The statement, apart from failing to show empathy, also gave the absurd suggestion that military clearance could have prevented last Saturday’s genocide.

Surely, the Presidency is fully apprised of the fact that members of the military, the authors of the clearance that it waxed lyrical about, constitute a large part of the estimated 36,000 people killed since Boko Haram launched its murderous onslaught on the North-East in 2009. No one who means to be taken seriously would go so far as to suggest that they died for failing to obtain clearance. It is a fact that since 2009, an estimated two million Nigerians have suffered displacement and become refugees in their own country. Boko Haram pronounced “technically defeated” by the government and the military high command, is thriving and waxing bolder and more daring by the day.

Although the United Nations, harangued by increasingly desperate and rather touchy officialdom, revised the number of casualties downwards from its initial estimate of 110 slain persons, it is important to realise that this reduction does not, and indeed cannot, reduce the import of the gruesome incident. The fact, quite simply, is that a terror outfit scorned the elaborate military set-up in Borno and executed a carnage in broad daylight.

Reacting to the gory incident, the Nigerian Army told Nigerians that the Boko Haram attacks were an international conspiracy to “cut Nigeria to size” and to destabilise its peace. Acting Director, Army Public Relations, Colonel Sagir Musa, said:  “The recent killing of our people on a rice farm in Borno State was an unexpected, inhuman, cowardly, dastardly and sadistic cruelty by the Boko Haram terrorists. There is no normal human being that will take pleasure in such an inhuman massacre of defenceless and armless civilians working on their farms, but that is the nature of terrorism and those who sponsor it. There is an international conspiracy to cut Nigeria to size… to destabilise and dismember Nigeria if possible in subservience to the international paymasters who are the owners of Boko Haram.”

These paymasters train, arm and finance the terrorists and supply their logistics, Musa added. He then averred that without this treacherous international support of Boko Haram, it would have since been defeated. “We can defeat them through our unity and unflinching support and encouragement of our security forces, particularly the military,” he declared. To be sure, we do not dispute the army’s claim of an international angle to Boko Haram terrorism. That is an established fact. The point, however, is that if the military and the government are doing anything concrete at all to arrest the situation, it remains to be seen. In any case, the families of the innocent Nigerians cut down in cold blood last Saturday would not be interested in learned military discourse: what they want, and what the people of Borno and indeed the entire country wants, is for the bloodshed to stop and for the killers to get their just deserts. We urge the government and the military to work towards achieving these goals. Nigerians are tired of laborious explanations after terror attacks.

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