It’s time Nigerians cooked for these terrorists!

THE terrorists who kidnapped a bride and 62 wedding guests at Damari in Sabuwa LG of Katsina State are currently having a swell time. Not only do they have a rich supply of captive women with which to slake their depraved lusts, they also want millions to prop up their fiefdom. They are demanding N100 million, threatening to marry off the bride and sell the other abductees if their families did not pay the ransom. They dressed the bride in army uniform, slung AK-47s around the necks of the captives, and uploaded the video evidence on social media, confident that the state will not cow them. Hear their leader: “I am the one who abducted them, and I will not release them until the ransom we demanded is paid. Anyone who thinks they can rescue them should try to do so.” There’s a Daura Deceiver in the same state who did nothing to protect the people from the blood-thirsty killers but has an impenetrable wall around him while brides and grooms cannot even consummate their marriage!

Folks, there’s a reason these dogs (who once fed the twins born by a woman in their captivity to dogs) are so bold. They have backers in high places. Only recently, Danjuma Ali-Keffi, former GOC, 1 Mechanised Division of the Nigerian Army, asked President Bola Tinubu to investigate the death of former army chief, Lt-General Ibrahim Attahiru, in a plane crash in Kaduna, Kaduna State, on May 21, 2021, linking the incident to terror financiers in the country and urging the president to probe his compulsory retirement from service for exposing those top officials during the previous administration. Think about it: the terrorists who collect millions and billions often look ragged and disheveled, according to those who managed to escape from their clutches, and they are working for barons. They carry expensive weapons. They use phones. Ransoms have been paid through banks but the masterminds are still walking as free (wo)men. Something isn’t adding up.

Why don’t terrorists launch attacks in North Korea? They know that the state itself is terror; that they would be buried with bullets. They know that soldiers would use their bodies for shooting practice. Before whose dining table will a dog wag its tail? Terrorists dread Israel: Netanyahu takes a thousand lives for each life they take among his people. In the United States, these criminals would be dead in less than two hours. Japanese Admiral Yamamoto may or may not have spoken the words attributed to him, but they are true nonetheless: “You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.” In Nigeria, terrorists reign as kings, pampered by the powers that be. They know the weaknesses of a country where hospitals lack drugs, where ATMs are empty, where schools foster illiteracy, and where fuel is not guaranteed at a filling station. Hunger stalks the land as people cut up a single Titus into ten pieces, buses conveying foodstuff are being attacked by hungry citizens, but the terror masterminds know no poverty. They know that the nation is not asking serious questions.

Who is supplying these terrorists with weapons and food?  Where are their families based? How do they transport huge stashes of cash across our borders?  If they convert naira to foreign currency, where do they do so? Who are their backers and where are their family houses located? Is there something customs operatives are not telling us? Can we not deploy drones and smoke them out? As part of its National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism, the U.S. Government says it  will “enhance domestic terrorism analysis and improve information sharing throughout law enforcement at the federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial levels, and, where appropriate, private sector partners, guarantee “revamped support to community partners who can help to prevent individuals from ever reaching the point of committing terrorist violence, disrupt and deter domestic terrorism activity via increased support to federal, state, and local law enforcement in addressing domestic terrorism nationwide, and “confront long-term contributors to domestic terrorism”, protecting Americans from “racial, ethnic, and religious hatred, and stemming the flow of firearms to individuals intending to commit acts of domestic terrorism, and working to ensure that law enforcement operates without bias in countering domestic terrorism.” Why can’t we take a cue from the US?

Terrorism would not thrive with the society slaughtering terrorists: daggering them till the knife is blunt, mauling them without mercy. The terrorists would not strike if they knew that the society would deploy tactical superior wickedness, castrating, daggering and incinerating them in the bush;  beheading their food suppliers and burning their houses. You have to make it clear to terrorists that once they abduct people, they will be slaughtered. To tackle these blood merchants, you impose community terrorism levy to support hunters in the bush and set up roadside squads/community information brigades. There must be a town strategy: you fight terrorists as a town, hold vigils and monitor strange faces at beer parlours, etc.

The government must set up state police, ensure drone monitoring of forests and farmsteads, locate terrorist communication with GPS, set up farm squads comprising all the armed services, deploy Man O’ War to support Amotekun, and empower forest guards. The case of the terrorists who murdered the Elesun of Esun-Ekiti, the Onimojo of Omojola-Ekiti and the Olukoro of Koro Kingdom in Ekiti LG of Kwara State proves that state policing is the way to go. A combined team of police, military and secret service operatives and vigilantes and hunters rescued the abducted wife of the late Olukoro and her little girl and arrested 13 terrorists in the forest/boundary between Kwara and Ekiti states. Another team involving police operatives, hunters, members of Agbekoya group, vigilantes and Amotekun Corps stormed Emure-Ekiti Forest, Ise/Ogbese Forest and Emure-Ile Forest in Ondo State and arrested the murderers of the Elesun and the Onimojo. The arrested terrorists, Yaya Sumaila, Idrisu Abubakar, Hassan Abudullahi, Abudullahi Abudullahi, Haruna Abubakar, Usman Abudullahi, Haruna Sule, and Babusa Alhaji Lede, will soon have their day in court.

If a man cooks for the community, say the Igbo, the community will finish the food. But if the community cooks for a man, he will never finish the food. The terrorists have been cooking for Nigerians for too long; it’s time Nigerians cooked for them. It’s time to send them to hell!