Overcoming Boko Haram insurgency

HAVING been born, grown up and lived in many parts of our dear country, Nigeria, and having been properly educated in the country as well as in many other parts of the world where one also lived in, significantly, one frequently wonders why God allowed a place such as Nigeria to exist at all on the face of the earth! Having lived, worked, as well as self-educated myself at the highest levels of education, and seeing how Nigerians across the tribes and ethnic groups who live in those overseas countries relate so well with themselves in at least some of those countries – much to the utmost admirations of other people in those countries, e.g., the Fiji Islands – it is very sad indeed to see what happens to these same Nigerians once their travelling aeroplanes touch down at Abuja or Lagos, on their return to this country! That is not to say that Nigerians do not export some of their tribal and ethnic hatreds and other funny behaviours outside of this country though. However, their apparent inability, comparatively, to reason anymore or even to behave with the smallest amounts of true cordiality and goodwill towards one another across the tribes and ethnic groups when they get back here,and simply growing so wild and uncontrollable once they come back or remain in this inter-culturally hateful place called Nigeria, is very amazing.

It is also very surprising that because of these ethnic and tribal hegemonies, Nigerians are generally unable to see that the average Whiteman does not desire for any race in the world to compare with them in any acceptable measures of civilization. Thus our bickering among ourselves and undermining each other re-enforces these their original attitudes. It still does so, even now that those their said civilizations have gotten bunkum, with men marrying men, women doing the same and some marrying animals, televisions, etc, and forcing the registries and courts to recognize, respect and register them! Nigerians and other black or developing country people who continue to behave in these ways or to retain the attitude that the Whiteman’s culture and products are the best, only promote this marginalization of the other world’s races. The Caucasian people, especially the neo-colonialist ones, naturally desire to use black people who behave in these demeaning ways that are obviously in line with their original dispositions.

In that way, it is very easy for these non-white people and so-called black people, even as leaders in their very own countries, to continue to cooperate with these Whiteman colonialists and neo-colonialists to continue to undermine their very own people and indigenous races and tribes. They of course get huge financial and other “Western” sociopolitical benefits from these mercenary jobs – in the academia, professional, legislative, judicial and political realms; and even more! Nigeria is, of course, the unfortunate “champion” of these Whiteman’s-stooge self-undermining behaviours; and so continues our self-impoverishments and mass suffering.

The extremely brief summaries above explain why it has been impossible for the political leadership in Nigeria to understand the most important aspect of the so-called Boko Haram insurgency; and so to be able to begin to address the problem in any meaningful ways. Let nobody think that from what I have said here, I am proposing that the Boko Haram problem is a single or even simple matter at all! On the contrary, I know very well that the matter is not that simple at all. It is not, because so very many other intrigues have played into it that it is very difficult to unravel all of it in a two-page article such as this one. However, unravelling the pure Boko Haram original matter from the local Nigerian scene alone, and before the complicating and the foreign imperialists and neo-imperialists intrigues into the matter, are not impossible to do.

Without unravelling and addressing the primary origin of the Boko Haram and all the other similar world terrorist situations, it will be impossible to begin to tackle any of them at all; to talk the least, of the local Nigerian Boko Haram one. “Fighting” the Boko Haram palaver, as both Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari national political leaderships have all tried to do, will mean to continue in a no-winner-no-looser wasteful enterprise – in our humble opinion! Now to come to the crux of the matter, the Boko Haram people (whose name’s literal translation, we are told, means that the “Whiteman’s education is evil” – a HARAM in the originating language of the name) had told this to us at their onset! Anybody who examines that claim will find out that it is a 100 per cent correct statement of a sort! However, it is not necessarily the Whiteman’s education that the Boko Haram people mean, as their so-called modern culture of secular humanism!

It is this same culture that Osama-bin-Ladin, Al-Qaeda and all the other radical Islamic international terrorist groups are fighting. They see Europe as the origin of the culture and USA as the current melting pot thereof. That is why they are infiltrating and overtaking Europe by all sorts of means -peaceful, honest, strategic, pretentious and otherwise; but seeing the USA as the present melting pot thereof, and which needs to be rapidly overrun by them. Incidentally, Donald Trump is fighting both groups of people (the radical fundamentalist, imperialist Secular Humanist sexists and the radical fundamentalist Islamists) without understanding well how best to first unravel and so, to do so properly and accurately. It is obvious that as long as Nigeria’s leaders refuse to address the secular humanist neo-colonisation (which some world civilizations are referring to as cultural imperialism and neo-colonialism), we will never get anywhere close to addressing our overall national problems. Similarly, unless they understand the most basic issue of the Boko Haram and address it properly, we will not begin the “war” of their containment or to begin to win it.

While we refuse to accept that “the Whiteman’s modern culture of secular humanist imperialism and neocolonialism is evil” by agreeing with the statement and clarifying the truer statement of the fact, we will not ever begin to expect a victory over this insurgency. In doing the right thing, we should show them our anti-gay legislation as evidence of our agreement with them on these matters. We should then also promise to,as well as improve the very good aspects of our traditional Nigerian and African chastity and pro-life values, cultures, laws and practices – all of them anti-secular Humanist! The leaders of the Boko Haram people should be encouraged to propose any laws that they may desire for the strengthening of our African family life, against these western family life ravaging by their Secular Humanist culture.

• Asuzu is Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of Ibadan