Nigeria lost its soul a long time ago. My engagement with Nigeria, the country of my birth, got concretised in the 1990s which was the last decade of military dictatorship. That engagement was a painful experience forged in the furnace of the struggle for nationhood. That decade was not just momentous for my generation, but it also led Nigeria to the crossroads where the deceptive choice of choosing the way to go was made. The 1990s saw members of my generation gaining admission into university just in time to catch the flickering flame of radical consciousness. That decade also saw the military’s amputation of hope through the annulment of the June 12, 1993 election which has been adjudged as Nigeria’s freest and fairest. That annulment threw up combatants who struggled for the soul of Nigeria. My generation ranged on the side of history. We took to the streets in civil disobedience. We mounted barricades against marauding soldiers and just before the curtains fell on the last century, the soldiers capitulated and a new dispensation was inaugurated.
It was in the hurly-burly of that bloody struggle that Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, the wife of the winner of the June 12 election, Chief Moshood Kasimawo Olawale Abiola, was shot dead on June 4 1996. I recall that wet and uninspiring morning, made more hopeless and miserable by the unending industrial action embarked upon by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), when the radio broke the news of Kudirat’s assassination. The solidarity that propelled Nigerian students had been broken by the long ASUU strike and we couldn’t mobilize to confront the Abacha regime that liquidated Kudirat. However, I had thought that Nigerian women would storm the streets the next morning to protest Kudirat’s death and begin the process that would route the Abacha junta. My expectation derived impetus from the role played by women in the dismantling of hegemonies. The Aba women riots of 1929 and the Abeokuta women riots of 1946 tickled my memory. However, nothing happened. It was at that point that Nigeria lost its soul.
The recent killing of two aid workers by Boko Haram insurgents elongates the catalogue of the tragic manifestations which foreground the character of a nation without a soul. The aid workers Saifura Khorsa and Hauwa Liman were killed a month apart. Saifura and Hauwa were among humanitarian workers working with the International Committee of Red Cross to brig succor to the war ravaged North-East. Both of them, in their early twenties, were among aid workers abducted by Boko Haram some months ago. Their execution has, expectedly, been greeted by outrage manifesting in the condemnation of the act. After these what next? Will the government rise to the occasion and vanquish the Boko Haram insurgents once and for all? The answer is no. The government appears to lack the will to put an end to the Boo Haram menace.
Every nation is often described as a work in progress, but Nigeria has been put on hold for a long time. That was why Boko Haram phenomenon grew from a small band of stick wielding boys during the Obasanjo era to become one of the most dreaded terrorist groups in the world in less than a decade. When Yusuf Mohammed, the founder of Boko Haram, launched out in the streets of Bauchi and Borno, Olusegun Obasanjo, who was then Nigeria’s president, was globetrotting and fantasizing about his third term ambition. He played the ostrich as the menace festered and became intractable.
By the time Goodluck Jonathan, who later became president, stirred from his millennial slumber in 2014 to tackle Boko Haram, the fighters had hoisted flags in many towns in Nigeria and declared a caliphate. They had also taken thousands hostage and murdered countless numbers. Their headquarters, Sambisa forest, entered the national lexicon as the symbol of maniacal insurgency. The killing of over fifty school boys in Buni Yadi in Yobe State and the abduction of school girls in Chibok in 2014 were to draw the world’s attention to the tragedy. Dapchi, where one hundred and five school girls were seized, joined the list this year. Some of the girls were later released. Five of them died. While Leah Sharibu, the Christian girl, remains in captivity.
When Mohammadu Buhari took the oath of office as president in May 2015, he was unequivocal in declaring that Boko Haram would be routed by December of that year. The fighters had a good laugh and retooled. There was a lull in fighting during which the Nigerian armed forces reclaimed lost territories. However, Boko Haram reorganised and re-launched an offensive that exposed the incapacity of the government in tackling the insurgency. Since then, the insurgents have fought and earned medals of infamy in the field of battle.
Boko Haram is writing the history of Nigeria in blood. Successive governments have deliberately failed to put a finger on the socio-economic exigency that engendered Boko Haram. Its roots lay deep in socio-economic exploitation perpetuated by the ruling class. The condition which triggered the insurgency remains consolidated and not until it is addressed and redressed, Nigeria will continue to render dirges for Saifura, for Hauwa.
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