Blood on Their Hands
By
Garba Deen Muhammad
deengarba@yahoo.com


As the violent dust raised by the tragic saga of Boko Haram settles down, very horrible pictures are emerging from the rubble: state sanctioned genocide. Bloodthirsty policemen with only one thing on their minds: murder. Callous, incompetent state governors desperate to divert attention away from their corruption, ineptitude and other political troubles.

With each passing day, and with each additional revelation, Mohammed Yusuf, leader of the Boko Haram movement and hundreds of his followers that were killed by the police and the army, are looking less like villains and more like victims. Poor guys, there is just no one left alive to tell their own side of the story. But those who thought that killing everybody that could have provided alternative window into the remote and immediate cause of the tragedy would cover up their crimes for ever, did not reckon with modern technology, or with the determination of the Nigerian army to be thoroughly professional in the matter.

The picture of Mohammed Yusuf as he was captured and handed over to the police; and the transcript of his interrogation both of which were released by the army and both of which were captured by dozens of ireporters using their mobile phones, have given the lie to the official explanation that we were fed with. When the crisis broke out late last month in Bauchi, the official explanation was that a band of religious extremists with medieval tendencies had gone berserk and had launched a murderous-cum-suicidal attack against the state and its citizens. As my friend Modibbo Kawu would say, that was the profile of Boko Haram that was created in our minds.

The Bauchi state government was the first to create this “savage” profile; naturally this suited the dominant media which have never been friendly or even fair to Islam or Muslims. So the media gleefully orchestrated it, and we uncritically swallowed it, hook, line and sinker; instantly, all over the
country, a venomous perception of Boko Haram built up among Muslims and Christians, at home and abroad. Everybody was screaming: kill them, crush them, massacre them; they are not fit to live.


But now, with the benefit of new revelations, it does look as if it is those who murdered a subdued, unarmed, manacled Mohammed Yusuf that do not deserve to live. According to eye witnesses the security forces also murdered perfectly innocent people in cold blood; with some of them even exploiting the opportunity to exert vengeance on some perceived personal enemies of theirs. And what are those new revelations?


First, there was the statement of Mohammed Yusuf as contained in the transcript released by the army. It was clear from what he said that Yusuf and Boko Haram were/are no more dangerous to the country than Henry Okah and his group, MEND.

Therefore why did the security forces choose to treat Boko Haram and Yusuf with such brutality and savagery in contrast to the way they are treating other militant groups such as MEND, MASSOB, OPC etc? Muslims all over the country are justifiably angry and becoming increasingly frustrated as one grim truth sinks in: In their own country they are second class citizens; when it comes to justice two laws apply when you dare to disagree with the state, one for the Southern Nigerian and another for the Northern Nigerian Muslim. And this is made even more painful by the sad realization that they are treated with such callous indifference with the active connivance of their own leaders.

This is the view of the average Muslim
on the street, majority of who totally disagree with Boko Haram’s distorted understanding of Islam.

The second revelation is the way the police hurriedly and extra-judicially executed Yusuf. What Nigerians are reading from this is that Yusuf was hastily killed by the police to prevent him from making revelations that could incriminate top government officials, including possibly top security operatives. That may not be necessarily correct but why did the police and the Borno State Governor attempt to lie that Yususf was killed in gunfight with his captors? People tell lies for one reason only, that is when they have something to hide; in this case the public would like to know why the police summarily executed such a crucial link to the deeper secretes of such a dangerous movement and then attempted to deceive the public.


Granted that the Boko Haram movement presented a rather delicate security situation for both the police and the governors of the states where the problem was most serious; it is also true that the police needed to be decisive in order to stop the situation from spilling into other volatile areas and covering more dangerous socio-political grounds; but even in war situations, there are rules of engagement that must be observed.

If Yusuf was leading a band of dangerous armed robbers, no one will question the way he was killed, but by their action the police authorities have denied the nation the chance to look beyond the surface, to uncover the dept of the reach of Boko Haram, their method of recruitment and find out who their financiers are, if any. As it is we are all left to speculate as to the how, where and what Boko Haram is all about.

Even the killing of a former commissioner in Borno state (who was accused of assisting the group) did not endear the
police to the public; according to one report the former commissioner was killed while pleading to have audience with the state governor, his former boss, but the governor reportedly refused to see him and the man was executed shortly afterwards. Nobody can say what his role was beyond what the police alleged. Then there was also the equally pathetic and dubious killing of the father in-law of Mohammed Yusuf, who was killed after reporting himself to the police.

Indeed the more facts that emerge from this bloody tragedy, and the more critically one examines the Boko Haram saga, the clearer it becomes that the whole matter has been one terrible intelligence and security mess. This then gives rise to the question whether in fact the National Security Adviser to the President is the right person to be entrusted with investigating the matter; if the NSA had been on top of his job, the situation might not have degenerated to the level it did.


God knows, there had been sufficient warning signals: Bauchi has been simmering since the state governor retuned to his former party the PDP from the ANPP under which platform he won the governorship election; when the president went to Bauchi to give him the PDP flag, hundreds of youths had to be rounded up and detained for the duration of the ceremony; shortly afterwards two students were shot dead when they clashed with security forces over payment of some examination fees. In Borno, only a few weeks before the crisis, there was a violent clash between the police and a funeral procession of some religious group (possibly Boko Haram) in which some members of the religious group were killed (they had sworn, allegedly, to take revenge).

Yet it was apparent that our security chiefs either neglected all those warning flashes or didn’t recognize them; either way this requires the president, who was probably misinformed—and ill-advised to travel out at the peak of the crisis—to take a very critical look at his security team with a view to overhauling it.

The President and the governors of the two states would also need to address the genuine resentment that is gaining currency among Muslims that we are expendable, just because we have no oil in the backyard. If the government decides to allow this resentment and feeling of alienation to grow, it would be shocked at the dimension that that the next rebellion could assume.

Garba Deen is the former Editor of Weekly Trust and the Editor-in-Chief of The Companion.