Boko Haram And America

Boko Haram And America’s Offer Of “Military Cooperation” With Nigeria

Tondu Aonduna

At the best of times, media reports attesting to the presence of foreign military units in a national jurisdiction ought to raise great concern and even dismay. The alleged recommendation of “military assistance” ( to the Jonathan regime ) about a week ago by a committee of America’s House of Representatives , allegedly to help it fight the Boko Haram terrorist threat, should be scrutinized openly and not shrouded in secrecy. The reasons will soon be obvious here.

Overwhelmed by the daunting challenges that the nation is confronted with, President Jonathan and his lacklustre regime are increasingly relying on repressive and other misguided actions that are bound to cause further strife and alienation amongst the long-suffering people of our country. The judiciary is under siege on account of the ill-will and interference by the PDP-led government in Abuja. Attacks on the independent media and journalists are getting more brazen even as the orchestrated harassment of the opposition and perceived political enemies is assuming more alarming proportions. Jonathan’s allies in places like Benue and Akwa Ibom States are perpetrating a reign of terror with the president, the police and other security outfits either tacitly supporting the banditry by the anti-people governors in those places or doing nothing to help put a stop to it. And as if that isn’t worrying enough, the country must now grapple with a potentially destabilizing action as indicated in the disturbing report ( By Sahara Reporters, among other news organizations )about three weeks ago that American “special forces”, on the orders of the increasingly unpopular Obama administration, have been deployed in northern Nigeria, supposedly to fight the Islamic sect bearing the curious sobriquet of Boko Haram. The American embassy in Nigeria has offered a tepid and unconvincing denial that their country’s so-called special forces have been sent to this country. Interestingly, the Jonathan regime has apparently not made any statement denying the alleged deployment. The regime has not up till today denied credible reports either, suggesting that Israeli mercenaries are also working for Jonathan. At any rate, the denial by the American embassy is significantly immaterial considering the agonizing reality that America’s military and spying presence in Nigeria has dramatically escalated in the past few months. American mercenaries are said to be deeply involved in Jonathan’s Boko Haram dossier.

This highly sensitive and troubling matter of alien hired fighters on our soil, whether through executive fiat or congressional legislative effort on the part of the Americans, does once more raise serious questions about Jonathan’s sense of judgement and suitability for the position he currently occupies. With their history of arrogance and disdain toward the mores as well as rights of local populations where they have operated, be it in Iraq or Afghanistan, for instance, America’s “ special forces” have left a grim trail of wanton barbarity and atrocities - gruesomely mutilated bodies, the systematic destruction of homes , torture, harassment, degrading and inquisitory interrogations, etc . – which are cavalierly passed off by successive American regimes and their complacent friends in the media as “collateral damage”.

America’s kind of war on terror has made too many innocent victims, profoundly ruined societies and led to a degeneration in the negative stereotyping of identifiable communities and their members. The excesses associated with America’s recent military interventions around the globe should have called for more sobriety - a statesmanlike approach that seeks to keep the meddling agents of Uncle Sam and other foreign adventurers at bay. That Jonathan has apparently opted for a panicky retreat into the arms of our potential enemies speaks volumes. It is a particularly wrong-headed and unpatriotic gesture on the part of our soi-disant president to engage in what is tantamount to abdication by participating in Obama’s hare-brained election-oriented schemes. By so doing, he is invariably putting the nation’s stability at great risk. With Jonathan, MEND and Boko Haram couldn’t have had a better ally.

Here is a man who is paranoid, as hypocritical and as vindictive as his mentor and godfather, the ex-tyrant called Obasanjo, to the extent that at least six months after the last elections, he is still fixated on imaginary enemies who must be lurking in every nook and cranny in the North. A president who sees “goliaths” when he wakes up every morning has, in a knee-jerk manner, taken to associating every excess by Boko Haram with a plot by his political enemies, meaning northerners, to discredit his regime by making Nigeria ungovernable ! Consciously or unconsciously, Jonathan and the cast of fellow irredentists and provincialists around him do view Nigerian politics in Manichean terms of “good versus evil” whereby much of the Muslim North is perceived as enemy territory fundamentally opposed to Mr. President and his “hard-earned “ authority. To a large extent, it is this kind of sectarian mindset on the part of the president and his henchmen that has informed the infantile but dangerous decision to have more American mercenaries on Nigerian soil at this point in our history. It is bewildering that despite the bombs that MEND has so far exploded ( from the Niger-Delta to Lagos and Abuja ) and the hecatomb left in the wake of their signature acts of anarchist defiance, Jonathan persists in vainly trying to absolve the self-styled militant group. With Boko Haram, he is at his primordial and revanchist best. The president has effectively refused serious dialogue as an option to handle the Boko Haram imbroglio. It is now apparent that many vested interests, both local and foreign, are benefitting tremendously ( financially, through huge so-called security votes and extortion by the corrupt police, army, the SSS, etc ; for America and other foreign entities, by way of an increased military and spying presence here, carte blanche for America’s oil needs, etc. ) from the tenuous security situation in the North to a point where they are not likely to want any meaningful dialogue any time soon.

The people most adversely affected by the murderous Boko Haram insurgency seem united in their pursuit of peaceful means as a preferred way to help get out of the security impasse whose genesis is traceable , in the first instance, to the criminal truancy by irresponsible and anti-people governments at the local , state and federal levels. And lest we forget, the immediate trigger that set Boko Haram on the path of condemnable violence and retaliation was their perceived persecution which culminated in the extra-judicial murders , a few years ago, of its leaders and members in general, crimes that have not been punished up till today. Moreover, there is consensus in much of the North against the army presence in Borno and neighbouring states precisely because of the gross human rights abuses being committed against innocent citizens by soldiers posted there. These abuses include, amongst others, rapes, stealing, torture and wilful and unwarranted vandalising of people’s property. What makes Jonathan believe that Nigerians in the affected areas will roll out the red carpet for American mercenaries and their political masters with a human rights track record that is chillingly dismal ? it requires pointing out also that the primary allegiance of Jonathan’s American and Israeli “friends” is to foreign interests and not Nigerian ones.

An important question that comes to mind regarding this scandal involving the reported sending of more American mercenaries to Nigeria has to do with the total lack of respect on the part of Jonathan and his regime for the Nigerian people and their sensibilities. Jonathan has neither formally informed the nation of this American misadventure in our heartland, nor has he defined what moral or constitutional authority he thinks he has that warrants his reckless subjugation of our sovereignty to mercenary interests that cannot be said to coincide with our immediate and long-term aspirations. The utter disregard by Jonathan and his regime for the superior interests of the nation is typical of an unrepresentative tyranny whose legitimacy is questionable, to say the least, and whose leadership thinks, wrongly though, that its political survival as well as the protection of its selfish concerns are best served by foreign entities imbued with awesome powers of blackmail and coercion through military and diplomatic hectoring and propaganda. By acquiescing to the mercenary intervention by the Americans, Jonathan and his regime have invariably declared their intention to place, first, the North, and secondly, the rest of Nigeria, under the stranglehold of a reactionary PDP-led mafia with a terrible inferiority complex vis-à- vis Americans and other Westerners in particular. This disheartening development is unacceptable. Jonathan and his PDP gang must tell Nigerians what else they are allowing the Americans and other foreign representatives to lay their hands on, all in the name of fighting Boko Haram.

Of course, the Americans seem to be taking very seriously their role as intendants in this Jonathan/PDP scheme of a brazen and irresponsible surrender of Nigerian sovereignty. Ominously , the reported deployment of American killers (They are not boy scouts ) is simultaneously being accompanied by a media campaign that is sponsored by the American embassy in Abuja. A Lagos-based Nigerian daily, The Nation, has carried the report of the American ambassador in Nigeria lecturing to Aso Rock (and the country as a whole ) on the peaceful way to handle the Boko Haram question. How cynical can these Obama people be! It is obvious that the ambassador is first and foremost engaging in a damage control ploy, most likely fearing the outrage, not to mention the backlash, that the story regarding the intervention by American mercenaries would provoke amongst the Nigerian population. Deep down, Ambassador McCulley and his political masters in Washington know that what they are doing is wrong, a terrible mistake that is bound to destabilise our country for a long time. But do they really care? The bottom-line is what interests them. The ball is in our court. Let us be guided by the wise admonition by Nigeria’s former Army Chief, Gen. Victor Malu. When a kowtowing erstwhile despot, Obasanjo, once toyed with the idea of allowing the Americans an unfettered military presence under the guise that they were to train our soldiers for security-related engagements in Africa, Gen. Malu firmly rejected the Greek gift by rightly insisting that Nigerians were the ones who should be imparting their expertise (as well as experience ) to the Americans in the area of peace-keeping and security in Africa and not the other way round. Of course, this patriotic gesture did earn the general a sack but his point had duly been made. Jonathan and his regime should be resolute and refuse the offer of “military cooperation” reportedly being proposed by the American congress. As citizens, we should condemn Boko Haram’s excesses. But we must also strongly reject Jonathan’s impunity and especially his increasing and unsettling resort to force and mercenary military interventions against his perceived enemies as is the case in northern Nigeria and Bayelsa, respectively. It gets all the more unsettling with the knowledge that Emperor Jonathan and his acolytes seem desperate to impose his insane term elongation scheme, also known as a single 7-year presidential mandate. Crucially, Boko Haram-inspired terror must never be used as a convenient excuse for America’s imperialist designs here. Neither should it be employed as a facile but pernicious pretext for the woeful failures of Jonathan and his bungling and scandal-plagued regime. Through his reckless ways, Jonathan is endangering Nigerian democracy. He must be called to order.

Aonduna Tondu ( E-Mail: aondunatondu@gmail.com ).

P.S. Readers are also encouraged to read a related essay entitled “ Why Nigerians Must Say No To America’s Meddling In Their Affairs” ( BY Aonduna Tondu ). It is widely available on the Internet.