The Fight to Save Nigeria by Rotimi Fasan

Last week concluded with another victory for the terrorists who are determined to make life unbearable for Nigerians, while the rest of the country mourns. We were all forced to accept the sad reality of the death in captivity of General Rabe Abubakar. He had been abducted with his wife about four weeks ago by terrorists along the Marabar Musawa‑Kafinsoli highway in the Matazu Local Government Area of Katsina State.

General Abubakar was from Katsina, a state whose government quickly announced that the unlucky general had died of natural causes, namely a deadly combination of high blood pressure and diabetes. In the government’s narrow definition of a natural ailment, the so‑called “tag‑team” disease of hypertension and diabetes is described as such, ignoring the possibility that these conditions may have been aggravated or triggered by the General’s detention in the forest without access to medication.

General Abubakar’s family has rejected the government’s account of his death. They say he died from an untreated snake bite, not from diabetes or hypertension. Whose words should we trust in this situation? The grieving family or a government that has shown itself ineffective in confronting home‑grown terror, a government that has not earned our confidence? A man with General Abubakar’s health condition, if not his age, would probably be on some medication. If he died without access to those medications under the conditions in which he was held, that death cannot be described as natural. It was inflicted. Yet it is the nature of a government and a people who soften terrorists and call them family to downplay the heinous crime of terrorism with euphemistic language.

Katsina State was one of the first states in the violence‑ravaged north to adopt the ignoble practice of negotiating with terrorists by paying them large sums of money in exchange for peace. They opened the door for terrorists to re‑enter society without first accounting for their crimes. These official acts of criminal negligence and abdication of responsibility were carried out in the name of rehabilitation. Under the administration of Aminu Bello Masari, as is still the case across many states in the northwest and northeast, terrorists were periodically and systematically released into society. Many of them now operate far beyond their regional breeding ground, spreading their criminal influence to other parts of the country.

That was the case in Borno State this past week when the state government released another set of at least 720 criminals, reconditioned terrorists, offering them everything to make their so‑called reintegration into society smooth. Babagana Zulum, the Borno State governor, appears to be engaged in a Sisyphean mission in his so‑called fight against terrorism. He seems to be fetching water with a basket. Otherwise, he would not be going to the front lines, supposedly fighting terror groups, while trying to provide the best for the displaced populations in his state, and then returning to periodically set absolutely free people found culpable or caught in compromising acts of terror. Let him keep splitting hairs about who is a terrorist or what constitutes terrorism; the fact remains that his behaviour leaves much to be desired and raises suspicion about his real attitude to terrorism.

There is no doubt that granting freedom to terrorists, as has become state policy across the north, is giving them license to commit more atrocities. It is a failed policy that has yielded no gain. Since the commencement of this wrong‑headed policy, we have yet to see any reduction in the number of properties destroyed, communities sacked, people abducted, or murdered. But there is documented evidence that many of the freed terrorists in the north return to their life of crime and terror in the forests. It is a well‑known fact of crime history and psychology that criminals, especially hardened ones who have shed blood or participated in ideology‑driven terrorism, hardly change course or renounce their faith quickly.

These are the people for whom the northern political and religious elite demand amnesty and insist can travel anywhere in the country as Nigerians, even in their hundreds, loaded as cargoes in trailer vehicles across regional and ethnic boundaries. So today, 45 Yoruba schoolchildren and their teachers are spending their first month under the captivity of Boko Haram terrorists who are demanding the release of their comrades‑in‑arms held in prisons for crimes committed in the north supposedly against the Nigerian state. Why should the southwest pay for crimes committed in the north? Why should a Babagana Zulum who is opposed to a decentralised police system insist on the Nigerian state taking responsibility for the security of a state where terrorists are welcome with open arms?

These are extreme acts of provocation that are disguised as calls for equity — for the President, who is a Yoruba man at this time, to take responsibility for the deliberate failures of mostly Fulani politicians. To say this is for some to promote bigotry. Yet the truth needs to be told. Bigotry is hating a man for his ethnicity and holding him accountable for the actions of others. This is not speaking for Bola Tinubu, but if what we are seeing — this dangerous politicking disguised as demands for accountability — is what some Nigerians call the cluelessness of the president, then they’ve got something else coming. They are making the disintegration of Nigeria a tenable proposition. Bola Tinubu has been indecisive in fighting insecurity for reasons of regime protection. It is to please the same people tormenting Nigeria. If that’s cluelessness, then it begs a new name.

There are different ways to destroy a country. Some do it bearing arms like the terrorists across the country. Others adopt apparently harmless tools like words. This is where terrorist sympathisers come in. The likes of Sheikh Ahmad Gumi are easily identified. But so are governors who set terrorists free in a careless re‑victimisation of all victims of terror. Their action amounts to a rebuke of our men and women in uniform — the military, the police, and other security agencies who have paid the ultimate price of citizenship or are constantly in the line of fire.

In this fight to save Nigeria, there cannot be fence‑sitters.

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