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People try to associate terror with religion. There is a desire to affiliate terror with religion. We feel comfortable designating terrorists within religious or tribal clusters. This is human; it gives us a delineable group to target or avoid. But there is a fundamental problem in this; by strictly resolving and limiting terror to particular associations we end up protecting it, assisting it and fail to be able to end it.
Terror has no religion; it has no ethnic or tribal affiliation. There are two groups known to humanity: the good and the evil. Terrorists belong to the evil group. Within this evil group, all evil men are partakers. Within this group there is no bias, men of all religions and tribes are employed. The goal is evil and anyone good at evil is employed. It is easy and terrorists prefer to brainwash and recruit foot soldiers with common affiliations, but when one looks at the top of almost all terror groups in history, the leadership itself are always clearly ungodly folk, who make interfaith and intertribal betraying affiliations which prove their non allegiance to their portrayed religious or ethnic brand. Sheep in wolf’s’ skin.
Nigeria is confused right now, it was revealed that the top sponsor of Boko Haram, a radical “islamist” terrorist group in the north, is a Christian man from the south. To make matters worse, the man is an army General whose perceived job is combating the very terror. By our preconceived perceptions, some of us rule that out as impossibility and discourage looking any further. But we conveniently forget that the leader of the counterpart Southern terrorist group, MEND, who some view as the lead terror utilizing group for the purpose of emancipation, is Mujahid Asari-Dokubo, a Muslim, whose name is “Jihad.” The irony of it.
If a Muslim can be the leader of the Southern terror group, why can a Christian not be the leader of the northern terrorist group? We should be able to ask and investigate; we do not want to miss the solution to our crisis till it engulfs us completely. We should study the factors that bring terrorists together: blood, money, politics. When the CIA was alleged to have revealed that Boko Haram and MEND collaborate, we found that hard to believe. They collaborate in gun running and narcotics trade.
When we are looking for the gun runners, we must be liberal. We cannot profile. Profiling will make us miss our mark. Indeed many or even, most of the gun runners for Boko Haram that have been caught have been distant ethnic groups and of other faith. This is the reality of terror. Many supporters, sponsors and partners in terror, do so for the money; for politics; and even just for the kick of it. We must ask why the Jonathan administration has been sympathetic to the sponsors of terror and unable for its five years to arrest and prosecute a single one. Perhaps the reasons are far from what we embraced. Jonathan did not hesitate to strongly attack HRH Emir Sanusi when Sanusi exposed his interests. Jonathan then was not scared to seize Sanusi’s passport and stop him from travelling. The Presidency even concocted pathetic evidence against his person at the time.
If Jonathan can dare such to one of the north’s most respected men, then why has he not done so to the real Boko Haram sponsors if indeed they are strictly northern and Muslim men? That would be less controversial and if he flushed Nigeria with evidence, he will even score great points for protecting Nigerian masses and not merely himself and Diezani. We must begin to think of whether he fails to arrest the sponsors because as he says, they (Boko Haram and their sponsors) are his siblings, people he regards as his family. People he protects by affiliation. People he takes care of and who likewise take care of his interests and political ambition.
The devil rules terror and he can use any man. No man is too big and none too small to be employed in terror. Boko Haram is destroying Nigeria but only because we fail to right our consciences, purify our hearts and come together to face and attack all elements in this terror from the nation’s top leadership, through its local elders and religious leaders, to its military brass. We are torn by tribal, political and religious desperation as promoted by the sponsors of terror and this stalls our ability to defeat terror.
We hope Nigerians will allow the war against terror to be de-tribalised and de-religionized.
Our blood is crimson and our ashes are gray, when terror kills us, we all turn to dust the same way.
Dr. Peregrino Brimah; http://ENDS.ng [Every Nigerian Do Something] Email: [email protected] Twitter: @EveryNigerian
