By Gimba
Kakanda
Abubakar Shekau was formerly a lieutenant at Lord’s Resistance Army. He left LRA after a marked difference in the direction of the terrorist cult’s ideology with his boss, and converted to Islam to champion an Al-Qaeda-style insurgency. He migrated to Nigeria in 2005, and settled down in Shekau, Yobe State. In his early interviews, he insisted, refuting his boss’s charges of insubordination, that he left because of his disapproval of LRA’s quest for a society governed by the Biblical Ten Commandments. His preference of Sharia was after a brief stay in the Yemeni city of Sana’a where, for understanding Islamic orthodoxy in toto, according to him, he was nicknamed Darul Tauheed. Shekau was an LRA-trained, ultra-conservative Christian and Ugandan. We must join hands in rejecting his claims.
Of course, the source of the above is my imagination, my own conspiracy theory, to pander to the ongoing misuse of our intellect in analysing the genesis and complexities of our troubles as a nation and as a people, and on the junctures where humanity takes flight and abandons us conspire against each other. The past few weeks have been about competing to outdo one another in inventions of unverifiable stories, sometimes amusing and, other times, and these are of higher frequency, shameful, so much so that you wish to recommend the conspiracy theorists for admission into a mental institution.
If you’re still living in denial of Shekau’s actual existence, there are archives to study – and the Internet is one of them. There are videos of his on Youtube and other video-sharing websites where doubters can watch and study him, his mannerisms, employing your latent Sherlock Holmes-esque skills.
In the early years of this insurgency, a friend of mine who had followed Shekau’s commentaries on the affairs of the world, long before his transformation into a wanted man, gave me a DVD of the man’s selected sermons. The DVDs were on sale in Minna, I don’t know about now. Shekau is real, and dangerous. And to say that he doesn’t know an “alif” about Islam is cheap, for the Shekau I listened to was a considerably learned man who wallowed, which he now does in full blast, in hollow ideologies, possessed by the demons of a society he yearned for!
So it’s needless to dismiss Shekau as one of us – Muslims. He has never identified with any concept aside from one inspired by the Islamic. He’s not a Christian. Like Joseph Kony, the elusive leader of LRA, exploiting his Christianity, terrorized in his yearning for “a society governed by the Biblical Ten Commandments.” The more we dismiss Boko Haram insurgents as non-Muslims the more we ridicule our intellect. They are Muslims who, like you, and of course me, have gone astray. They’re Muslims whose doctrines are flawed and dangerous and, obviously, against the teachings of orthodox Islam but they’re Muslims nonetheless!
What the Boko Haram insurgents perpetrate is understandably un-islamic but they are Muslims. Like you and me. Disqualifying them as non-Muslims is not only a cheap escape but questions the authenticity of your own faith too. First, Islam is unambiguous in its condemnation of alcoholism but a day without a beer makes you sick. Yet you still parade yourself as Muslim. Second, Islam forbids fornication and adultery, yet your life is woven around sex, hard drug and ill-gotten wealth – all the things actually considered haram. Yet, ignorant of the decrees that your acts of worship are of no rewards in all the times you’re intoxicated, you pass fatwas on fellow sinners.
So, my friend, if we apply your logic in authenticating who the ideal Muslims are, you and the Boko Haram insurgents may earn the same sentence – on the strength of your sins, and resistance to enjoined moral values!
Every unsentimental human being knows that every ideology can be exploited for the wrong movements. Instead of propounding conspiracy theories, let’s dedicate our energy to efforts being made to rescue our girls. Where are they, over a month later? Our campaign right now must be to remind international community, that #BringBackOurGirls is neither a posing nor fashion contest.
We don’t want to see Yves Saint Laurent suit, don’t want to see gucci shoes, don’t want to see Rolex watches… anymore. If you really want to help us, then you must understand that urgency is requisite in counter-terrorism. But if your actual intention is merely to embarrass us in style, laugh over our postcolonial failures in the closet, and publicise the other side of my ‘barbarous’ people, then open up and leave us alone. Stop documenting our miseries if you’re not willing to assist us. Our girls have marked30 days, a month, in captivity. Is this a fashionable tragedy?
A people’s daughters were abducted, they’re in immeasurable misery, yet the “Establishment” is asking them to “waka come” – and see them in their grand Palace (of shame). Aren’t you and your ilk, (s)elected to serve, supposed to visit them and apologise for failing to defend them as pledged in your Oath of Office or assure them of a possibility of rescuing their beloved daughters?
You, as their leader, are the actual servant, from whom is expected such visits and moral supports in the hours of national tragedies?
It’s insensitive, and of course disrespectful, to command a grief-stricken people to yours. Yet you sit on a trillion naira, expecting hashtags to gather and venture into Sambisa Forest and touch the heart of the morally unconscious terrorists or even, by a twist of miracle, save the citizens you have vowed to protect!
I really wish I could sit down with my kids in the future, telling them, with painful nostalgia and perhaps pride, of a terrorist cult called “Boko Haram” that terrorised my youth, as our parents had told us of Maitatsine’s violent dissent – and the immediate subduing of Mohammed Marwa-indoctrinated Yan Tatsine by a militarily no-nonsense government!
But our counter-terrorism isn’t a guarantee for that hope. I fear that our kids may be similarly rattled by this evil creation of our time, a product of a dangerously built society. I fear. For us.How this literally frail Shekau who may not even stand me in a boxing bout managed to defy our security arrangements, outwitting the salary-earning, civilian-brutalising “sojoas” there to defend the people, is a proof that ours is a structurally collapsed nation. May God save us from us!