By Chamba Simeh
Perhaps, no analysis, so far, on the abducted Chibok schoolgirls and the Boko Haram menace has been as poignant and expository as that of the Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka. The reason for this in-depth knowledge of the modus operandi and schisms of the terror group is not far-fetched. Soyinka’s experience stems from the fact that he is the founder of the first cult in Nigeria, the Pyrates Confraternity, in 1952. The university-based group was initially a social organisation for promising students. However, as new cults were formed, they became increasingly violent through the 1970s and 1980s. By the 1990s, many confraternities largely operated as criminal gangs, called “campus cults” in Nigerian tertiary institutions; they have been linked to political violence, as well as the conflict in the Niger Delta.
Soyinka had explained that the Pyrates wanted to differentiate themselves from “stodgy establishment and its pretentious products in a new educational institution different from a culture of hypocritical and affluent middleclass, different from alienated colonial aristocrats”. The organisation adopted the motto “Against all conventions”, the skull and crossbones as their logo, while members adopted confraternity names such as “Cap’n Blood” and “Long John Silver”.
It is on the backdrop of this pedigree that Soyinka had on major forums, local and international, dissected the Boko Haram phenomenon. The Nobel prize-winning author had last week in Port Harcourt, Rivers state, at the declaration of the state capital as the World Book Capital, taken a swipe at President Goodluck Jonathan administration for its inability to rescue the 234 abducted secondary school girls in Chibok, Borno State by Boko Haram.
Soyinka also criticised President Jonathan for dancing at the Kano political rally barely a few hours after the dastardly Nyanya bombing that killed over 75 Nigerians. He expressed dismay that Nigeria which deployed its soldiers to Mali to battle extremist groups whose agenda was to eradicate the community of learning, tolerance and peaceful cohabitation, could not do same to the Boko Haram which has declared a fatwa on enlightenment in the country. “We must take the battle to the extremists. An army that sits in the barracks in the face of enemy attack is no army at all but a sitting duck,” he said.
Soyinka was again on hand in Oshogbo, Osun state, where he raised the alarm of an impending religious war in Nigeria, warning Nigerians to guard against its devastating effect. Soyinka made the remark during a three-day colloquium under the theme: ‘Fundamental Imperatives of Cohabitation: Faith and Secularism’, which is expected to bring Christians, Muslims and traditionalists to discuss ways of preventing religious war in the country. He said recent events in the country pointed to the fact that religious war was looming.
But the most scathing and elaborate discourse on the Boko Haram onslaught is Soyinka’s interview with CNN Chief International Correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, which was aired on Tuesday, last week. Soyinka said the government of President Goodluck Jonathan was not capable of countering the menace of Boko Haram, and solicited the intervention of the international community. Soyinka accused both the past and the present governments in the country of living in self-denial, by believing that they could negotiate or “appeal” to “murderers and killers” to stop their activities.
He said: “It is not just the President that has been living in self-denial but some of those he has surrounded himself with. I cannot understand why it is difficult to ask for international help when you are confronted with a problem of this nature. The problem would not have reached this monstrous level if the President has not been living in self-denial. So, accepting the help of the United States in this matter is long overdue.”
Soyinka, who faulted the visit of late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua to the family and loyalists of the founder of Boko Haram, Yusuf Mohammed, after he was killed in police detention in 2009, said that the abducted schoolgirls in Chibok might live with the trauma of their kidnapping for the rest of their lives, recommending that the authorities should get psychologists, who would be able to help them after they might have been freed.
He blamed politicians for laying the foundation for the army of idle militants in the North, which became the bedrock of the lingering insurgency. “The politicians helped to entrench this problem in the first place. The large army of Almajiri metamorphosed into the raw materials that these terrorists recruited and the politicians also used them for their own selfish interest. Now, they can no longer handle the problem”, he told CNN.
Although Soyinka is just one of the #bringbackourgirls global crusaders, his elucidating expository of the knotty issues and underpinnings of the insurgency, Niger Delta militancy, kidnappings and general insecurity in Nigeria makes him a potent force to be reckoned with in the anti-terror war. The Nobel Laureate should, therefore, be conscripted into the on-going intelligence network to help unravel the mystery shrouding the intractability of the Boko Haram mayhem.