QuoteOrdinarily, there should be no confusion as to why Boko Haram has become the cancer it has assumed in Nigeria today but for the confusion that has replaced rational and dispassionate appraisal of issues based on politics. Confusion has been elevated to a standard with which the credulity of Nigerian masses is exploited and in the process, we are often rendered pitiably gullible to the extent that issues are hardly seen exactly the way they are but twisted to confound us the more.



Presidential hopeful, Atiku Abubakar, in a paid newspaper advertorial last week, attributed leadership failure to the festering insurgency in the Nigeria's northeast and then sought to create the impression that a change in leadership guard amongst the present crop of the political class was all that is necessary to fix the cankerworm which have arisen from long years of religious manipulation.

While Atiku would appear to be making a valid point, he was nevertheless begging the issue by refusing to acknowledge that Boko Haram is a product of political impunity perpetrated wantonly over the years through the manipulation of religion for political ends. To understand where the rain started beating us is to decipher the agenda of Boko Haram and the politics that would likely sustain rather than abate the ugly trend!

Failure to acknowledge the full import of the challenge of Boko Haram as a consequence of overbearing religious extremism and impunity of the past is to indulge in convenient politics of deceit and acquiescence. Indeed, by failing to correctly situate Boko Haram as an agenda of destabilization is to continue to live in denial of the reality at hand and to succumb to politics of blackmail that would only serve to deepen rather than deal with the real issue.

Of course, Atiku like other actors in politics of convenience know that Boko Haram is only but a giddying consequence of the leadership they offered the country at some points in the past; however it is altogether not strange that they would rather prefer to offend our sensibilities. Indeed, while Boko Haram has become frustratingly intractable owing to the continuation of convenient politics of denial by the present administration, the truth remains that the seeds of the present crisis were sown over the years.

It was only a question of time that the bubble would burst! It is instructive to assert that violent religious extremism perpetrated over the years gave the country away as possible hotbeds of divisive religious ideology and warfare. It was against such fertile background that late Mouamar Guadaffi ignorantly advocated the partitioning of Nigeria based on misleading dichotomy, which failed to recognise the unique peculiarity in the spread of the two dominant religions.

The reality of renewed onslaught by the dreaded Islamic sect in the northeast state of Adamawa in the last one-week has further accentuated the danger which pervasive religious ideology portends for the sovereignty of Nigeria. As the military contend with the challenge of routing the insurgents in captures towns of Adamawa, most Nigerians would probably no longer reckon with the divisive and destabilisation ideology of this sect as espoused in its publicised objectives and creed. As if we are eternally condemned to devious politics, we would rather be more interested in the anecdotes of the crisis than correctly situating the evil which the emergence and boisterousness of Boko Haram represent.

In an attempt to obscure the dire reality of what Boko Haram signifies for the unity of the country, we are consciously led away from relating and engaging with the real issues in the agenda being propagated and violently and fanatically unleashed on the people of the northeast regardless of the rights and liberty of the victims to express cultural and religious preferences. Alas, the cancer is festering while our politicians refuse to appreciate the need to rise in unison, beyond political divides, against a self-inflicted scourge that threatens the very existence of the country.