A year ago, I would have said that they (Boko Haram) were religiously motivated. But as they killed more and more Muslims, it’s hard for me to believe that they are motivated by religion. Who are these guys and what do they want? I don’t think we really understand them”. – Mr James Entwistle, US Ambassador to Nigeria. Entwistle, the ebullient and dynamic Chief Envoy of America here reportedly made this assertion in a media briefing at a private university in Yola, Adamawa State, when asked why his country
was blocking efforts by Nigeria to procure arms and ammunition to tackle the Islamist insurgency in the North East. He also alleged that his country’s reluctance to sell crucial military equipment to Nigeria was based on what he described as “human rights violations” by the Nigerian military personnel.
President Barack Obama of the United States
President Barack Obama of the United States
I find this very interesting and surprising, indeed. I recall that on Wednesday, November 13, 2013, the United States Government, based on the recommendations of the Bureau of Counter-Terrorism, finally – if belatedly – designated Boko Haram as one of the 63-odd Foreign Terrorist Organisations, FTOs, active around the world, most of them Islamist groups which regard the US and the West as their primary enemies. Usually, when a group is so designated, the American government applies a number of sanctions aimed at crippling them, including cutting off their network of financial supply and even going as far as providing military support toward either eradicating them or forcing them to change their ways. Instances have also occurred where many organisations have been removed from the US register of FTOs when they scale down their terrorist approach.
Well, if America says they don’t know who these Boko Haram nuts are, let me remind them. Even the US has frequently linked Boko Haram to the Al Qaeda Network, which is principally behind murderous Islamist rebels in Somalia, Mali, the Maghreb, Yemen and the biggest of them all, the Islamic State in the Levant, ISIL, threatening the territorial integrity of Syria, Iraq and Turkey. This is the group that has killed more than 10,000 innocent Nigerians in their places of worship, mostly churches and to a much lesser extent, mosques. They have killed military, security and police personnel, including some high-ranking Islamic clerics and traditional rulers.
They have destroyed towns, burnt down schools and sacked villages. They were the ones who abducted the Chibok school girls, whom they have held in captivity for about 180 days. Today, these guys whom Entwistle say “we don’t know”, have captured and occupied territories which they claimed as “Islamic Caliphate”. They have been slitting throats of men, women and children, cutting hands and forcing single young women into marriages in line with their warped interpretation of Islam.
As for what they want, there is no mystery about it. They say they don’t want the Western system of living because, according to them, it is “evil” and does not allow them to practise their religion. They say they don’t want Western education, and have accordingly been destroying schools and killing teachers and medical personnel working to eradicate polio. By claiming an “Islamic Caliphate”, they obviously want to overthrow the more accommodating Islamic order in the North to set up a new system that will impose Islam on people and, like the ISIL, kill those who say no to them.
How can America, with all its power and technology, claim they don’t know who these people are? Is Entwistle saying that just because Boko Haram is killing Muslims along with Christians, their sins are less? It would have been more if they killed only Christians? Is it not sufficient that these guys are murdering innocent, law-abiding people? Is that not enough for any well-meaning ally of Nigeria to support all efforts to crush this menace? We are not asking for American troops. Why is America talking about human rights abuses? What evidence do they have of them? Which particular humans are their rights being abused? Even if some Nigerian troops have engaged in unprofessional conduct, has it been proved to be a policy of engagement or encouraged by the high command or government? Can America claim that in its unending interferences and wars around the world its troops and war machine do not routinely commit human rights abuses, or at least collateral damage? Which “clean war” has America ever fought? And who is to say that Boko Haram and their hordes of unpatriotic, politically-motivated supporters are not staging these abuses and passing them off as acts of our troops? Is it not wiser for the US to join hands in eliminating Boko Haram first, and then go after war criminals?
I am wondering what America will gain if, in an unlikely twist of events, Boko Haram gathers traction like ISIL and takes over most of Northern Nigeria in a major shift of loyalty by the local people there? Perhaps, America will then, in panic, start looking for international coalition partners to stop Boko Haram? Perhaps they will begin to lob expensive missiles from the safety of their floating frigates at sea, leaving the ground mess for us to contend with, as they did in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and others?
America has to re-examine its irritating policy of seeking to impose democracy and human rights around the world because it seems to have caused more harm than good, especially in fragile, Third World states and the Middle East, which has a cultural setting that is totally different from that of the West. They colluded with local activists to destabilise Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Iraq, and Syria would have followed suit if not for their support by Russia and China. Human rights in America are not the same as human rights in Saudi Arabia. In America, if you abuse Jesus Christ it’s “free speech”, but in Saudi if you abuse Prophet Mohammed you will be beheaded, and that’s flat!
In America and most of the West, a man can marry another man and it will not only be “normal”, it will also be “celebrity” news. Here in Africa, if it happens, both will risk being lynched because homosexual behaviour is an abomination that may bring spiritual damnation to family lines down the ages. We don’t regard gay life as “human rights”, here in Africa, and Nigeria has made a law to stamp it. The Western society is in great decline because its elastic interpretation of “human rights” has eroded the spiritual foundations that originally launched the West as a modern civilisation.
If America will not help us, let them leave us alone. They stopped buying our oil, yet we are moving on. We will defeat Boko Haram with or without their help. It will only take more time, human lives and resources. We will maintain our own standard of human rights, which says: “your rights stop where mine start”, and vice versa. You will lose your human rights when you deprive others of theirs, or if you act in ways that offend the cherished values of our society or promote the “normalisation” of taboos.
Our constitution has spelt out in detail, the fundamental human rights that we promote or aspire so to do. We do not need America or Britain to come and impose theirs on us.
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