Savagery In The Savannah By Anthony Chuka Konwea, P.E.

Bigotry and corruption are the two
core existential threats confronting
Nigeria in its stuttering march
towards genuine nationhood. In a
number of recent write-ups with
general slant on nation-building,
this writer has sounded the alarm
on the danger which corruption in
high and low places poses to the
future of the country. Indeed such
essays as ‘The Unholy Trinity –
National Interest vs. Regime
Interest’, ‘Who Is The Thief-In-
Chief? – Parts (1), (2), and (3)’ and
‘To You Looters, Rejoice!!!’ have
reflected extensively on the
phenomenology of corruption in
Nigeria.
At first glance, bigotry and
corruption appear to be completely
unrelated. At a higher level of
abstraction however we notice that
there is indeed a connection
between the two. My loot! My
religion!! My children!!! My tribe!!!!
There you have it. The link between
bigotry and corruption is ego and
the celebration of self. It is the same
self-enhancing ego which motivates
the cornering of the common
patrimony for personal gratification
that instructs the consideration of
one’s creed, one’s tribe, one’s
children and every other thing
associated with one’s self as
definitely superior and quasi
infallible while denying other creeds,
other tribes and other peoples’
children their space under the sun
and their very right to coexist in
peace.
And so even as you read this piece,
it is quite possible that a number of
our compatriots in Northern Nigeria,
defenseless men, women and
children, all bona fide Nigerian
citizens like you and me, are having
their throats slit or their innards
bombed out by cowardly savages
going by the name of Boko Haram
terrorists. They suffer all these
atrocities for what crime? Chiefly
that they happen to be Christians
and occasionally that they happen
to be moderate Muslims who do not
support wanton murderous acts
against their peaceful unarmed
compatriots of different faith. Their
tragic fates and their innocent blood
shed ostensibly in the name of
protecting and avenging Islam are
acts of human bestiality against
fellow human beings crying out to
God day and night for divine justice.
And so before our very eyes, the
map of Nigeria is being
progressively redrawn. Vast areas of
northern Nigeria particularly in the
northeastern part of the country are
gradually being effectively excised
and isolated from the rest of the
country via ethnic and religious
cleansing. The sovereignty of the
Nigerian state over segments of its
own territory is being challenged
daily with reckless impunity.
The notion that Islam cannot coexist
peacefully with other faiths and
creeds is a fat lie. We have as proof
to the contrary, the situation in the
south western part of Nigeria. One
must pay unqualified tribute here to
the Muslims in South-Western
Nigeria and other peaceful Muslims
elsewhere in Northern and Southern
Nigeria, who against all odds have
stoutly refused to emulate the
murderous hate-filled activities of
radical Islamism.
In all my years of existence on
earth, I have never heard of Muslim
youths in South – Western Nigeria
and they exist there in significant
numbers, going on a rampage and
killing their fellow compatriots just
because they are so-called infidels,
Christians or pagans. Indeed
moderate Muslims in South-Western
Nigeria by their peaceful co-
existence with their neighbors of
differing faiths, make a far better
case for potential conversion to
Islam by any one than the
murderous, cowardly, radical Islamic
terrorists of Northern Nigeria.
If you truly believe your religion is
superior to other religions, and that
you are headed to paradise while
others are doomed to go to hell,
your attitude towards others at best
should be one of loving sympathy
and at worst one of derisory pity.
Certainly your attitude should not be
one of murderous hatred except
perhaps if you are not content with
the strictures of your religion and
are envious of the liberties granted
by others’ faith. In any case, you are
not making a good sales pitch for
your faith if all we see associated
with it is radical bigotry sandwiched
by butchery of the defenseless and
bombing-out of the innocent.
There is a fundamental contradiction
in radical, intimidating religious
activity. You can never truly and
genuinely convert someone to your
religion by force or by intimidation if
that is your main goal. Any
conversion by intimidation is at best
a timorous conversion. It is well
said that a man convinced against
his will is of the same opinion still.
If the unnecessarily premeditated
clash of faiths in Nigeria were purely
and simply a battle for minds and a
contest for new converts, surely the
radical Islamists would concede that
they have lost the tussle hands
down by a wide margin due to their
brutal methodology.
Personally I do not believe that the
radical Islamists are daft enough not
to concede defeat in the battle for
minds if ever there was one. That
they persist in their brutal methods
leads one to the inescapable
conclusion that a battle for fresh
converts is not their main intention.
Their intention is something darker,
something far more sinister.
And so we must recognize all this
talk of radical Islam in Nigeria for
the ruse that it truly is. Radical
Islam as practiced in Northern
Nigeria is a Trojan horse for geo-
political domination. What is going
on here is that on the pretext of
defending their faith which in any
case is not being threatened by
anybody, radical Muslims in
Northern Nigeria are engaging in
acts of intimidation and latterly
terror in order to secure geo-
political advantage and pre-
eminence for themselves and their
sponsors in the nation’s affairs.
Since in any case, you cannot
subsequently convert to your faith a
person you have just slaughtered
and since we do not see the threat a
simple peasant Christian family in
Northern Nigeria, struggling to eke
out a living in these harsh times,
poses to Islam, we insist that the
murderous activities of the Islamic
terrorists in Northern Nigeria and
their sponsors have nothing
whatsoever to do with the
propagation of or defense of Islam
but everything to do with a geo-
political power grab.
Recognizing the fundamental threat
radical Islamists pose to the State,
all patriotic Nigerians, moderate
Muslims, Christians and pagans
alike, must rise up, stand shoulder
to shoulder in unity and stoutly
resist them whenever and wherever
they emerge. It is not for nothing
that progressive Muslim countries
like Turkey and even quite a few
Muslim monarchies like Saudi Arabia
and Morocco hold radical Islamists
in their countries on a tight leash.
These countries having correctly
assessed the danger, appreciate that
radical Islamism has very little to do
with Islam but everything to do with
a pre-historic, antiquated, feudal
power grab no more, no less.
Rest assured that no amount of
appeasement would satisfy the
radical Islamists until they subvert
all State institutions, overthrow the
State and erect a new radical
Islamic state fashioned to suit their
peculiar whims and caprices. The
short but brutal rule of the Taliban
in Afghanistan, where young girls
were stopped by decree from going
to school and young men were
stopped by decree from shaving
their beards is still fresh in our
memories. Is that the sort of country
we want to bequeath to the next
generation of Nigerians? The
concurrent battles going on in post-
Mubarak and predominantly Muslim
Egypt between moderate Muslims
and the Muslim Brotherhood backed
President Mohamed Morsi should
serve as a timely reminder.
Now it has been advanced by some
that moderate Muslims particularly
those in South-Western Nigeria are
not pious Muslims. Not being a
Muslim myself, I am not in a
position to comment on who is a
pious and who is not a pious
Muslim. What I do know and I have
certainly been around, is that vice
and virtue cut across the entire
length and breadth of Nigeria
regardless of creed, tribe, age and
gender.
There is no vice practiced in other
parts of Nigeria that is not practiced
in Northern Nigeria by northern
Muslims. Is it bribery and
corruption? Is it stealing? Is it
adultery? Is it fornication? Is it
prostitution? Is it homosexuality and
lesbianism? Is it alcoholism? Is it
smoking? Is it bearing false witness
against one’s neighbor? Is it 419? Is
it kidnapping? Is it slothfulness? Is
it slander? Name it. The intensity
may be different in each particular
case, but these vices are not
unheard of among northern
Muslims. In any case, when did
murderous hatred for one’s neighbor
of a different faith or tribe become a
mark of piety?
All religions without exception abhor
vice and sin. But no religion worthy
to be so called should promote
hatred on the basis of creed, race,
tribe, age and gender. By any means
hate the sin, but certainly do not
hate the sinner. If you cannot bring
yourself to love, at worst pity the
sinner and leave him to his
providential fate. And that should be
the leitmotif of genuine religious
activity.
Forget about the propaganda. While
the Islamic terrorists by their
murderous activities proclaim that
they hate the so-called infidel
sinners; their hypocritical lifestyles
confirm that they love and secretly
partake in the infidels’ sin. What
they seem to be saying in other
words is that you may commit the
infidel sin discreetly, so long as you
are a northern Muslim.
In the wake of the murderous
activities of the Boko Haram
terrorists, the Nigerian ruling class
finds itself in a quandary regarding
the way forward. While many people
have called for negotiation with the
terrorists, others have called for an
outright military solution or a fight
to the finish. What is the best way
forward?
As we have noted, appeasement
never pays with radical Islamists.
Radical Islam is like a cancer which
has to be rooted out before it
spreads widely. And so negotiation
with the terrorists should never be
an option. What the Government
should do in the short term is to
announce an amnesty for terrorists,
who are willing to drop their arms,
renounce radicalism and come in
from the cold. After extensive
debriefing including gathering of
intelligence about unrepentant
terrorists, such reformed terrorists
should be retrained and
rehabilitated while still being
monitored. Unrepentant terrorists
should be hunted down and brought
to justice.
Our security forces have to be
revamped and retrained in modern
counter insurgency methods,
including containment of urban
terrorism, intelligence gathering and
evaluation, bomb detection and
bomb disposal methods etc.
Indiscriminate killings by the
security forces should be very
strictly discouraged with offenders
among the security forces brought
to book. It is better for one terrorist
to escape than for a single innocent
blood to be shed by our security
forces. Terrorist infiltration into the
security services should be treated
as high treason and those involved
made to pay the consequences to
the letter.
The greatest weapon terrorists have
is that of surprise. They enjoy the
liberty of choice over the place, time
and type of terrorist activity to
unleash on captive vicinities. The
most effective way to confront them
is to use their own methods upon
them. Our anti-terrorist forces
should adopt and enforce
unannounced ‘lockdowns’ of
randomly selected, designated
neighborhoods in terrorist infested
areas. During such lockdowns, every
square inch of the specified area
should be searched and every
person found therein should be
interrogated as to their mission.
It has been suggested by some, that
the major recruiting catchment for
radical Islamists are the so called
‘almajiri’ street boys. According to
this school of thought, graduates of
the almajiri system constitute the
bulk of the foot soldiers of Islamic
terrorism in Nigeria. The almajiri
network is being fingered as the
nursery or ‘killergarten’ of radical
Islam. It is uncertain how true this
assertion is but whatever may be
the reality, the governments of the
Federation should take more than a
passing interest in the almajiri
phenomenon. As a long term
panacea, the Federal and State
governments, corruption permitting,
should invest in the vocational
education of the street boys in order
to make them self-reliant and self-
sustaining.
In the wake of the Boko Haram
terrorist attacks, many southern
Christians and southern Muslims
resident in the North have run back
to their ancestral regions. Spare a
thought for indigenous northern
Christians. With nowhere to run to,
they remain perched in their
ancestral homes in the North
waiting like sitting ducks to be
plucked by the terrorists.
While today the terrorists have
northern Christians in their sights,
northern moderate Muslims are well
advised to be wary of the existential
threat posed to them too by Islamic
terrorism. For if they fail to join
hands with the rest of us their
compatriots in confronting these
monsters, perhaps in a few months’
or years’ time they too could find
themselves in the cross-hairs of this
creeping terrorism.
Then they would lament like the
Europeans did about Hitler that
‘First they came for the Igbos, we
did nothing. Then they came for
southern Christians, we did nothing.
Next they came for southern
Muslims, we did nothing. Then they
came for Northern Christians, we did
nothing. Until finally they have come
for us northern moderate Muslims,
and there is no body left to save
us’.

May God bless Nigeria