Prelude To Baga Genocide, The Subsequent Silence And The Cover-up

“I will not tolerate the killing of a
single soldier again”~ President
Goodluck Jonathan.
The above is a summary of threat
issued by President Jonathan during
his score-settling visit to Borno in
early March this year. The poorly and
hurriedly packed visit was a face-
saving one to counter the opposition
governors who were in Borno two
weeks earlier to empathize with the
people of the region over insecurity.
Jonathan as a president for almost
three years did not see it fit to pay a
visit until the governors visited. His
visitation to Borno because the
opposition governors did further
exposes the shallowness of the minds
at the helm of our fair. As unimportant
as the visit was, the aftermath of it is
the contents of this piece.
One of the aftermaths is the Baga
genocide perpetrated by the joint task
force (JTF) ostensibly put in that
region to provide security. Anyone who
describes what happened in Baga less
than being genocide is a criminal. The
JTF provides everything such as fear,
killings, arson, infanticide, intimidation
but security. One may want to ask how
the Jonathan’s visit was a precursor to
the genocide in Baga town of Borno.
The prelude to the Baga genocide is
this:
“I cannot preside over this country as
a president and security officers are
killed. These people leave their
families, stay on the road and the bush
so that we will sleep and I will not
want to hear that one of them is killed”
Jonathan said while visiting Maiduguri.
(Emphasis mine). The fact is that one
does not see what their staying on the
road has offered us except long traffic
jam, harassment, accident and even
death. With all the numerous check-
points set up by the JTF, ammunition
still escape their eyes into town to
cause havoc. Without JTF, people
sleep with more caution and are
relatively more secured.
The C-in-C further said, “So nobody
should make an analogy that one
soldier is killed. We have admonished
the soldiers not to kill innocent
civilians but we will not allow and I will
not celebrate the death of one security
officer anywhere in this country
whether it is in Bayelsa State whether
it is in Niger Delta, whether it is in
Anambra State, whether it is in the
South East, whether it is the South
West, whether it is in North West,
whether it is in North Central,
anywhere. We will not, and I repeat, we
will not accommodate it.” (All
emphasis mine).
Those are parts of the threats issued
by President Jonathan to the Borno
people. From the first line, the
president made it clear that we should
not expect his soldiers to kill only a
soul in retaliation for a soldier or
police killed. The life of a soldier or
policeman would cost us more, as we
have seen in the Baga annihilation.
The caveat that he had admonished
soldier not to kill innocent civilians
was a window-dressing. The
resolution of the president in dealing
with the crisis in Borno was bared out
from the first line of his words.
Instructively, just after the president’s
visit, the spate of extrajudicial killing of
innocent souls by JTF in the Borno-
Yobe axis rose that made the secretary
of the Borno Elders Forum, Dr. Bulama
Gubio to cry out that Jonathan’s visit
only worsened insecurity.
Jonathan is the accidental
Commander-in-Chief of the armed
force of a geographical expression
which calls itself the Federal Republic
of Nigeria. As a commander of an
army, his threat is a sort of command
to his field soldiers. Anyone who reads
between lines and can properly
connects dots should see a correlation
between ‘I will not tolerate the death of
a single soldier again’ by President
Jonathan, the death of a single soldier
in the hand of Boko Haram and the
subsequent Baga mass killing. The
analysis to the threat issued by the
president to Borno elders is that you
will see what visits you if you dare kill
a soldier again. It came to pass that a
soldier was killed and Baga was no
more. It is the analogy of a witch who
promised to kill a pregnant woman the
previous night and the next morning a
pregnant woman was dead. Make your
conclusion.
However, the president was once again
selective in carrying out his threat.
Thirteen policemen were killed in
Bayelsa state before the death of a
soldier in Baga, but as you read this
piece soldiers have not moved in to
Bayelsa state to annihilate it.
The silence from the presidency for
forty-eight hours after the Baga
genocide added weight to thought that
the JTF were doing the command of
the president. And when the president
decided to speak, he said the figures
were ‘exaggerated’. It is rather ironic
that a president who rushed to
condemn the killings of three people in
Boston did not see any reason to
censure mass killing in his own
territory. Even going by only-six-
civilians-were-killed nonsense from the
military should attract more criticism
from the president than the Boston
three. Six is still greater than three
regardless of quality.
The lies being spread by the military
propaganda machine led by Col. Sagir
Musa is anything but truth. Lately, the
Nigeria Military suddenly realized the
effect of the media in manipulating
information. Therefore, it put up a
media front to misinform public on JTF
atrocities against the Nigerian people.
Alas, it arrived the scene of
propaganda too late. With an access to
internet and a stroke of the keyboard
nowadays, one can reach a whole lot
of information.
There are now many unconventional
media through which people get to fact
of matters. While the military
propaganda machines continue to
change figures on the number of
people that died in the Baga massacre
and its sustenance by the silence of
the conventional media, the
unconventional media is awashed with
facts and figures. The large-scale
arson, infanticide, femicide and all the
extrajudicial killings committed by the
JTF in Baga are already documented
on google imagery.
As for our electronics and print media,
it is sad and appalling that they have
maintained a silence in the conspiracy
to bury the Baga genocide. All they are
reporting is superficial and it is more
of a story from JTF. None has done a
systematic investigation into the
matter to tell us what we already know.
Whatever the restriction imposed by
the JTF, foreign-based Al-jazeera
network has penetrated the besieged
town to report what the local media
has refused to do. Our media are
rather obsessed with the Jonathan-
Amaechi inordinate ambitious war,
Tukur-Governors drama or the
Jonathan-Obasanjo pretense. These
and communiqué issued by politicians
are more important to our media than
the lives of people in Yobe, Maiduguri
or elsewhere where people are killed
daily. It is the season of 2015, thus
any other matter is unimportant.
Killing, kidnapping and raping do not
worth investigation by our journalists
any longer.
That Al-Jazeera report further exposes
the bare-faced lies of the JTF as it was
directing the former where to focus its
camera lens. Even the Propagandist-
in-Chief, Col. Sagir Musa was not bold
enough to show his blood-stained face.
The report tells that the people of Baga
are still under the occupation of a
brutal army under the command of a
corrupt commander-in-crime.
Whatever conspiracy between the
triumvirate of a provincial presidency,
the horrendous JTF and the lazy media
to bury the atrocity in Baga, the
unconventional media has shown all
we ought to know. The divergent
misinformation being spun out by JTF,
the presidency and the defense
headquarter is only tenable if our
security has no history of arson and
deliberate mass killing.
In February 2008, a group of youth in
Ogaminana town in Kogi central was
peacefully protesting the neglect of
Itakpe Iron Ore and demanded to know
why the iron concentrates in their
domain are being ferried away to other
part of the country without
employment for them or royalty paid to
the community. The protesting youths
deflated the tyres of six trucks loaded
with iron concentrates on their way out
to Port Harcourt. Policemen were
deployed by the powerful individuals
involved in the plundering of the
people’s resources. In the
confrontation that ensued between the
youths and the police, one policeman
and a youth were killed. The mobile
police unit reinforced with the
policemen for a reprisal attack and
when they were done with their cruelty,
more than fifty innocent elderly men,
women and youths were dead. Sixty-
five houses and over one-hundred and
fifty shops were razed down by the
police. Just like what Col. Sagir Musa
is doing presently, the then police
commissioner, Ibe Aghanya justified
the savagery of the police by spinning
a story to demonize all the people of
Ogaminana community.
Recently in 2012 in same Kogi state, a
gun-fire exchange occurred between
armed robbers and the JTF along
Obehira-Lagos road. The JTF returned
with more men and heavy armoury
including a military helicopter to lay
siege on the town of Obehira. People
sleeping in their homes were dragged
from their beds, shot dead and labeled
Boko Haram.
Fact is that our security kills innocent
people to justify the heavy spending on
them. They never confront the real
terrorist. When the bellies of the top
military commanders of an army
suddenly begin to protrude, such an
army cannot do better than a vigilante
group in challenging terrorism. When
you can no longer say who is carrying
a pregnancy between an army officer
and his pregnant wife, pray that no
serious insurgency rise against such
an army. Such an army will only be at
best brutalizing its own people; such
an army prays that there is always
internal crisis that will increase
security vote.
While serving in the north western
state of Zamfara as youth corps
member, I noticed a particular house in
which various brands of cars were
packed and covered with tarpaulin.
When I inquired on the ownership of
the compound, it was owned by a
member of the task force then in the
restive Niger Delta. Another Brigadier
who was struggling to pay his children
school fees then was posted to the
restive region as a commander, by the
time he finished his tenure, he had
become a billionaire. Yes, a billionaire.
In nutshell, the inability of our security
to quell major security challenge is
deliberate. Insecurity is now a mean
for them for quick but bloody
enrichment.
But for how long will our security
continue to brutalize the same people
they are paid to protect? How long will
our military continue to enrich
themselves with blood money? When
would Nigeria have a government that
considers all part of the country as its
territory? When will this presidency
started to treat Borno and Yobe as not
an alien land? When will this
presidency threw away the ill advice
that the north east crisis was to spite
his presidency? When will our media
begin to give equal publication to issue
of human lives regardless of who killed
who? Who will heal the wound inflicted
by the JTF on the people of Baga? The
atrocity in Baga should not be allowed
to go unpunished. History should be
documenting all these atrocities so
that one day we would bring to
account all those that have perpetrated
crime against defenseless citizens
whether in Baga or elsewhere.

A.S.M Jimoh
On twitter @anehi2008