It is time for Buhari to declare these beasts as the terrorists that they are and deploy all available resources to fight them. There can be no ifs, no buts, no equivocation. Failure to do so will lead to more horror in the North West, and history won’t b
who remain in custody 33 gruelling days on; and the 121 of Bethel Baptist School student who have spent their 16th day in captivity today.
Where on earth, other than Buhari’s Nigeria, could this happen? Over 300 students spending weeks and weeks in the hands of some of the most horrific beasts on earth? The gang leader responsible for the abduction of the Birnin-Yauri children was recorded in a phone call threatening to marry off the girls and train and absorb the boys into his gang; there are reports that he has now started doing this. If the groups responsible for these atrocities are not terrorists, I don’t know who qualifies. In an astounding interview for Democracy Day last month, President Buhari said he was overwhelmed by the situation in the North West but that “we are treating them as criminals now”. Treating them like criminals now? What was he treating them as before? Innocent merchants? Well, the fact of the matter is that they are not mere criminals. They are terrorists.
To find the justification for this contention, you don’t need move further than Section 1 of the Terrorism (Prevention) Act 2011. The gist of subsection 2, a rather verbose provision, is that anyone who kills, kidnaps or destroys property in order to coerce or intimate government, international organisation or the public into doing or abstaining from something is a terrorist. One does not need to be a lawyer to see that the criminal gangs in the North West qualify to be terrorists under each and every one of the above accounts: they massacre, abduct and destroy to extort ransom, secure the release of their members or press for other demands. In recent evolution, they have stopped negotiating ransoms with parents, so that they could focus their demands on governments. In several of the recent mass kidnappings including of the 38 Afaka students and the Birnin-Yauri ones, the abductors insisted that they would only talk to the government, not parents.
To sum it all, the groups we call bandits have moved on from mimicking and aligning with Boko Haram into terrorism in their own right. This is true in law and common sense. So what is stopping the Buhari administration from declaring and treating them as terrorists? Instead, what we get from the government is ‘warning’ preceded by empty and hollow qualifiers as “severe”, “serious” or “last”. What kind of leader keeps advising repugnant criminals as they unleash terror?
If Nigeria can pursue and repatriate Nnamdi Kanu back home (an action I commend) why on earth is it impossible to bring gang leaders operating with utter impunity within our own territory to their knees and then to justice? If we can stop Sunday Igboho on his way to Germany and arrest him, why on earth are we unable to stop Gudda Turji, Sani Dangote, Dogo Gide and their like? After every mass kidnapping, the federal government uses a now-familiar line: that it won’t use force for the safety of the children, and then leave state governments to buy the abductees’ freedom. But what is stopping the federal government from using sufficient force after one set of children is freed before another is abducted?
A theory has been flying around that nepotism is the reason the presidency is treating the terrorists in the North West with kid gloves: that Buhari is simply playing soft because the culprits are fellow Fulanis. I have dismissed this theory in the past and I do so again now. But there is not even the weakest explanation for his reluctance to act. It is time for Buhari to declare these beasts as the terrorists that they are and deploy all available resources to fight them. There can be no ifs, no buts, no equivocation. Failure to do so will lead to more horror in the North West, and history won’t be so kind.