In the final analysis, Nigeria has no Data base on Terrorism that is credible and dependable. For a country that cannot count itself, no reliance can be placed on facts and figures produced by any state department because it may be influenced by other considerations, including perhaps, the amplification of fear to generate better needless federal funding.                      The federal government war on terror is going awry. It has sent out the signal that it can’t defend itself as it is prepared to negotiate with terrorists contrary to standard protocols and findings on the subject of non negotiation. Nigeria remains a black spot on the troubled conscience of the world where Children are murdered for going to school.

There are indications that appeasements, and financial rewards given to terrorists are not duly accounted for but fraudulently appropriated by security agents and government officials The Success of some ethnic groups in this uncensored application of violence has sent the signal to the South East whose stringed leadership have woken to the reality of perpetual enslavement and marginalization by the political protocols set in place since the end of the Biafra-Nigeria civil war that has been designed to keep them in undeveloped and  disadvantaged  Zones which leaves them with no other option but to migrate to other zones to set up their businesses and domicile, where they have been targeted and are the victims of reoccurring slaughter.

The successive government of Nigeria is to blame for the upsurge of terrorism because successive administration lacked the moral legitimacy to govern because of generalized corruption and insecurity.

Nevertheless, the governments of Nigeria, seemly, has continued to promote and encourage a policy of genocide against ndigbo whose leadership remain in disarray,     self serving, and  blind with eclipsed relevance to the Nigerian political equations.

The Igbo leadership has failed to draw the attention of the international community to these crimes against humanity aimed at silencing their political development whilst some of their  people have been killed and  buried illegally in mass graves by state governments and federal authorities in breach of domestic and international laws, without autopsies or criminal inquiries in various locations in Northern Nigeria under the guise of religious upheavals but they remain rather satisfied with group aggrandizement.

 

RELIGIOUS CONSEQUENCES OF TERRORISM.

Terrorism has largely contributed to the large scale destruction of religious capital, by that I mean human lives and properties belonging to mostly Christians. Christians have been repeatedly killed in their places of worship, on the streets of Nigeria, in their workplaces, including Children and women from the broad spectrum of our ethnic divides.

Terrorism has created shadows of fear, despair, frustrations, and vales of tears in Nigeria. The Christian has been hunted, killed, maimed, and brutalized with impunity in Nigeria. In one of the media reports, infants, babies, women and children who took shelter in a building in Plateau State where pursued, surrounded and the building burnt down and none allowed escaping.

The religious freedom of Christians has been greatly inhibited by terrorism. The Bombing of Catholics in Niger state in their place of worship on Christmas day who became known as the The Christmas martyrs of madalla barely, after a religious worship at a catholic church in Madalla, Suleja, by members of the Islamic sect known as Boko Haram who struck by attacking the Church and its worshippers with vehicles rigged with explosives.

The attack led to the death instantly of about 20 worshippers with hundreds wounded and properties, mostly cars destroyed. Inspite of this singular act of terror against Christians in Nigeria the church has remained calm and forgiving although the Northern Part of the Country can never be the same again in the landscape of mutual mistrust and enmity.

It must also be noted that he development of Islam and the safety of Muslims has been constrained remarkably by Acts of Counter Terrorism. Many Moslems have been killed in many parts of the Country in reprisal attacks with their properties destroyed.

The development of Islam in Southern Nigeria has been severely contained and made unattractive because of the growing anger against Muslims.

On the other hand, many Igbo in search of employment in the federal and state Civil service have   changed their religion as Christians to embrace Islam so as to secure Jobs which otherwise would have been denied to them. More than a few are members of Boko Haram.

Nonetheless, the Igbo have remained the largest casualty of Boko Haram and religious unrests in Nigeria. They are specially targeted and killed and their shops and homes looted. The numbers does not exclude women and children and yet their leadership has remained unimaginative, corrupt, cowed and stringed.

Although many of the crimes against the Igbo are religiously and politically motivated leading to pogroms with the perpetrators known, the leadership of the people has never united in purpose to establish these crimes as crimes against humanity and prosecute their offenders because of individualized greed and selfishness.

Even when there has been open acknowledgement of such crimes to the media including such matters as the killing of Ironsi which led to the Organized and generalized pogroms against the Igbo, and the federal policy of starvation of 3 million Biafra people mostly women and children and non combatants. These are crimes against humanity, religiously and politically motivated against the Christian Igbo.

The amplification of terrorism in our polity creates anger, bitterness and divisiveness and shares no structural values with the provisions of section 38 of the 1999 constitution which provides as follows:

(1)  Every person shall be entitled to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including freedom to change his religion, or belief and freedom (either alone or in community with others, and in public or in private) to manifest and propagate his religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.

 

CONCLUSION.

The Climate of terror experienced in the religious upheavals and terrorism is symptomatic of our organic decay as a people within an impossible state which makes the Sovereign national conference inevitable and the necessity for better policy on religious issues more desirable.

Nevertheless, the Igbo demands from Nigeria remain incoherent, vague and uncondensed whilst the rest of Nigeria are prepared with their agenda.

In my address to the Ohanaeze ndigbo at Concorde Owerri before we proceeded to the government house to the launch of the C21 in 2011 by Owelle Okorocha, I had canvassed for the Igbo to insist on Enugu, the former capital of southern Nigeria to be made the permanent host of the National Assembly under the constitutional amendment as to facilitate the institutional relevance and development of the Igbo in Nigeria.

The Yoruba have Lagos, the North, Abuja: what do we have? Now I add the proposal that Port Harcourt be  declared and made the nations commercial capital under the proposed national conference, as the surest partway for the development of the Niger delta, a position which Lagos lost constitutionally when it ceased to be the nation’s capital and now left in vacuum.

Further more, the two main religious groups in Nigeria may always remain divided and distrustful of each other unless carefully, we seek common grounds for agreements rather than disintegration and fashion enabling constitutional laws and policies to ensure peaceful Coexistence.

I remain persuaded by the visions of One Nigeria which can only be sustained by our common political honesty and spiritual circumcision. It should be a policy of Nigeria to discourage religious crisis that undermines political and religious liberties. Otherwise, mere rhetoric cannot suffice, as in urging the Cat and Mouse to be good friends.

 

Comments

comments