For many years since the rise of culturally motivated banditry and Islamist inspired terrorism in northern Nigeria, the region and its elite have blamed everything and everyone but the main culprits for the widespread insecurity ravaging the country. When it was no longer a problem Goodluck Jonathan’s “cluelessness” it became an issue “climate change, poverty and illiteracy” under the northern presidency of Muhammadu Buhari, just as it has been politicised in President Tinubu’s Nigeria to be a ‘weak and uncaring of the north” government. And whenever government proposes a hard military approach towards tackling the menace of insecurity, the religious, political and technocratic establishment of the north speaking through a man known as Sheikh Abubakar Mahmud Gumi, will urge for restraint and instead ask government to negotiate with bandits terrorising the people of the region.
In fact leading lights of the north including late President Muhammadu Buhari, prominent Islamic cleric, Sheikh Gumi, former minister and Arewa Consultative Forum Chieftain, Bashir Dalhatu, former executive secretary of NHIS, Professor Usman Yusuf amongst many others have called on the federal government to grant amnesty to terrorists operating in the region as was the case with Niger Delta militants under the administration of President Umar Musa Yar’Adua. And when Muhammadu Buhari, one of the region’s was beloved politicians emerged as President of Nigeria in 2015, hush and mum over escalating violence arising from banditry was urged in order to protect the image of one of “our own” in power. So, for many years, states like Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto, Kaduna, Kebbi and most parts of the North West were devastated by mass killings, abductions, kidnappings for ransom and highway robbery without the outside world knowing much of the orgy of violence as the people were urged to suffer in silence in order to protect the image of President Buhari.
To make matters worse, anybody or group that decided to speak out and call for government action to protect the lives and properties of the region, were usually viciously attacked, defamed, ostracised and hated intensely by a horde of “Buharideens” in a manner that portrays them as worse than infidels, with their Muslim and Arewa bonafides called to question. A prominent example of this intense persecution of those who were trying to save the people of the region from themselves, was when Sheikh Muhammad Nuru Khalid, the Imam of Apo legislative quarters Jummat mosque in Abuja was sacked from his position by being too vocal in exposing the insecurity in the Muslim north of Nigeria and his persistent call on President Buhari to act.
Interestingly, the chairman of the mosque committee that pronounced his sacking was Senator Saidu Dansadau, from Zamfara state, the headquarters of banditry in northern Nigeria, where his Dansadau village had all but been wiped out of existence by bandits. Consequently, due to a combination of untamed Islamism, pacifism and identity political correctness, Arewa was positioned on the road to Afghanistan, where numerous jihadi terror groups such Lakurawa, Mamuda, Ansaru and others have turned the region into their playground Islamist terrorism.
Apparently hamstrung by the pacifist sentiment in the region, President Tinubu, a politician with his eyes set on his re-election may have decided to play along by adopting the so-called non kinetic approach to insecurity in order not to hurt the sensibilities of the leadership establishment of the region. In the three years since he has been president, a number of kidnapping incidents involving mass abduction of school children in Niger, Kaduna and Kebbi states had the abductees released through negotiations under the guise of “non kinetic” approach to tackling insecurity. And this had drawn criticisms against the Tinubu administration from many Nigerians including me. But unbeknownst to me and many other Nigerians, this pacifist approach is as far as Arewa home grown terrorists restrict their terror franchise at home, as the first major attempt to extend their jihadi terror activities from Arewanistan to Yoruba land met a different Ahmed Bola Tinubu, the President and Commander in Chief of Nigeria’s armed forces.
The first signal that Yorubaland is not Arewa is the fact that when Jihadi terrorists made a land fall in Oriire community of Oyo state, where multiple school locations were attacked and children along with their teachers abducted by elements of the Ansaru, an al-Qaeda affiliate, people of rose up in a united voice and demanded for action from their son, President Tinubu. In fact, massive protests were organised against their own in Aso rock calling on him to act decisively. I did not hear any Yoruba Muslim cleric advocating for “dialogue” or “negotiation” with the terrorists because they are “our brothers.” Not even our friend, Professor Ish’aq Akintola, the one man riot squad of MURIC. But in Arewa, were asked to pray for President Buhari and our Muslim clerics declared any form of protests against insecurity and bad governance “haram.” And when Afro Beat Icon and Nigerian from Yorubaland, David Adeleke aka Davido took his advocacy to the international arena during his world cup opening ceremony performance to press for the release of the abducted Oriire school children and their teachers, it Dauda Kahutu aka Rarara, a local Hausa singer from northern Nigeria who fiercely criticised him for “harming Nigeria’s reputation” on the global stage.
With the people of Yoruba land rising up in unison against terrorism and asking their son who is in power in Aso Rock to act decisively, it has become clear that indeed Yorubaland is not Arewanistan where terrorists and bandits are glamourised and treated like rock stars. Buoyed by progressive and sensible stand of Yoruba people in reaction to the Oriire abduction, President Tinubu launched an unprecedented, first of its kind and never seen before military operation that successfully secured the rescue of the Oriire abductees, with surgical precision. For the first since the civil war, we saw the full might of the Nigerian state deployed heavily with resounding success against terrorists. In the case of the Oriire incident, the Tinubu government refused to negotiate and did not deploy the so-called non kinetic approach to secure their release. It was full blast kinetic.
After successfully, securing the rescue of the abductees and the neutralisation of the assailants, Nigeria’s security services arrested their collaborators across the country while charging two of their leaders in custody to court, where they speedily tried, found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. Apparently dissatisfied with this judgement, the SSS has appealed the judgement asking for death penalty for the leaders of the terror group. This clearly shows that if government is willing to work it can work. A major cog in the wheel of security of lives and properties in northern Nigeria has been making complex a simple of issue of culturally motivated Fulani banditry and religiously motivated jihadi terrorism, which is nothing but a violent manifestation of Islamism.
Today, Fulani banditry and violent jihadism that nurtured to monstrosity in Arewa now pose an existential threat to the Nigerian state. arising from wrong cultural and religious practices, northern region has set itself on a fire that is threatening to engulf the whole country, but with the Oriire rescue and the imminent establishment of state police, it should be clear to the north and its leaders that the rest of Nigeria may no longer be willing to endure the collective incineration from their religious and cultural self immolation.
Majeed Dahiru, a public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja and can be reached through [email protected].
