by Ijeoma Nwogwugwu

Ever since the United States listed 14 countries, including Nigeria, which it perceives as either “sponsors of terrorism” or “countries of interest”, a lot has been said and written locally and overseas in reaction to the development. Of particular interest are those reactions from the Nigerian citizenry and officials in government. The general consensus was that the US acted out of political expediency by hastily including Nigeria on a watch list that would subject its citizens to profiling and intensive security screening each time they travel to the US and possibly other parts of the world.

For many of these commentators, one isolated incident involving the alleged botched attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up an American airplane on Christmas day was insufficient to have warranted Nigeria’s inclusion on the list. Attempts have further been made to show that the young Farouk is not a made in Nigeria product and was radicalized in the United Kingdom where he mingled with radical elements in mosques and other similar associations where they met. The most curious arguments put up in defense of Nigeria are that Nigerians by their very nature are not “suicidal” and are happy-go-lucky people with an innate love for life and living.

I am inclined to disagree with this line of argument for a number of reasons. First, it would be rather simplistic to think that the US government included Nigeria on a sub-list of “countries of interest” just because Farouk Abdulmutallab was misguided into attempting to blow up the Detroit-bound Delta Airline plane. This country has a history of sectarian violence linked to religious tensions and resentment which the state has not been able to contain for decades. Indeed, more Nigerians have been maimed and killed in religious-related clashes in northern Nigeria than in all of the countries along the West African coast with an equal representation of Muslims and Christians dispersed between the south and the north of those countries put together.

Starting from the Maitatsine riots in the 1980s when members of that sect led by one Muhammadu Marwa shot their way to notoriety, killed thousands and proclaimed their brand of Islam to be superior to every other one, including Christianity, to the Boko Haram crisis last year, the Nigerian state has never been able to curb the mounting threat of sectarian violence in our midst. Yet, aside from the extra-judicial killing of Mohammed Yusuf and his cohorts a few months ago, none of the religious zealots who preach hate and jihaddism against the “infidels” has been arrested and tried by the state for their involvement in the riots. Instead, the norm has been to set up dozens of commission of inquiries after which no action is ever taken even when some of the people behind the clashes were known.

Even after the 9/11 attack on American soil, a few misguided young Muslims poured out into the streets celebrating the destruction of the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and the plane that went down in northern Pennsylvania. To add salt and pepper to the wound, shortly after the attack, more than a few families named their new born sons, Osama, signifying their endorsement of the mastermind behind the plot to extinguish the “Great Satan” as the US is known by such extremists.

As recently as 2006, religious clashes were also triggered after a group of Muslims converged in Maiduguri to protest the drawing of an offensive cartoon by a Danish newspaper. According to Newswatch magazine which in October 2009 chronicled the history of sectarian violence in the country, that incident led to the destruction of property belonging to non-Muslims, and the attack and death of more than 50 Christians including Michael Gajere, who was identified as the Catholic priest in charge of St. Rita’s Catholic Church. The Maiduguri incident led to reprisal attacks in Onitsha by Igbos. Incensed by the sight of their kith and kin that were brought home for burial, some Igbos went in search of Muslims in the commercial town, and ended up killing more than 30 of them.

Realistically, listing all the cases of religious-related clashes would require more space than this page would permit. But the point being made is that Nigeria in the last three decades has shown more than a passing inclination for religious extremism, and by extension is the prefect breeding ground for elements willing to sacrifice their lives to further their cause. That in my estimation is not a good portrayal of happy-go-lucky people. Rather, it is one that portrays intolerance and a propensity for violence in the name of God.

Besides, it would be erroneous not to classify the trigger for most of the clashes linked to religion in the north, as acts of terror. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines the word terror as “extreme fear” while to instill terror is “the use of extreme fear to intimidate people, especially for political reasons”.

Terrorism, on the other hand, is defined as the “use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims”, while the verb to terrorize means to “create and maintain a state of extreme fear and distress in (someone)”. Going by these very basic definitions, I do not see how the sustained acts of religious violence in northern Nigeria over the last three decades do not constitute acts of terror. Terrorism is not merely limited to the bombing of US targets and like interests. It is the act of instilling extreme fear through violent means and through whatever form, including the use of machetes, swords, horsewhips, sticks and stones that can inflict grievous harm.

When an overzealous man or groups of people rise up in arms against their fellow human beings and decide to kill them for the simple reason that they have divergent religious beliefs, that constitutes an act of terrorism. It is an incontrovertible fact that thousands of non-Muslims from the south have been forced to flee the north for fear of being killed. They were terrorized into relocating to their homes and communities in the south. The same is applicable to the kidnappings of oil workers and innocent citizens in the Niger Delta as well as the destruction and bombing of oil facilities. No matter how justified or aggrieved the perpetrators of such dastardly acts feel, they are nothing more than terrorists trying to instill extreme fear for political capital. Extremism in all its forms can never be justified in a plural state, particularly in a government that talks about law and order.

Moreover, we would be making a big mistake if we think that Al Qaeda has not possibly established a foothold in the Nigeria. Since 9/11, Al Qaeda has grown into an amorphous organisation with franchises all over the Middle East, and certain parts of Asia and Africa. Today, Al Qaeda has simply become an “idea” that binds Islamic extremists who believe in the same cause and press home their message by replicating acts of terror on America, western interests and their allies. The recurring philosophy among its adherents is “the enemy of my friend is my enemy”. It is for these reason experts on terror and the spread of Islamic extremism all acknowledge that the Al Qaeda band of terrorists started and led by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan has no relationship with Al Qaeda in the Middle East, Al Qaeda in Somalia or Al Qaeda in Indonesia.

If we must be honest with ourselves, Nigeria is only a secular state in name. For all intents and purpose, it should be renamed the “Chrislamic Republic of Nigeria”. Religious extremism is as pervasive in the south as it is in the northern part of the country. Nigerian Christians do not have to wait for a replay of the Branch Davidian Christian religious sect that barricade itself in a ranch in Waco, Texas for 51 days until it was raided by the FBI and resulted in the death of 54 adults and 21 children, before realising they are heading along the same extremist path.

As a people, we have lost all sense of rational thought and logic, and attribute everything to a higher being. The most embarrassing aspect of our over-religiosity has been made more glaring in recent weeks by our refusal to invoke the 1999 Constitution, preferring instead to pray for an incapacitated president whom we don’t even know if he’s alive or dead. My common refrain to this sickening prevarication is “what’s God got to do with it?”

In my candid opinion, that we have been listed by the US as a country of interest should be a wake up call for all of us. We would be running away from the truth by pointing at the United Kingdom and other countries whose citizens have been caught in the past for terrorist acts. We forget that America and the UK have sustained a “special relationship” across the Atlantic that is centuries old. America sees the UK as its foremost ally in Europe and would therefore never do anything to jeopardize that bond, certainly not because of a Richard Reid, the British shoe bomber. Even where religious elements begin to grow and fester in those countries, they clamp down on them decisively and deport foreigners back to their countries of origin. They most certainly do not pander to meaningless sentiments like we do in Nigeria.

Instead of burying our heads in the sand, we should see our listing as an opportunity for the Nigerian state to uphold its secular constitution as supreme and take decisive security measures to discourage and contain extremism, be it Christian or Muslim.

by Okey Ndibe

Nigerians received a bizarre Christmas gift Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, a 23-year old man from a privileged background, tried to pull off what could have been the bloodiest suicide bombing in the US since September 11, 2001. Umar Mutallab had planned to detonate explosives strapped to his body in order to bring down Northwest Airline Flight 253 as the jet neared its destination in Detroit, Michigan.

Had his gory plan succeeded, Umar – an engineering student at the University of London and son of Umaru Abdul Mutallab, the just-retired chairman of First Bank of Nigeria – would have unleashed mayhem and terror not only on Americans but the world as a whole. Thanks to vigilant passengers who wasted no time in pouncing on him the moment they heard popping sounds, this bone-chilling disaster was averted.

Even so, this sickening plot by a sick child of privilege has become an instant disaster for Nigerians everywhere, but especially those who live or frequently travel abroad. ??Fair or not (and there’s a lot of argument to be made on both sides), Nigeria is portrayed in the foreign media as one of the great centers of corruption and scams. Despite a well-established history of religious fanaticism that spills out, intermittently, into orgies of killing in Allah’s name, Nigeria somehow managed to escape being baptized a haven of religion-induced terrorism. ??Until, that is, last Friday when Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab imprinted the name of Nigeria on the global consciousness as an address where terrorists teem. Through his depraved bombing plot, this young man has smudged the image of millions of tolerant Nigerian Muslims in the eyes of the world. In fact, he’s given all Nigerians a notoriety they can ill afford. ??Nigerians who travel, or live abroad – especially in Europe, Asia and North America – will bear the brunt of this dangerous new perception. In a post 9/11 world where the lines between vigilance and hysteria are often blurred, to be identified as sharing citizenship with a young man who tried to incinerate a plane mid-air can mean great ordeal.

Throughout last week, I received calls from Nigerians living in the US, the UK, or Europe. In each caller’s tone was a touch of dread. Some wondered what Abdul Mutallab’s crazed design meant for the future of Nigeria, a country already prostrate. Others were more concerned about how the aborted drama of a bloody bombing would reshape their lives. ??One friend, a professor at a top American university, told me about the traveling trials of a colleague of his, a professor of Sudanese nationality. On numerous occasions, the Sudanese scholar has been taken off flights, or prevented from boarding one – all on account of the man’s “Islamic” name and the Sudan’s reputation as a grooming ground for al Qaeda terrorists. Another friend, a young executive at a major American financial services company, related the experience of a colleague of his, an Egyptian-American. He said that when he and his colleague traveled together, the Egyptian-American was frequently subjected to exacting, even intrusive, searches and exhaustive questioning.

Travelers who carry the Nigerian passport know that they can count on a certain level of scrutiny and hostility at foreign airports. Who needs the added aggravation of being regarded as a terrorist – until you prove otherwise?

In the 1990s, at the height of 419 scams and other forms of schemes targeted at banks and gullible individuals, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued alerts warning American financial institutions to be wary of hiring Nigerians. Such directives took a toll on the career aspirations of many highly qualified Nigerian professionals in the US who were turned back from jobs the moment their passport gave them away. Many Nigerians who were working for financial corporations were subjected to surveillance that presumed them to be criminals – or, at least, crime-minded.

All that travail would pale to insignificance compared to the price Nigerians resident abroad stand to pay if – God forbid – the impression takes root that their country is a fertile soil for rabid zealots willing to inflict mass-murder and other forms of mayhem on “infidels.”

How exactly did we get here?

One answer, of course, is that al Qaeda is a global scourge, with cells embedded not only in Islamic nations but also in such liberal democracies as Britain, Denmark, Canada and the United States of America. In that sense, then, there’s nothing really extraordinary that a Nigerian had stepped up to play his hideous part in a tragic plot.

But there’s also a sense in which Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab’s emergence is the culmination of years of official nonchalance towards the phenomenon of domestic religious violence. Tens of thousands of Nigerians have perished in outbreaks of sectarian violence often instigated by members of some fringe Islamic group or another. It’s depraved, but not altogether unexpected, that zealots would from sometimes arise in a frenzied spree, fueled by a hunger to massacre non-believers in the name of their deity.

But what’s even weirder is that the government – whose primary mandate ought to be the protection of lives and property – habitually indulges the slaughterers. On numerous occasions, the Nigerian police and army elected to snore away as fiends killed and destroyed in the name of “God.” Few, if any, of those murderers were ever prosecuted, much convicted.

The Nigerian state, in permitting sanctimonious fanatics to get away with their cruel sport, helped create Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab. In the end, the difference between domestic religious terrorism and its exportation is only a plane trip away.

Dora Akunyili, Umaru Yar’Adua’s “rebrand” guru, once disparaged Nigerians resident abroad for tarring their country’s image through excessive criticism. Akunyili should know better, but those were the early days of her commission – and she was, it seemed, desperate to convince her paymasters that she was equal to the magic, not of clearing out shit, but applying deodorant on it.

Akunyili’s barbs at foreign-based Nigerians sought to create a false dichotomy. She implied that some Nigerians – the homebound ones – view their country more positively than the disconnected “exiles.” The truth, and she knows it, is that there are indeed two groups of Nigerians, but not along the lines she suggested. There are those – the vast majority – who are dismayed by their country’s missed opportunities and derailed promises. And then, there are others – a tiny group – who profess to love Nigeria exactly the way it is.

Whether one is located abroad or at home has nothing to do with one’s response to Nigeria. Interest is everything. Nigerians are like people everywhere else: they want a decent country where they can live as humans, secure in their lives and property. But there are the few, leeches and parasites whose appetites are as huge as their minds and consciences are miniscule, who take callous pleasure in a dysfunctional Nigeria. For them, dysfunction is a necessary condition for the kind of primitive accumulation in which they thrive.

Once the majority awakes to the fact of its numerical superiority – and, from the way things are shaping up in the country, that’s bound to happen sooner than later – then they will stand up and reclaim their country from the calloused hands of the few manufacturers of misery and death in our midst. That’s one way to ensure that the Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab and his ilk don’t define the rest of us.

By Reuben Abati

Once upon a time in this country, it was fashionable to consider certain things impossible, indeed un-Nigerian. Before the 1960s, many Nigerians considered military intervention in Nigerian politics impossible. Even when the first military coup in Africa occurred: not here, was the refrain on the lips of Nigerians. But then it happened. In the 70s, many Nigerians also never imagined a day when many Nigerians would eat crumbs from dustbins as a result of poverty. It also happened. There is a long list of “would never happen-s” which have since become elements of rude awakening in the Nigerian experience. I concluded long ago that Nigerians are capable of anything. Nothing in this country shocks me anymore.

Up until recently, I kept only one line of faith open: I could still argue that Nigerians are not likely to engage in suicide bombing no matter how fanatical they may be about any cause. Even when reports made it clear that a group of Al Qaeda fanatics had set up cells in parts of the North, I still held on to that last shred of faith in the Nigerian. Why? Nigerians I would argue love life so much that they would cling to it; their own lives that is, not the lives of others. They could kill and destroy, but that average Nigerian would like to preserve himself. We are the happiest people on earth, not so? And didn’t one dictionary describe a major segment of our population, the Yoruba as “the fun-loving people of South West Nigeria”. Well, even that my resilient line of thought now appears wishful. Boko Haram has shown us that many are willing to die for stupid causes. The latest incident involving the 23-year old Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab has further proven the point that everything is possible in a country and among a people who lost their moral compass.

Abdul Mutallab is a most unlikely terrorist or suicide bomber. He is said to be a student of Engineering at the University College , London and the son of a well-known and well-heeled father. What could have driven him to such extremes, that he would attempt to bomb a Detroit-bound aircraft with 278 persons on board? And he is a Nigerian! He is young, privileged: the kind of silver spoon kid that everyone would imagine was being groomed to inherit a part of the earth. What could have happened to such a young man that he would think he is better off serving the Al Qaeda? He reportedly got the chemical substance that he wanted to detonate from Yemen , and as other passengers overpowered him, they said he kept screaming about the situation in Afghanistan . How is that his problem? Everyone on that flight must be heaving a sigh of relief that the Nigerian-born would-be bomber failed in his mission and that he ended up with burned legs, and the prospect of spending the rest of his life behind bars.

It is not a good story for Nigeria . The would-be bomber’s association with Nigeria further casts a slur on the country’s image. It took only a few Nigerians being arrested for drug trafficking before we all became drug couriers in the eyes of immigration officials in the West. A few Nigerians added a new dimension to con-art, and the world slapped all Nigerians with the label of 419, as if we invented the confidence trick. When next a Nigerian shows up at any airport anywhere in the world, he is likely to be scrutinised henceforth as if he were an agent of the Al Qaeda. Don’t be surprised if in the next few days, the Western media jumps to the conclusion that Nigeria is a major recruitment ground for terrorists, requiring every Nigerian to be treated with suspicion. Our case will not be helped by the acts of terror in the Niger Delta nor would it be helped in any way by the news that barely a week before the Mutallab incident, a local would-be bomber had tried to deliver a bomb parcel at the offices of Super Screen Television in Lagos . Professor Dora Akunyili must be biting her fingers. At a time when she is trying to rebrand the country positively, one Abdul Mutallab has just made global nonsense of all the seminars, all the appeals, all the campaigns, all the slogans, and all her passion about rebranding Nigerian. What is that slogan again? Good people, great country? Mr Mutallab and his failed bomb would not qualify as a good advertisement.

The Nigerian Minister of Aviation, Babatunde Omotoba must also be having sleepless moments. The would-be bomber reportedly started his journey from Nigeria . It doesn’t matter that he was not detected at the Amsterdam Airport and that nobody suspected him while he was airborne in the Western airspace: more questions are likely to be raised about all flights emanating from Nigeria . For, at the heart of the Abdul Mutallab incident is both home and international security. We need not quibble over the Nigerian side of it: security at Nigerian airports is lax. Oftentimes the screening machines do not work. Airport security would go through your luggage with their dirty hands. Many of them don’t even bother to wear gloves. I saw one guy inspecting one passenger’s (I guess dirty) underwear, and then he was to go through my own bag, I quickly moved to another security personnel. Instead of using metal detectors, on many occasions, the officials frisk you with bare hands, pressing your pockets, with some of the mischievous ones trying to touch what they should not. An allegedly privileged child like Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab may not even need to go through security screening. Big men and their wives and children are often piloted through security; they could go straight to the tarmac to board the aircraft, depending on the scope of their influence. With the power of cash, anything can be taken onto an aircraft in Nigeria .

The story is also not good for Islam. The would-be bomber being a Muslim further strengthens a growing suspicion and stereotype, and an established profile of the terrorist in the mind of the West: the terrorist as Al-Qaeda, the terrorist as Muslim. With this incident also coming shortly after the Boko Haram mass murder in Northern Nigeria, it is difficult to blame those who are insisting that Nigerian faces a dangerous threat from Islamic fundamentalism. But our problem is not with Islam, but with bigotry, and demagoguery, and the colour of bigotry is not Islamic, there are Christian bigots just as there are extremists among adherents of traditional African religion. In 1993, some young Nigerians had hijacked an aircraft, they took it to Niger where they were arrested and subsequently tried and jailed. They were defending the June 12 Presidential election and they were not all Muslims. We must be cautious for there are commentators who are already rushing to judgement against Islamic Nigeria. Nor should this become an occasion for Hausa/Fulani bashing. When Nigerians reduce everything so conveniently to an expression of ethnic contempt, they gloss over the facts of a case. Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab was certainly not acting on behalf of the Islamic North of Nigeria. He is most likely either sick or a product of failed parenting, or simply tragically impressionable.

By African standards, this must be a great tragedy for his parents and other members of his family. The Devil has used their family to discredit the whole of Nigeria and bring shame upon the land. Would they disown him and claim that he is not a member of their family, not even a Nigerian? Most parents would give anything to have their children go to school in England . Children are expected to do well and bring joy to their parents. That is the African way. But to have a child from a well-known family end up as a terrorist is quite revealing. If he had succeeded, I doubt if his parents would feel that he would be on his way to Heaven surrounded by seven virgins as the myth says! Now we know: it is not only the children of the poor who engage in criminal activities; the rich also cry; and in this regard, poverty does not always explain deviant social conduct.

The incident reminds America again of how much it is hated by bigots and fanatics around the world and how vulnerable it is. We live in the American century, but with the enemies of America recruiting agents from all over the world, and the most unlikely places, shows how dangerous the American century is. World peace is threatened. Hate is the dominant spirit of the age. The shape of war has changed: it is no longer on the battlefield; it could arrive in the shape of a pillow, a syringe and a pack of powder and liquid that is designed to kill 278 persons if it works. Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab could have succeeded. He was inside the aircraft; the flight was on its way, effectively inside American territory. Either a fortunate stroke of serendipity or amateurishness foiled the plan. But there is something in all of this about the vigilance of the American intelligence system. They knew about Mutallab, the terrorist. He had been on their watch-list although they didn’t consider him high-risk. Could they have followed him to and from Nigeria ? Even if he escaped the security system in Nigeria (trying to be charitable here), and the more efficient system at Amsterdam Schipol, was he possibly walking into a prepared net? The agility with which someone sitting close by jumped over other passengers and wrestled him to the ground was more than coincidental. Who was the expert Good Samaritan? “They took him out and it was really quick”. A CIA officer on duty? Within an hour, the White House had been informed and a statement was issued with President Obama’s authority; who is also personally monitoring the investigations. There are other angles to this story that are not yet in the public domain.

The Nigerian government has acted properly by issuing a statement. The Ministry of Information and Communications has said that the “Federal Government of Nigeria received with dismay the news of an attempted terrorist attack on a US airline. We state very clearly that as a nation, we abhor all forms of terrorism. The Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria , Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan has directed Nigerian security agencies to commence full investigation of the incident. While steps are being taken to verify the identity of the alleged suspect and his motives, our security agencies will cooperate fully with the American authorities in the on-going investigations. Nigerian government will be providing updates as more information becomes available.”

To keep quiet would mean that the Nigerian government does not really care if the Mutallab incident turns all of us into potential terrorists in the eyes of the world. But the statement does not go far enough. It should include a direct condemnation of the would-be bomber and a declaration that Nigerians are peace-loving people. The Nigerian Government must take a keen interest in the details of the investigations at the American end, and also conduct its own investigations as promised. President Barack Obama snubbed Nigeria during his maiden visit to Africa as American President. Mrs Hillary Clinton later visited only to abuse Nigerian leaders. The other day, she classified Nigeria along with Cuba as a country that is able and capable but unwilling to make progress. What other things do the Americans know about us that are not yet public knowledge?

Mutallab, a former Federal Minister and bank chief, and father of the terrorist with Yemeni connections, has been quoted as saying that Mutallab, the son, is a problem child and that months ago, he had reported him to the US authorities. He is also said to be in Abuja assisting the Nigerian security agencies. Mutallab, the father, deserves our sympathies. This is at a private level, the story of his own failure and a lesson to all parents.