by Simon Kolawole

A young Nigerian boy, named Farouk, went to the UK to study engineering. The chap started attending mosques where radical preachers, rather than concentrate on propagating Islam and exhorting Muslims to love their neighbours, spend most of the time denouncing the West and the Great Satan (commonly known as the US). UK did nothing about the preachers of hate on its own soil. Subsequently, the young boy got radicalised and went into a mental state that alarmed his father. He quickly got in touch with American authorities to report his son. The US did nothing about it.

Then on Christmas day, the boy hid explosives in his underpants and tried in vain to blow up an American airliner. What happened next? The US blacklisted Nigeria as a “country of interest”. Pronto, Nigeria was classified alongside Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen as countries whose travellers will face “enhanced security screening”. In simple English, it means if you hold a Nigerian passport and you are travelling to the US, you will be singled out for humiliating checks. To even get the US visa will now be one difficult assignment – and you may no longer be given more than a single-entry or six-month visa.

Let’s face it: this is ridiculous. Plain ridiculous.

The Yoruba will say: “Kila gbe, kila ju?” What is the crime? What is the punishment? The punishment is far more than the “crime”. How can the action of one boy out of 140 million Nigerians become a yardstick to punish all of us? It is all the more ridiculous when you realise that the boy was obviously radicalised in the UK, not Nigeria. He received his suicide training in Yemen, not Nigeria. He received the explosive in Yemen, not Nigeria. The father reported him to US authorities. The boy was on the US watch list, yet he was not watched. He bought a ticket to Detriot. The US authorities cleared him to fly. So what’s Nigeria’s offence? It seems the US was just looking for the slightest excuse to pounce on us.

What exactly did we do wrong to deserve the victimisation? Let us examine a couple of hypotheses. The first says Nigeria was blacklisted because of Al-Qaeda activities in the country as evident in the religious riots in the North. Nigeria is seen as a breeding ground for fundamentalists and terrorists who could threaten American interest. The US, in trying to protect itself, had no other option than to blacklist Nigeria in the wake of the AbdulMutallab saga. Those who peddle this hypothesis include some top government officials. But I do not buy into this. There is yet no concrete evidence that Al-Qaeda has any cell in Nigeria – and, for goodness sake, AbdulMutallab was not radicalised here. He was made in the UK. So where do the dots connect?

We should not confuse religious conflicts with terrorism. Religious conflicts, like ethnic conflicts, have been with us for ages. I have heard people talk about Boko Haram as terrorism – but the best information we have on them so far is that they were religious zealots who were up in arms with politicians.

They may share similar beliefs with Al-Qaeda – particularly their anti-West message – but there is a thick line between what they stand for and what Al-Qaeda stands for. Terrorism, the only mode of operation of Al-Qaeda, is a systematic use of violence (such as bombing) to make a political statement, under a religious guise, against targeted interests. The victims are never carefully selected – so even Muslims could be victims, as we saw in the September 11 attacks and other cases around the world. In the Al-Qaeda thinking, even if the aircraft is filled with Muslims, as long as an American is killed, the operation is highly successful.

Now this is different from the religious conflicts that we experience in Nigeria. They are usually sparked off by an incident at a particular point in time, given that the atmosphere is permanently tense and polluted with hate, mistrust and resentment. Terrorism, by contrast, is a sustained, systematic campaign. Even if the US based its action against Nigeria on religious conflicts, how come India is not on the list? India experiences religious conflicts regularly. Egypt experiences conflicts between its minority Coptic Christians and the majority Muslim population all the time. Why is Egypt not on the list then? Those pointing fingers at Boko Haram are pointing in the wrong direction. There is more to the US action than Boko Haram.

Let’s even say US believes Nigeria harbours terrorists. So far, AbdulMutallab is the only Nigerian to have experimented with suicide bombing. Meanwhile, there are convicted terrorists who are American and British citizens. There are Al-Qaeda cells in the UK. The July 7, 2005 attacks on London underground trains were plotted on UK soil by UK citizens. They struck and killed and injured dozens of people. Why is the UK not a “country of interest”? Hamid Hyat, convicted of terrorism in 2007, is an American. Richard Reid, a British citizen, is serving a life sentence in the US for his failed shoe-bombing of December 2001. Terrorist attacks have taken place in Egypt, India, Indonesia and Spain, yet US has not classified these countries as “countries of interest”. So there is more to the US action than AbdulMutallab.

Let’s move on to the second hypothesis – what I call the “Yar’Adua Diplomatic Disease”. As THISDAY reported during the week, Nigeria’s foreign relations have weakened over the last three years. Generally speaking, Nigeria seems confused on its foreign policy – whether to be pro-West or pro-East. My advice is that we should weigh the pros and cons of whichever we want to choose, and then pursue it with commitment. We can’t sit on the fence. Sadly, we’re fast disappearing from the international scene.

For a country that has only oil to sell to the world, it is not in the country’s economic or political interest to make itself unimportant in the scheme of things. President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua has attended the UN General Assembly just once; the rest, he sent his foreign minister, not even the Vice-President, to attend. Automatically, we’re relegated. There are some levels that a foreign minister can never operate. That’s the truth.

Nigeria has not had an ambassador in the US for most of the 30 months of the Yar’Adua administration. The US government is expected to be dealing with a Charge d’Affairs. In international relations, I don’t know how politically wise this is. When the AbdulMutallab saga broke, there was no person on ground for US President Barack Obama to discuss with. Our president was somewhere in Saudi Arabia, incommunicado. Such high-level discussions are usually held at presidential level. If Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan had been constitutionally empowered to speak on behalf of Nigeria, Obama would have been able to discuss meaningfully with him.

What we needed was to make a case for ourselves. Ironically, we were waiting for the Americans to call us before putting them through to Yar’Adua – or whoever was going to impersonate him. With nobody to make a case for us, it was all too easy for the Americans to rush to blacklist us for an offence we did not commit, for an offence we were in no way culpable, for an offence that the US has at least 99 per cent of the blame. In fact, Obama has taken full responsibility for the failure of the American intelligence system. Yet Nigeria gets punished! Some dots are certainly not connecting there.

I conclude, therefore, that the AbdulMutallab-induced blacklisting is nothing but a decoy. The real American grouse, I suggest, is with Yar’Adua administration’s aimless foreign policy and lukewarm ties with the US. Nigeria is full of absurd political intrigues and empty of leadership. We are finally paying the price. As Americans would say, we ain’t seen nothing yet! Even Togo will soon blacklist us.

by Simon Kolawole

Let’s briefly discuss the story of a young, independent boy with religious zeal and a fertile mind, delicately torn between the two worlds of extremism and liberalism. No, I’m not talking about Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab. I’m talking about myself. I embraced the Christian faith at the age of 20 during my national youth service and I was ready to do anything – except kill – for God. All I needed to be told was “don’t do this” and I would not, “do this” and I would.

The formative stage of religious beliefs is the most critical in a believer’s life. The heart is so tender. You’re so vulnerable. Because you have not studied the scriptures enough to be able to make up your mind by yourself, you rely virtually on interpretations by others. Pray you don’t get the wrong message.

I was told I could no longer keep “unbelievers” as friends – which would include even my childhood friends and members of my family. I was told I would go to hell if I continued to listen to the music of Bob Marley.

I was told ladies who didn’t wear scarves were a few kilometres from hell. Ladies who wore trousers would perish, for sure. In no time, I was in a serious emotional crisis, desperately caught between two worlds – one of extremism which my Bible teachers told me was the best way to heaven; the other of pragmatism, knowing that I would still have to live with people who did not share my faith or beliefs. At that critical juncture of my life, I was able to resolve my crisis by personally studying the Bible, asking different people different questions and reading a variety of literature to keep a balance.

As I read the story of AbdulMutallab, the 23-year-old chap at the centre of a failed attempt to suicide-bomb an American airliner, something clicked in me: that is the familiar story of naïve zealotry. He had a heart for his God. Even though he was born a Muslim, he went deeper and deeper into his religion at a stage in his life. He was a young, independent boy with religious zeal and a fertile mind. He wanted to be upright – to stay off the vices that so easily entrap young men and women.

He wrote in one of his posts on an Islamic website: “I have no friend. Not because I do not socialise, etc but because either people do not want to get too close to me as they go partying and stuff while I don’t, or they are bad people who befriend me and influence me to do bad things.” And in another, he wrote: “The last thing I want to talk about is my dilemma between liberalism and extremism [...] How should one put the balance right?”

That is the critical juncture in a believer’s life. You are supposed to be pure but the world around you is dirty. You don’t drink but your friends drink, so should you cut them off completely or stay with them but refuse to join them in drinking? How long can that last? Is it not easy for them to drag you into drinking than for you to drag them off the bottle?

How can you be a believer and still go to disco halls? How can you keep girls as friends and not end up fornicating in a moment of weakness? These simple questions are usually difficult to handle, especially for a young believer. Of course, there is a world of difference between Christian and Islamic beliefs – but, at the end of discussion, religious beliefs leave similar traits and impact on the life of a believer.

At the critical juncture in AbdulMutallab’s Islamic renewal, he was torn between conservatism and modernism, between radicalism and pragmatism, between extremism and liberalism. How do I love my God and my “unbelieving” neighbour at the same time? How can I wear a Nike cap on top of jalabia (the Arabic clothing associated with Islam) or a skull cap on top of denim jeans? AbdulMutallab was unable to handle these questions by himself – and so he fell into the wrong hands. That, to me, was the turning point of his life. With a mind so fertile and vulnerable, the radicals moved in and took over.

The first step by radicals is to convince the believer that whatever he does in the service of God is permissible. In fact, it is the wish of God. The ultimate reward is heaven. And, yes, the believer no longer belongs to this world. He (or she) is now a citizen of heaven and should start looking forward to going to meet with God. In fact, the earthly family is no longer his family. He is no longer from Nigeria; he is now from heaven. And God is eagerly awaiting his return to heaven where he would reap limitless rewards.

By the time AbdulMutallab was sending text messages to his family members from Dubai telling them never to ask of him again, the radicals had finally succeeded. They had convinced him to do away with his earthly family. And by the time he chose to go and enlist as a suicide bomber, the radicals had completed the job of brainwashing him. They had succeeded in indoctrinating him that the ultimate good thing he can do in life is to die for his God. No form of death is better. It is better to kill yourself in the service of God than die in a road accident or die fighting for your country. God would be very pleased that you killed yourself fighting against infidels.

My heart goes out to AbdulMutallab because he too is a victim. His love for his God had made him vulnerable. At that critical point, his tender heart was filled with the message of hate rather than love, isolation rather than accommodation, death rather than life. He fell into the wrong hands. He could have asked his radical teachers: Sir, how come you are not carrying the bomb yourself?

How come you’re not giving the bomb to your children to carry? Why me? Don’t you want to die fighting for God too? Don’t you want your children to go to heaven too? Why is Osama bin Laden on the run? If he truly believes he is now a citizen of heaven, why doesn’t he join the suicide bombers so that he can go to heaven quickly? New converts to radicalism are not encouraged to ask these questions; they are simply to listen and not talk. If you ask too many questions, you’re committing a sin and God would be angry with you.

I have heard a lot of people criticise Alhaji Umar Mutallab for sending his children to school abroad, for not bringing up Farouk properly. Yet we all know that this argument is very unkind. Let’s be fair: Farouk’s father reported his worrisome new orientation to the US embassy. How many fathers can do that, knowing the implications for the child?

Of all the Nigerian children who have been schooling abroad (they are in their thousands), how many of them have become suicide bombers? The only case I know of, so far, is Farouk. Name another one. Do you now use one case to reach a conclusion? It is too simple to conclude that Farouk became radicalised because he schooled in Togo and the UK. In this facebook and twitter age, you can become radicalised anywhere you are, even in the remotest village in Nigeria.

What of children who take to drugs, cultism, armed robbery and all sorts of vices?

Did they also school in Togo? As simple as it sounds, you can live in the same house and sleep on the same bed with your child without knowing his or her mind! Only a deluded father will tell you he knows everything his son or daughter does. AbdulMutallab could have schooled in Lagos and still chosen a similar path. Most of the religious zealots we have in Nigeria who are busy burning places of worship and killing innocent people have never been to UK or Yemen.

We would therefore be deceiving ourselves by saying: “Thank God, my own children are schooling in Lokoja. Thank God, I am very close to my children. They can never be involved in vices because we live under the same roof.” We do not need to snigger at Alhaji Mutallab. We are all vulnerable to this abnormal behaviour in the society.

I know that we parents have a God-ordered responsibility to bring our children up properly. There is no question about that. We all wish the best for our children. We all want to bring up children we can be proud of. But any parent who is sincere enough will also admit that some of these things are beyond us. Ultimately, there is something called the grace of God. After all, I know pastors whose children live wayward lives. That is the irony of it all.

By Dele Sobowale

I started reading Nigerian newspapers in 1953 —mostly those absolutely delightful cartoon/advertisements by Nigerian Breweries featuring Sammy Sparkle. Who in our generation can forget that mischievous character who popped up almost every where to stop a train; to stop a fight, etc, and the punch line —“I did says Sammy Sparkle; its time for STAR”.

I was also a good listener; in fact the best listener when my father, a Yoruba man who would gladly lay his life on the line for “Zik of Africa” and my eldest brother, who was a die-hard Awoist engaged themselves in arguments over their heroes. Between father, who religiously read the West African Pilot published by Zik and my brother, who devoured the Tribune, published by Awolowo, I got to know most of the important news of each day.

Never in those 56 years has the media in Nigeria and respected opinion leaders made such individual and collective fools of themselves as they have done since the news of Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempt to commit suicide was first announced by the American owned CNN network on Christmas day.

Notice the words “attempt to commit suicide” because that is what most of our commentators missed. The CBN, naturally, had gone to considerable length to portray Farouk as a terrorist because an American aircraft was involved and the attempt occurred as the plane was about to land in Detroit — one of America’s largest cities. It was understandable that the news network would take the politically “correct” position in their broadcasts with regard to this incident.

But, it was poor journalism. Worse than that; it was pure propaganda —as this article would show.

Media executioners

While CNN’s position was understandable, the response of the Nigerian media, opinion leaders, the Federal Government and even Farouk’s father was at first puzzling and finally enraging. CNN labeled Farouk a “terrorist” and every damn fool in Nigeria who had access to a page of newspaper or a few minutes on the air in electronic media, was gullible enough to accept that label without question and a barrage of the most prejudicial statements and commentaries followed.

Editors, who should be more discerning, were all on holidays and they allowed their papers to be used in the most despicable manner — to defame Farouk; to pronounce him guilty — even before pleas are taken and to have handed the poor misguided boy to American executioners. Well, I have a name for my media colleagues, from CNN to Nigerian columnists — on this matter.

As far as I am concerned they are all a bunch of media executioners. They have not even bothered with the first golden rule of journalism and law —let the other party be heard. None of our engaging and erudite columnists has spoken to Farouk; and failing that none had put on their thinking caps to ask themselves if Farouk’s right — namely the right to be presumed innocent of the charges — were being violated.

When Mark Twain, 1835-1910, wrote in Innocents at Home, “Are you going to hang him anyhow — and try him afterward?”, he must have had in mind a situation such as this.

And it was not only Farouk who was thoughtlessly slaughtered in the collective race to hand the poor boy to American executioners. His parents, the Federal Government and even the re-branding effort of the Yar’Adua’s administration and the Nigerian nation were all taken to the media abattoir and butchered.

But was Farouk guilty of terrorism? Was his father wrong to have sent his son abroad for his education? Should the unfortunate incident be a reason to jettison the re-branding effort? And should Nigeria and Nigerians feel embarrassed and hide their heads in shame? The answer to all the questions, surprisingly, is a resounding NO!

Permit me to start in reverse order to point out how Nigerians have allowed themselves to be fooled by US propaganda and the thoughtlessness of our public opinion molders.

Virtually every day bombs go off in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, killing several hundred more people than were on the Delta Airline plane that Farouk was accused of attempting to blow off. Neither the governments nor the people in those countries feel ashamed or embarrassed. Why? Because they, and the entire world, realise that those carrying out these activities are in the tiniest minority. The vast majority of the people just want to live a peaceful life —if they can.

By the same token, 90% or more of Nigerians have never boarded an aircraft —and probably never will. An even larger majority — close to 99.99999% know nothing about explosives; they neither know how they are made and how they are used.

So in what way does Farouk represent them and as a result they should feel ashamed. In fact, Farouk is a product of the foreign countries — including Britain and America, now making the most deafening noise about a Nigerian “terrorist” when there is none. So Nigeria and my fellow countrymen and women have nothing to be ashamed of on this matter which the Western media and their Nigerian collaborators have blown out of proportion — as you will soon see.

Those carpeting the father for sending his son abroad for education are simply envious. There is probably no Nigerian today blessed with Alhaji Mutallab’s money who will not ship his children to school abroad. And, if a university in London harbours subversive elements hell-bent on preying on poor misguided souls, the fault is not Alhaji Mutallab’s own; nor Nigeria’s. The fault is with the British government which had failed to curb such activities on its campuses.

Alhaji Mutallab, as a matter of fact, deserves a pat on the back for not engaging in cover-up. Few fathers will report their sons to the CIA or British security forces. Alhaji made only one cardinal error —which is, jeopardising his son’s right to strong defence when the case comes up.

He should not have released the statement that he did because it can be misconstrued as admission that his son is guilty as charged by the media executioners —at home or abroad. Later in this article, Alhaji and Nigerians will be shown the way forward.

But, let me announce the destination of this journey — Nigerians should collectively put up a fight to save Farouk’s life. And the reasons are not hard to discover.

First, America never releases its citizens for prosecution in another country. So contemptuous are they of the quality of other nation’s judiciary that they don’t even believe an American can receive fair trial even in Western countries.

Secondly, Britain has provided the example of what a country should do when its citizen is on trial in other lands. As the Farouk story was playing on SKY NEWS, another story was on the air. A Briton had been sentenced to death in China for smuggling hard drugs into that country.

The British government and the man’s family proceeded to mount a campaign to free the man. He was pronounced mentally unstable — yet nobody presented a doctor’s report to substantiate the claim. The Chinese were made to feel like brutes despite the fact the more people are killed and more lives are destroyed by drug trafficking than all the homicides arising from “terrorism”.

The message was clear; Britain wanted its citizen’s life to be spared irrespective of the fact that the judgment was based on convincing proof and guilt was beyond reasonable doubt. By contrast Farouk was being cut and quartered at home and abroad by people who have not even heard the evidence.

Who’s a terrorist?

Now we come to the main issue —was Farouk guilty of terrorism? Was he a terrorist? And do all the facts at our disposal point to terrorism? Few of us are experts on the subject and even the experts don’t always agree. But, every one is familiar with the saying that, “one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter”.

Every time a bazooka lands in Israel from the West Bank, the Israelis call it a terrorist attack; the Palestinians call it a blow for liberation of Palestine from the illegal occupants. When Israel, in response to the bazooka which killed one person, sends bombers and tanks into Lebanon and reduce the city to rubbles — including children’s hospital — the West calls it retaliation; Arabs call it genocide.

Who’s right? It all depends on who you are. There is absolutely no reason why Nigerians should swallow — hook, line and sinker — the West’s characterisation of an event as “terrorist” any more than we can expect them to accept it as “liberation effort”.

At any rate, if America can recruit Britain, Australia and other nations to fight its war in Afghanistan or Iraq, and those soldiers are not called “terrorists” regardless of how many Arabs they massacre, what stops the Arabs from seeking help wherever they can find it?

This is not an admission that Farouk was a recruit for al-Queda despite US propaganda. It is to point out to everyone that there is a war on in the Middle East started on the basis of a lie told by US President Bush and British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, about weapons of mass destruction, WMD, in Iraq. I recollect writing in my SUNDAY VANGUARD column before the war started that “Bush and Blair would invade Iraq even if there is no single pen knife in the country”.

Today the whole world knows there was no WMD; the whole world also knows that over one million Iraqis have lost their lives since the invasion and the once thriving country has been devastated. What can be more “terrorist” than that?

Now we come to my “son”, Farouk. I call him son, not only because I am old enough to be his father, but because I feel pity for him and if possible, I will adopt him. If it is possible to visit him, I will hug him and tell him that he has not been abandoned; that in my books, he is not a terrorist. Again the facts at our disposal should be our guide. And what do we know?

Why did he do it?

First we know that Farouk is the son of one of the richest men in Nigeria and that he stands to inherit — if we can save him from the executioners — millions of naira and, may be, even dollars. In fact, he will probably not ever have to work for a living if he chooses not to and he will still live in affluence for the rest of his life. The obvious question is: why does a fellow like that want to blow himself up? Once that question crops up in your mind, you begin to see the truth, namely that we have a mind disturbed in a handsome body frame.

In short Farouk was, and is still, not himself. And nothing proves this more than the approach he adopted to end his life. In short the fellow was embarked on suicide in the most “tragic-comical” manner.

Second, most of us forget, when reading about suicide bombers, that the first word is SUICIDE. That comes before bomber. Obviously, any person with so much to live for, and who contemplates suicide, is not a candidate for the electric chair or the firing squad but a mental hospital.

Third, the poor boy, in absolute ignorance of how to manipulate the device he procured for the suicide bid, strapped the damned thing to his vital organs — which raises one question. Which well-adjusted young man still in his twenties would want to blow off his “tool box”?

Even my old friends, past 70, until their dying days guarded the “strong room” jealously. Despite the attempt by CNN and other Western media to prove that the explosive could have blown a hole in the plane’s fuselage, which they considered a sufficient reason to label Farouk as a “terrorist”, the fact remains that if the device had gone off as planned, Farouk was the only sure candidate for kingdom come. The seats next to him appeared empty and a plane might still be landed with a hole in the fuselage. It has happened before.

Fourth, a real terrorist generally wants to witness the result of his efforts. They plant an explosive which is detonated by remote control or with a timer allowing them to get away before the explosion occurs. Just as in the regular army, a soldier is trained to kill for his country, not to die. In so far as he dies, he has been a failure. So the real terrorist wants to live to terrorise another day.

The suicide bomber is another character all together. He would not see the outcome of his mission — if he succeeds. In that respect, he has a lot more in common with others embarking on self-liquidation. Having decided to end his life, the next most important question is: how?

The methods range from those who go alone to those who decide not to “walk alone”. And once it is decided that the exit must be accomplished by taking a crowd along, then it does not matter whether he drives his car on the path of a speeding train, or a fully loaded bus or a plane full of passengers. Farouk chose the plane and he is no more a terrorist than the fellow who caused the train to derail taking 400 people with him.

Nigerians must save Farouk

So far, all evidence at our disposal can only support one conclusion — suicide. That it occurred on Delta Airlines and in a plane coming to land in Detroit are secondary considerations. And if it is suicide, the fellow should not be executed but helped. And the only people who can help him are Nigerians. And Alhaji Mutallab must take the lead for his son to be saved.

We must adopt the Western approach; which means we establish a SAVE FAROUK ORGANISATION. Its functions will include raising funds to ensure that Farouk obtains the best legal team money can engage. The second is to start a multimedia campaign, including using CNN, to convince the world that Farouk is not a mass murderer but a sick young man.

The third is to insist that Nigeria’s leading psychiatrists should be called to assess his mental state. It is doubtful if an American or English doctor can accurately diagnose mental illness in a Nigerian who is not a raving lunatic already.

Fourth, the Federal Government of Nigeria, instead of distancing itself from Farouk, should use diplomatic approaches to get him released to a Nigerian psychiatric hospital for treatment. The fifth is to get Nigeria’s media executioners to stop labeling the fellow a terrorist and to join the campaign to save Farouk.

It will not be easy, given the prejudicial statements most commentators have made before. But, we must hold the life of every Nigerian so sacred as not to throw them to foreign wolves when they present with evidence that they are asking for help which sometimes manifests itself in extremism.

Finally, this is not an issue which should be confronted by Muslims alone. I am a Christian; but, that should not stop me from standing up and defending a Muslim who is being led to the slaughter house as we are now doing to our son Farouk. Will you join the struggle?

By Reuben Abati

Nigerians were not favourite air travellers before the Christmas Day Flight 253 bomb scare incident involving our 23-year old compatriot Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab: the rest of the world looked upon Nigerians as potential crooks (even if there are more crooks in Italy and Russia). We were accused of being too noisy and aggressive (one Nigerian got chased off a British airways flight and was promptly banned for life from all BA flights: this caused so much furore). Part of our profile is the label of being the biggest load carriers in the world. On nearly every route, Nigerians tend to have more luggage than other travellers (British Airways has had to create a special luggage re-pack area for Nigerians at Heathrow’s Terminal Five, the only nationals that have been given that curious distinction).

Nigerians were also regarded as potential drug couriers or illegal immigrants: the country’s green passport received detailed attention, to be sure that the passport belonged to the man or woman holding it! Visas originating from Nigeria were screened more than averagely. As a Nigerian flight arrived at an international airport, sniffer dogs were directed to check out the Nigerians. Since Nigerians like to travel with foodstuff, many of them ended up with their ogbono seeds, processed melon, fish, kilishi being sent to the laboratory for proper examination to detect possible traces of cocaine. Others could be handpicked and asked to use the toilet by force. Not even our national icons are spared such humiliation. Before December 25, 2009, Nigerians loved to protest that the humiliation that they received at local embassies issuing visas and at international ports was most undeserved. Young visa officers at the embassies treated Nigerian applicants like vermin. We didn’t like that at all.

Now, the Mutallab effect seems to be shutting us all up. The shame is collectively shared. The collateral damage is resulting in embarrassment and self-doubt. After December 25, 2009, this was a foreseeable development. Our apprehension was further confirmed by the Sunday December 27 incident involving another Nigerian who again was travelling from Amsterdam to the United States. The Nigerian passenger, suffering from incontinence had reportedly stayed a bit longer in the lavatory. Two days earlier, his compatriot whose suicide-bombing attempt had failed had also spent a little time in the lavatory. Both are black men. Other passengers therefore jumped to a convenient conclusion (here is another suicide bomber from Nigeria!). The poor man was treated as if he was another terrorist trying to finish off what his compatriot had bungled on Christmas day. Mutallab may go to jail for attempted suicide-bombing etc., but all Nigerians travelling internationally would henceforth also pay a price, for we have all been adjudged guilty by association.

A cousin who is home on Christmas Holiday couldn’t have expressed the dilemma better when he pointed out 72 hours to his departure that he would also be travelling through Amsterdam.

“Mutalllab travelled through my route. I don’t want to imagine what would happen when I get to Amsterdam,” he had said.

“They will search you from head to toe, that is all.”

“No. It is not that simple. They will do it in a way that you’d feel you have been pronounced guilty by association. Every Nigerian will now be treated like a Mutallab; as if there is a Mutallab in all of us. ”

“You don’t have to worry. As long as you don’t go to the toilet too often, or appear too motionless, nobody will treat you like a suspect.”

“Are you saying Nigerians are now banned from using the lavatory on international flights? I can’t believe that”

“I have not said that. But don’t go into the toilet and start grunting the way many of you do, or spend more time than necessary as if you are busy mixing substances.”

“But why is Ghana not being criticised? The young man travelled through Accra. Why is Holland not being asked to talk about the security at Amsterdam Schiphol International? Why is the focus on Nigeria?

“Simple. It was your man that tried to blow up an aircraft with explosives.”

Since December 25, 2009, there have been reports of airports across the world beefing up their security systems with three dimensional (3D) image scanners. Again, this is causing so much concern among Nigerians. One other fellow, also based in diaspora, had observed that airport authorities need to provide more information about how the 3D scanners work.

“I mean they can’t just go and give somebody cancer because they are looking for explosives. I understand that scanning the entire human anatomy, with electro-magnetic waves could have implications for health. I travel a lot. So does it mean that at every airport, I’ll be exposed to a full scan.”

“Looks like.”

“And I can bet we Nigerians will be targeted specially. We should speak up.”

“Yes and No.”

“You know what bothers me?”, one fellow who had been busy battling with a plate of cow leg interjected. “It is this thing they call 3D.”

“It is not new really. It has always been there.”

“But my attention has just been drawn to it. I understand that 3D scanning, the type that airports are now using will capture the human anatomy from all angles and indicate every part of the body, showing if anything is hidden anywhere.”

“Looks like. It is an advanced security check mechanism.”

“But there are ethical and legal issues.”

“How?”

“How? You are asking me how? You tell me how combatting international terrorism or a threat of it should allow any agency to use a see-all, tell-all machine that invades the body of another human being. That is not security; it is voyeurism. Peeping Toms may derive much fun from it, but I don’t like it.”

“As if your opinion matters… A 3D will only show outlines. How do I explain it? It is like the luggage screening machine.”

“You see. I am saying the same thing. It will show every hidden thing.”

“An outline actually.”

“That is unacceptable. My wife travels a lot. She is not a terrorist, not a would-be bomber.”

“How do you know?”

“I know because I am her husband.”

“You are not making sense.”

“I may not be making any sense to you. But what I am saying is that the West should know what it is introducing when it says it wants to fight international terrorism by all means. Using a three dimensional scanner to scan the outlines of the anatomy of a female homo sapiens is immoral. Can you imagine an airport official scanning my wife’s body? If they are not careful, they will create more suicide-bombers, they will turn decent men into international militants!”

“Look Mr Man, go and sit down. World peace and the lives of other human beings are more important than your wife’s outline. Woman-wrapper. The whole world is talking about peace and security, you are reducing everything to 3D scanner and your wife.”

“I know what I am talking about. As a Muslim, I have a duty to protect my wife.”

“That is precisely what visa officers don’t want to hear at this moment. If you go to an embassy as a Nigerian and you declare that your name is Farouk, Sulaiman, Abdulrazak, Abdul, Mujahiddin… You see, the moment those cynical visa officers type your name into the computer and it brings up the names of terrorists and suicide bombers who share the same names, they won’t waste a minute before stamping your passport: No visa, no visa, no visa.”

The discussion soon focussed on the report that since the Mutallab incident, airports across the world have been subjecting Nigeria-bound luggage or luggage originating therefrom to heavy security screening. In effect, many Nigerians arrive at their destinations without their luggage, or when it eventually arrives, it bears all the imprints of tampering, excessive examination and so on, in a few cases, the luggage is declared missing.

“Not funny”, my cousin said. “Do you know what that means in terms of time and cost? If your bags don’t come in when they should, it means you’d have to go back and check, phone calls and all that, time that should be spent on other things will be devoted to a journey that has not been allowed to end because the airline is looking for powder and liquid explosives.”

“That is the Mutallab Effect.”

“But the young man has not even been found guilty yet. Let them punish the offender and not punish a whole country. I don’t even know what a bomb looks like if I see it. So, why punish me?”

“These things don’t work like that.”

“Not fair.”

“The world has never been fair to anyone.”

“If any airline plays around with my luggage, I’d sue. I will go to court. They can only try that at the Nigerian end, not in the United States. You misplace my luggage, you pay for it.”

“Come to think of it,” I said. “May be there is a good side to all of this.”

“What is good in all Nigerians been tagged a Mutallab by the international community?”

“May be Nigerians will now behave better at airports around the world, knowing that they are being closely watched, May be our people will spend less time in aircraft lavatories. Have you not observed that when a Nigerian gets into the lavatory in an aircraft before you, he or she actually settles down there as if it is a sitting room?”

“Get away. You like to criticise everything. Make man no offload?”

“Well, may be all of this will teach Nigerians to travel light. If you know that your luggage may be delayed or you may lose a bag or two, then you’d reduce everything to hand luggage.”

“That will never happen. By the time you buy shoes for Ekaette, perfume for Ngozi; handbag for Mama Silifa, clothes for the children, the ones at home and the ones outside, with special emphasis on the latter, the bags are bound to multiply. It is only oyinbo travellers who don’t buy anything for anybody. We are Africans.”

“I know. Your ancestors were load carriers. It is in the genes.”

“How do you tell Nigerian travellers on the Dubai route not to carry baggage? I once saw a woman with five bags. When customs opened the bags, they found toilet rolls. Toilet rolls from Dubai!”

“I can imagine the Customs officials begging to be given a pack. We blame the Police all the time, but if you know the level of corruption in Customs, you’d scream E-F-C-C.”

“No. I will scream Fari-da Wa-zi-ri.”

“Be careful. That is another man’s wife.”

“What? Mr Waziri has donated his wife.”

“That is interesting. To you?”

“To public service.”

We concluded that after the initial expression of surprise, and the many questions that have been raised, the Mutallab incident is invariably about all of us as Nigerians. It presents government with special challenges, to the extent that the country’s image has been dealt a heavy blow which needs to be managed, and all Nigerians have now become guilty would-be terrorists, they are in the dock along with their compatriot, and Nigeria finds itself in the ugly situation of being classified as part of the axis of evil. The international media is feeding on the story, seeking a story behind every possible lead. By the time they are through, they may discover a lot more that will further tarnish the country’s image. The initial statement by the Federal Government is now inadequate, the world needs to be reassured continuously that Nigeria has not yet become a haven of terrorists.

We, the good ones are in the majority, and we are the real Nigerians not the boko haram, not the kala kato, not the treasury looters, not the sick leaders, not their wives, not the armed robbers and assassins, not the agents of Lord Lugard. Because every Nigerian who loses his or her mind brings shame upon the rest of us, the challenge of rescuing Nigeria is invariably the collective responsibility of the good majority. Those who mouth the rhetoric of citizens’ diplomacy should now do some work; and they need not embark on estacode-guzzling trips around the world to discharge that function. This is the 50th year of Nigeria’s independence, 50 years after the writing of Chinua Achebe’s No Longer At Ease. It is sad that Nigeria is still No Longer At Ease.

By Bisi Ojediran

I imagine how US President Barack Obama would have felt if he tried putting in a call to Nigerian authorities on hearing the news of Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempt to detonate explosives on Delta Northwest Airlines Flight 253 with 278 passengers and crew aboard. That is if he had not expected a call from Nigeria, as he would have from another country in that situation. “President Umaru Yar’ Adua has been away in a Saudi hospital for over 30 days,” he would have been reminded. “And the Vice President Goodluck Jonathan can be of no immediate help because he is not in charge.

” “What a……” Obama would have been tempted to say (I don’t know him to use swear words). But certainly he would have been shocked about the current status of Nigeria, which in White House confidential records is one of the pillars for the emancipation of the impoverished and poorly governed African continent. That is how Nigerians are ending the year. No effective leader! Farouk Abdulmutallab is a Nigerian! And a silver-spoon son of a highly placed Nigerian for that matter! No matter how well his background is rationalized, no matter how strong the defence mechanism, he is a Nigerian who has thrown air travel around the world into chaos with untold hardship for travellers, now subjected to body search.

The introduction of a 3D scan that strips travellers naked on the security screen is now likely, in spite of the heavy criticism against its use. For all agonizing travellers now, Nigeria, a country notorious for scam and corruption has added to its pain stimuli. The country is ending the year on a bad note in international relations, caused principally by poor representation or absence at important international fora. Now, Farouk has caused another coating of tar on Nigeria’s international image. And bad time awaits Nigerian travellers. Extra attention is normally applied to passengers arriving from Nigeria at busy airports around the globe because of concerns over fraud and smuggling. Now, it is going to get worse. For President Obama, he is gradually confirming my fears that his relatively soft stance with terrorists may cost the US another attack that will not only make his name a hate word, but also ruin his presidency. But that is a subject of another Tolling Bells piece.

Farouk’s father reported him to US authorities and according to reports a file was opened on Farouk, but as one official said, “one part of the system that absolutely failed” was that Abdulmutallab was able to board a plane to the United States allegedly with PETN. Well, it emerged yesterday that Farouk had been barred from entering the UK. With a bruised image and limping on the global scene, Nigerians would have been compensated if they are better off at home during a year that will end in three days. Are we better off in 2009? Well, the Vice President may have provided an answer in Abuja over the weekend when he spoke after a Christmas thanksgiving service.

He said Farouk has compounded the country’s challenges of fuel scarcity, kidnapping, weak economy and poor state of infrastructure, among others. I like that honest talk! To have said otherwise would have been a negation of the socio-economic rights of the majority of Nigerians who have been impoverished during the year. In the books, the economy, with and overall real GDP growth averaged about 6 per cent during the first half of 2009, a National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) preliminary estimate of a real GDP growth rate of 7.6 percent during the third quarter of 2009, and a decline of year-on-year headline inflation, looks good. But that is yet to translate into better living standards.

The true measure of a good economy is the wellbeing of the average citizen or family. Has the individual or family experienced improvement in living standards – better access to social amenities like water, health, education and power supply? Has the quality or even quantity of food on the dining table increased? And have there been improved opportunities to earn a living? Well, with about 70 per cent of Nigerians in the poverty bracket, and with a high level of unemployment, the answer is obvious. Of course, with a raging global economic crisis and a depressed crude oil market, Nigeria started the year on a bad note. Revenue from both oil and non-oil sources were below projections for the first half of 2009, and the aggregate revenue available for distribution to the three tiers of government fell short of projected estimate by about 26 per cent. But that can hardly be a justification for the bitterness of many Nigerians during the year.

Any suggestion that the country fared better will shock many Nigerians who have been denied basic necessities of life, even at this festive period. For a major oil producing country with at least three refineries to deny its citizens fuel during this period is crass insensitivity. And to be insulted that the scarcity of petrol was caused by saboteurs, and not government, when an apology should have been made to Nigerians, is gross disrespect of our socio-economic rights. When did it become the lot of the governed to fight economic saboteurs or fuel subsidy racketeers? Many Nigerians know that the lingering fuel scarcity originated from the poor handling of the planned deregulation of the downstream petroleum sector by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. With high prices of goods and services caused by the fuel scarcity and the hardship encountered in the sourcing of fuel by consumers, this festive season could have been better celebrated.

Reports of some lawmakers’ refusal to travel home for the fear of kidnapping should be funny, but it is depressing. Security, one of the key deliverables people look up to government for has also become a major challenge in the country. Security is a deliverable on government’s Seven –Point Agenda. So also is improved electricity supply, over which Nigerians perhaps feel the greatest disappointment. This is because not only was a promise made, huge sums of money was voted on a regular basis for it, and even when facts on the ground called for caution, those in charge boasted they could make it happen. A prominent minister from the South was so sure about it that he boasted it would be achieved during the year to turn the economy around. But as time wore on towards the deadline, and reality dawned, a defence mechanism started to be built. The high drama of it all was during the defence of her 2010 budget at the National Assembly.

A power outage had triggered calls of “6000 Mega Watts” and a question on the December deadline to which Information Minister Dora Akunyili responded, “I am not the minister of power.” Well, many Nigerians spent Xmas in darkness, as they have been in most of the year. That of course is not better life. Without electricity, there is not much the manufacturing sector can do. Investors in the sector are quick to say it is dead. May be not yet, but many companies, including vital ones like tyre companies, have closed shop. Survivors are bracing it but with worsening cost of production because they have to provide their own infrastructure, they say it is tough. Perhaps, the capital market is one area where the pain of Nigerians can be rationalised. The stock market crashed as did all other stock markets around the world. Many Nigerians, including former governor Chief Segun Osoba and the Oba of Lagos have lost millions. So have smaller investors.

But hope that the market would take a cue from recovering markets has been dashed. Return on Investment during the year declined by 65 per cent from the N280 billion paid out in 2008. The story of the money market is interesting. The other day, a worried investor said with so much money stolen by bank executives and the heavy losses declared by banks, Nigerians would have woken up one morning to discover that there are no banks in the country anymore. An exaggerated joke, but certainly the new CBN Governor Lamido Sanusi, has stemmed a dangerous trend and hopefully, sanity will be restored in the banking halls; hopefully the stock market which the reforms further shrank will recover; and hopefully the credit crunch will ease to get the economy growing again.

The judiciary has fared well, but not so the National Assembly, which is still on an ego trip. For example, there is no reason for the constitutional review process should be duplicated. People are also not comfortable with the many vital bills waiting to be passed. However, it is fair to say with the Amnesty in the Niger Delta, which has restored relative peace in the area, and the civil service reforms, President Yar’ Adua was doing a good home run for the year before he broke down. Governance has also improved in the states. I counted 12 with a high performing governor from a southern state last week, but with so much power and resources at the centre, poor performance at that level, easily rubs off on the nation. Although some ministries have done well, our concern is the over all well being of the people. From there, hope is fading. When hope fades, it makes space for depression. But depression is horrible in part because it cuts you off from your future or, more precisely, your sense of the future. The bleakness of the present is so oppressive just because you can’t imagine an alternative for tomorrow.

By Pius Adesanmi

Terrorist Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab is the ill-bred scion of privilege that was perhaps destined to be the instrument through which the dead would visit the comeuppance of sleeplessness on a certain vicious establishment that is responsible for the greatest heap of corpses in Nigeria’s history. Let’s be clear from the onset: I am talking about the same people that Wole Soyinka has addressed in such stellar public lectures as “Project Nationhood: The Chosen against all Others” and “The Precursors of Boko Haram”.

I am talking about a certain Feudo-Caliphal establishment in northern Nigeria whose only investment in the Nigerian project is a lazy and parasitic dependency on other people’s oil in the Niger Delta, buoyed as it were by a psychopathological obsession with illegitimate Federal power on the one hand, and the mass production of poverty in their own necks of the woods on the other hand. I have also previously offered my take on this murderous establishment in the extended essay, “The American South as Warning to the Nigerian North”.

What happened as a near-tragedy for the rest of the world and a clear tragedy for Nigeria and Nigerians on Christmas day – CNN’s Rick Sanchez now talks of a “Nigerian nightmare”- in Detroit may indeed be the voice of the young and stupid Mutallab, the hands of the dead, I argue, are also actively at work in those sinewy ways that they work only in Africa to ensure that endless mytho-cosmic traffic between the worlds of the unborn, the living, and the dead. To understand what I believe is going on here, you must be willing to suspend your subscription to the explanatory authority of all the Euro-philosophical and Americo-modern analyses that have attended this event among Nigerian, African, and other pundits and let the African worldview offer an explanatory grid for these things for once.

The African worldview I have in mind here is Yoruba, my primary tool of analysis. Any Yoruba who is sufficiently familiar with his culture knows not to joke with the concept of “ro’ku”. Where the family of the deceased has good reason to believe that there has been foul play – death from natural causes is rare in Africa – in the demise of their loved one, they perform certain rituals – “won ro’ku” – to ensure that the spirit of the dead finds no permanent rest. Once the “ro’ku” rituals have been performed, the spirit in question quits ghostland frequently to roam earthworld in search of vengeance. Tormented by apparitions and other bizarre happenings that could even involve being flogged by invisible hands, the guilty is pushed deeper and deeper into an abyss of irrational and insane actions that may eventually eventuate in a confession of responsibility for the demise of Lagbaja. The relatives of the deceased who decided to “ro” the “iku” (death) of their beloved may then rest in the comfort that the dead has secured vengeance and is now also resting.

Often – and largely due to the influence of Christianity and Islam – a family may elect not to go the ostensible route of “ro’ku” rituals. But even in such cases, there is often a quiet, subterranean actuation of the belief that “ori oku a ja”, literally, “the head” of the departed will fight and avenge itself. Head is to be understood here in the African sense – something like Chinua Achebe’s chi. Here, we are in the domain of indirect “ro’ku” where no ritualistic actions of facilitation or mediation are required on the part of the living. The wicked people who are directly responsible for a death and the structures or people who bear indirect responsibility for the said death through actions of complicity or criminal inaction are made vulnerable to the vengeful whims of the restless and fighting “head” of the dead.

The Yoruba say of such persons and the people or powers behind them – “won o ni sinmi” – they will not (find) rest. Whether through the enactment of appropriate rituals or through simple belief in its potency, the philosophy of “ro’ku” presupposes an endless roaming of the spirit of the dead in order to occasion irrational actions among the living and the guilty. Thus, at any given point, earthworld is crisscrossed by unappeased angry souls that have not been able to find eternal rest and must deprive the guilty among the living of sleep and rest until the society of the living embraces the path of restitution and punishment.

Unappeased angry souls such as that of Gideon Akaluka, the young Igbo trader, whose restless spirit has roamed and haunted the city of Kano since December 1994, “ro-ing” a death whose gruesomeness is only surpassed by the criminal shortness of Nigeria’s national memory. We have simply forgotten him and moved on. Yet, Mr. Akaluka’s family must still deal with the gory spectre of their son’s head dangling from a spike in broad daylight, as a mob of crazy Islamic militants danced with it through the streets of Kano, chanting Allahu Akbar (another Christian infidel down, some 50 million more to go in Nigeria!). The mob that beheaded Akaluka in Kano had enablers and complicitous political profiteers in the northern elite and leadership. Now Akaluka is “ro-ing” his own death. The scions of the politically complicit are misbehaving. And the chicken is home to roost.

Unappeased angry souls such as that of Christianah Oluwasesin, the young Yoruba school teacher, whose restless spirit has roamed and haunted the town of Gandu in Gombe state since March 2007, “ro-ing” a death whose gruesomeness is only surpassed by the criminality of Nigeria’s national memory. We have simply forgotten her and moved on. Yet Ms Oluwasesin’s family still deals with the gory spectre of their daughter’s lifeless body, clubbed to death in broad daylight by crazed Islamist pupils who accused her of desecrating the Holy Koran even as they chanted Allahu Akbar (another Christian infidel down, some 49 million, nine hundred and ninety-nine more to go in Nigeria). The lynch mob in Gandu had enablers and complicitous political profiteers in the northern elite and leadership. Now Oluwasesin is “ro-ing” her own death. The scions of the politically complicit are misbehaving. And the chicken is home to roost.

Unappeased angry souls such as that of Grace Ushang, the 25 year-old youth corper whose restless spirit has roamed and haunted the city of Maiduguri since September 2009, “ro-ing” a death whose gruesomeness is only surpassed by the criminality of Nigeria’s national memory. We have forgotten her in less than five months and moved on. Yet Ms Ushang’s family still deals with the gory spectre of their daughter’s lifeless body, raped and murdered by irate Islamic militants offended by the sight of her in khaki trousers – given to her by the Federal Government of Nigeria, a state she was serving at the time. She wore trousers in Nigeria’s sharianistan and paid with her life in 2009! (another Christian infidel down, some 40 million, nine hundred and ninety-eight million more to go in Nigeria.) The mob that raped and murdered Grace Ushang has enablers and complicitous political profiteers in the northern elite and leadership. Now Ushang is “ro-ing” her own death. The scions of the politically complicit are misbehaving. And the chicken is home to roost.

Within recent memory, Gideon Akaluka, Christianah Oluwasesin, and Grace Ushang are tragic signposts on a bloody trajectory that has taken us from Maitatsine to Boko Haram, accounting for close to three decades of an annual blood fest in the name of religion in a country that will only be fifty years-old in 2010. There are hundreds of thousands more where the troika of Akaluka, Oluwasesin, and Ushang came from. Hundreds of thousands of unappeased angry souls hovering over Nigeria in search of restitution and the ascription of responsibility and punishment to the guilty. Yet, in more than thirty years of regular Islamist blood fest in northern Nigeria, the Federal Government has never arrested and tried a single Islamic fundamentalist. As far as the cretinous status quo in Nigeria is concerned, no one was responsible for the deaths of Akaluka, Oluwasesin, and Ushang. No investigations. Nothing beyond the platitudinous expressions of dismay and the promise to leave no stone unturned until the perpetrators are found.

Unknown to the political opportunists in the northern elite who manufacture the onward Moslem armies of hunger, indoctrinate, and deploy them periodically to gory and devastating ends just to maintain the status quo, and who proceed to ignore the imperative of justice for the dead, so long as the victims answer Christian names from the south or so long as they are faceless and nameless expendable Muslim commoners from the north, every death has been a step forward on the road to Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab. Their nonchalance and neglect of the epidemic of religious violence in northern Nigeria have now been taken to new levels. Now, the dead are “ro-ing” years of injustice and criminal complicity by the northern establishment. The restless hands of the dead are at work. The spoilt children of our friends, who live in four-million pound apartments in London, are joining Al Qaeda and ensuring that their corrupt fathers in the Nigerian status quo will neither know peace nor find rest.

It must be said that the complicity and guilt of the northern establishment finds comfort in the attitude of the Nigerian media and intelligentsia. The imperative of naming names and ascribing responsibility for these things to specific people and fragments of Nigerian society – where evidence abounds – has always given way to clever demission and political correctness. We are always enjoined not to hold a particular religion or a particular segment of Nigeria responsible for anything. Such analyses often veer into inane philosophical abstractions on collective responsibility, systemic, and institutional failure, and other academic platitudes. Reuben Abati, for instance, has written an article on the current disgrace in which he somehow manages to comfort everyone – including the Mutallab family – and blame no one in particular.

In his own refreshingly different and heartening submissions in the article, “Nigeria’s Terrorism Notoriety”, Okey Ndibe brilliantly analyzes these issues and ascribes responsibility but he falls just short of specifically naming the northern establishment, preferring such euphemisms as “government”, “the Nigerian state”, and “official nonchalance towards the phenomenon of domestic religious violence”. There is a specific establishment behind “government”, “the Nigerian state”, and “official nonchalance” and we must now name and go after them in our critical reflections. Okey and those of us on the same side in the struggle for meaning within the Nigerian conundrum must now realize that the northern establishment has learnt to count on us for such neo-Enlightenment grand gestures of conceptual liberalism. They have learnt to blackmail us as

Islamophobic bigots whenever we move too close to naming them.

We must now call their bluff in our writings and name them. If we can name Helen Ukpabio and hold her responsible for murdering “witch” children in the name of fundamentalist Christianity, if we can name and hold the likes of Enoch Adeboye and Chris Oyakhilome responsible for a brand of fundamentalist Pentecostalism that is too cozy with the corrupt political establishment in Nigeria, we must hold a mirror to the face of the northern oligarchy. We must in fact make a conceptual shift and stop calling the annual carnage that these people condone and refuse to punish in northern Nigeria “religious violence”. They have learnt to live with that designation. It is terrorism pure and simple. We must call it terrorism. We owe the Nigerian people that conceptual shift. For while we are at it, trying to avoid being called bigots, all we get from those who profit politically from Nigeria’s annual ritual of domestic religious terrorism is insufferable arrogance such as we witnessed recently from one of them, Rilwanu Lukman, the irresponsible Minister of Petroleum Resources who abandoned Nigeria to an ongoing fuel crisis to catch up on winter holidays in Vienna in clear defiance of a Vice Presidential order to stay at home and work on the crisis.

We must insist on the fact that it is neither stereotyping nor bigotry to acknowledge and critically engage empirical and provable facts. If it is empirically provable that northern Nigerian has been the locus of virtually every incidence of domestic religious terrorism since independence, if the nonchalance of northern leadership to this gory trajectory of blood is evident and provable (they have never tried anyone for any of the murders), we should go ahead and name them and damn the consequences. Let us harbor no compunction whatsoever in acknowledging the fact that the dead are “ro-ing” their own death and manufacturing Mutallabs. Let us celebrate the fact that those who have denied them justice and their humanity – justice, according to Soyinka, is the first condition of humanity – will now not know sleep and peace. Where Nigerians have been incapable of doing so, the Americans will now guarantee their insomnia and heartening discomfort.

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 Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo

When you strip Nigeria of all its borrowed and illusive attires, what will be left is a wretched half-child-half-man nation on the verge of implosion. Nigerians and the rest of the world are beginning to ask themselves serious questions in the wake of a Nigerian man’s attempt at bombing an American airline over Detroit on Christmas day.

Nigerians, for so long in denial about the dangers of their floundering country, are beginning to rethink. Whether Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab was a crazy young man or the first Nigerian to be named a member of an international Islamic fundamentalist group, Nigerians are sure that nothing will remain the same.

As far back as June 1, 1969, the then Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu stated in his Ahiara Declaration that,

“The Federation of Nigeria is today as corrupt, as unprogressive and as oppressive and irreformable as the Ottoman Empire was in Eastern Europe over a century ago. And in contrast, the Nigerian Federation in the form it was constituted by the British cannot by any stretch of imagination be considered an African necessity. Yet we are being forced to sacrifice our very existence as a people to the integrity of that ramshackle creation that has no justification either in history or in the freely expressed wishes of the people.”

For those who have the eyes to see, Nigeria remains that eye-sore of the African continent. It is also the open-sore of the wider Black world. That it is irreformable is proven day after day since Britain granted it independence on October 1, 1960. Unfortunately, signs of that have been under the radar for many observers.

That the son of a former top Nigerian bank manager, who schooled at a top London University, tried to set a bomb inside an American airplane over Detroit, is all that is needed to refocus the attention of the world to Nigeria.

Since independence, Nigeria has had a civil war in which 3 million people died, mostly Igbo people of Eastern Nigeria. In the four decades since the Biafran-Nigerian war, there had been perennial massacres of people of Southern Nigeria in the North. Over 40 incidents had happened, some small, some large. Meanwhile, nobody had ever been arrested, persecuted or jailed for any of the killings. Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab will experience a different kind of justice in America.

In Nigeria, the Christian –Muslim conflicts often get a political disguise. Until recently, the Muslims of Northern Nigeria seemed more satisfied exerting their blow on Christians on the cloak of political reasons, be it in Jos in 1945, Kano in 1957, all of northern Nigeria in 1966, Kano in 1980, Maiduguri in 1982, Jimeta in 1984, Gombe in 1985, Kaduna & Kafanchan in 1991, Bauchi, Kastina, & Kano in 1991, Zango-Kataf in 1992, Funtua in 1993, Kano in 1994, Kano riot in 2000, Kaduna Sharia riot 2001, Jos 2004, Kano 2004, Kano 2007, Maiduguri 2009.

A careful look at the nature of the massacres, the choice of targets and the motivations behind them show the Islamist elements that desire to establish a pure form of an Islamic North that will not be adulterated by infidels. Within this period, the Muslims sporadically made it clear as when in December 1994 they captured and murdered Christian trader, Gideon Akaluka, who was under police protection. He was accused of tearing pages of the Koran in the northern city of Kano. Muslim group beheaded him and hoisted his head on a pike and paraded through the streets of Kano. On December 12, 2001, a Nigerian Christian truck driver, Saint Moritz, reversing his truck in Kano accidentally ran into an area occupied by Koranic study group. As students fled, one dropped his Koran. The truck trampled on a copy of the Koran. Muslim groups pursued the man into a police station, overpowered the few cops on post and killed him.

In 1999, the first predominately Northern Muslims state of Zamfara came out to declare its desire to have Sharia law fully observed. On January 10, 2001, while the rest of the world watched the Luna eclipse, hundreds of Muslim youths went on rampage in the northern city of Maiduguri. The youths blamed the eclipse on sinful activities committed in the city by Christians. They attacked hotels, bars, brothels, churches, burning and killing, screaming: “God is great!” “We want Sharia.” On October 15, 2001, as America began air strike against Afghanistan, riots broke out in northern Nigerian city of Kano against the air strike. Hundreds of non-Muslims were killed by mobs carrying the picture of Osama bin Laden. To date, thirteen states of the North have declared Sharia law. Since then, over 10,000 people have been killed in religious conflicts.

There is an ongoing war in the oil-rich Niger-delta area of southern Nigeria that influences the price of crude oil worldwide. In the Niger-delta area oil firms are polluting the waters of rural dwellers and armed youths of the area are fighting back, kidnapping expatriates and bombing flow stations and oil pipelines.

The Islamists in the North have made no qualms about their worldview that excludes the rest of the people of Nigeria. When they kill Christian Nigerians, as they always do, the rest of Nigeria make up excuses for them. Hardly were such incidents classified as terrorism, which is what they are. Before Osama bin Laden, there was Mohammed Maitatsine in Kano State of Nigeria who championed the elimination of non-Muslims in the north.

Meanwhile, what many people remember about Nigeria is the scourge of fraudulent proposals for fortunes unearned that flood emails and faxes across the world. It had since been seen as a minor irritation. Few people see it as a symptom of a deeper ailment. The Christmas Day bombing attempt has changed that. The tragedy of Nigeria is shaping up to be the tragedy of the world.

Currently, the Nigerian president has been on his sick bed in far away Saudi Arabia for over a month. He did not hand over power to his vice president because the man is from the south and as such is seen as a second class citizen by some Islamists in the North. So, for a month, the country has no leader. In his absence, politicians plunder the country’s treasury with increased impunity.

If Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia taught the world anything, it is that the world cannot sit back and watch a corrupt and unprogressive ‘ramshackle creation’ like Nigeria as it rots. It will eventually export its evil. Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab has finally exported the evil of Northern Islamist fundamentalism. This is just the beginning.

For the Nigerians, the time has come when they will stop sacrificing “their very existence as a people to the integrity of that ramshackle creation that has no justification either in history or in the freely expressed wishes of the people.”

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.