... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
for granted, making the disaster a justification for grand public treasury theft and even in service of a refusal to correct perception of tacit support for the group in conspiracy theories promoted to gullible and polarised citizens, the Muhammadu Buhari-led administration, despite its controversial handling of the economy, clearly takes its predecessors as a bad model for conflict management.
A prominent politician once told me that the war on terror failed under former President
Goodluck Jonathan... 14th President of Nigeria. He was Governor of Bayelsa State from 9 December 2005 to 28 May 2007, and was sworn in as Vice President on 29 May 2007. Jonathan is a member of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP). He is a lover of nifty hats, which makes him easily recognizable unless someone else in the room is wearing a neat chapeau.Other than that he's pretty useless as the Boko Haram debacle shows..
because, aside from our popular ridiculing of the man as uncharismatic and clueless, he was "afraid of his service chiefs." This is interesting considering the involvement of heads of our security institutions in one of the biggest heists in the history of Nigeria, diverting funds voted for counterterrorism to their private causes and personal accounts. The region was thus allowed to be destroyed by the Boko Haram because the evil benefits these morally irresponsible public officers.
Quite unfortunate was the politicisation of counterterrorism, with the President even seeking to make it a Muslim agenda against his Presidency while conspiracy theorists in the north, indoctrinated by former Governor Murtala Nyako and even Malam Nasir El-Rufai, portrayed the spate of killings as a covert operation of some Christian organizations or personalities eager to decimate the dominating north and its politically overpowered Muslims.
I have always seen Boko Haram as a real conflict that emerged from our cultural flaws and thrived on our institutional lapses. It's not a conspiracy, it's a reality to which many of us are firsthand witnesses.
I campaigned against Jonathan possessed by rage over his deliberate refusal to serve as a unifying figure at that critical point of our polarisation and distrust, for even making policy statements as he jumped from one pulpit to another, home and Israel.
I don't think the past administration sponsored the Boko Haram, they just let it happen because of the billions allocated to our security agencies by the tricked and paranoid dispensation. Yet, the past few days, with the liberations of many towns previously sacked or occupied by the holy warriors as announced by the Nigerian troops, internally displaced persons have been reunited with the only place they call homes, giving another chance for them to breathe freedom again, and rebuild their lives.