The Girls of Chibok, Maga, Papiri and our Frankenstein -By Festus Adedayo

On the night of April 14, 2014, rumour took over the Nigerian space. On that night, as Islamic jihadists’ trucks and buses forcibly conveying abducted 276 girls from Chibok, Borno State, disappeared into the Sambisa forest, a scary rumour whooshed in the Nigerian air. The girls were aged 16 to 18 and students of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok. It brings the question, what is the place of rumour in our everyday society? Nicholas DiFonzo and Prashant Bordia, in their “Rumor, gossip and urban legends” Diogenes (2007) say rumour is an “unverified and instrumentally relevant information statement in circulation”. Simply  put, you can dismiss rumour at your peril. Because, as the agò (costume) shawls the masquerade from view, the egúngún could emerge from the agò as human after all. As such, even with power, majesty and Intel reports at his disposal, as the Jihadists ferried the girls into Sambisa, President Goodluck Jonathan chose to queue behind “rumour” as an instrumentally relevant information. Rumour then assumed the place of fact.

But, what was the rumour of Chibok? That the abducted schoolgirls, mostly Christians and a sprinkle Muslims, were instruments in the hands of Nigerian politicians. But, how? When? Why?

While the All Progressives Congress (APC) was seeking to meander its way into Aso Rock in 2014, it was caught in the web of that rumour. Before anyone could stand in its way, the rumour had spiraled in like a typhoon. Even the maishai hawking hot tea by the sidewalks was sold the hot rumour. It was retailed on every outlet. Deft politicians of the APC were said to have woven the plot like a spider weaves its gossamer. Having brilliantly pelted the sour grape of “lacklustre” and “clueless” on Jonathan, “ineptitude” would finally ram in the last nail on his government’s coffin. America would buy it and APC would coast home to power. The rumour goes thus: enlisting local militants to siphon the girls out of Chibok was a top-notch political masterplan to tar-brush Jonathan. It has been said that the global outrage the Chibok abduction courted, with Barack Obama and his wife becoming willing recruits of the agenda, incinerated Jonathan. Its effect was so massive that, when he got to the polls in 2015, Jonathan was as worthless as a roll of tissue paper. For a very long time, a Big Man in the APC, said to have been handed the job of ferrying those girls out of Chibok, was never in good terms with Jonathan. Now, pay-day is here.

Sheikh Gumi and bandits

Fast-forward to last week. When their projection hits the bull’s eye, Yoruba say, the Babalawo had hardly unpacked his Ifa divination tablet, also known as an Ọpón Ifá, than physical affirmation of his prophecy came to pass. DiFonzo and Bordia’s rumour definition again perched on us like a recalcitrant vulture on carcass. Events of last week earned the epaulette to be saluted as Nigeria’s most harrowing week. Gory occurrences happened in less than 24 hours span from one another. They were followed by high-quality rumours which traveled at the speed of light, bearing cadences of truth. Nigeria’s recent insecurity nightmares, the rumours say, are pay-day for persons in this government who, eleven years ago, gathered to cook a broth of lies with faggots of untruth.

Time is a scatterer. Yoruba, chanting the unflattering cognomen of Time, say it scatters while evil ones build an anthill of lies. They thus nickname it “atúwon ká níbi wón gbé ñdá’ná iró.” Last week, years of gathering to cook a broth of untruth with institutional and establishment lies burst and scattered like the dry fruits of àgbáàrín, the velvet bean. That bean is also known as cowhage. During dry season, unceremoniously, the àgbáàrín splinters into numberless pieces. So, the hidden evil broth whose cooking became springboard for the burning of a whole house, would seem to have become public knowledge.

If you saw last week’s viral video of worshipers at a branch of the Christ Apostolic Church, (CAC) Eruku in Kwara State, the picture you would get is a prostrate Nigeria, on its knees. When you add that sobering picture to last Tuesday’s story of armed Islamic terrorists’ killing of a vic principal, abducting at least 25 students of Government Girls’ Comprehensive Secondary School, Maga, Kebbi State, as well as the killing of a Nigerian Brigadier-General by ISWAP terrorists, the picture becomes complete. The week was almost ending when another horror occurred. Three hundred and fifteen students of St. Mary’s Catholic Secondary and Primary School, Papiri, Niger State were abducted. So huge is the terror that, in panic, government shut all the 47 unity colleges.

Nigerian soldiers patrolling Northern Nigeria

When you dig a trench to bury your enemy, folk wisdom counsels that you dig it as shallow as possible. The nugget of the counsel is that, that same trench may well be your sepulcher. In the wake of the week of palpable agony that was unleashed on Nigeria last week, the Jonathan narrative returned to Nigerian public discourse. It is the narrative of a Nigeria being run by a government that is clueless in taming the shrew of insecurity, but heavy in propaganda. The Obamas have now been replaced by Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and co. as taunters of those who dug Jonathan’s grave. Evil has turned full circle.

The Eruku church invasion has preyed on the subconscious of the world ever since. Its preying comes with terrifying and terrorizing images. We saw a pastor, with an interpreter by his side, holding forte. With a rapturous congregation, they prayed against existential calamities. How were they to know that the devil, who they daggered with their religious swords, was at an arms’ length, ready for retaliation? All of a sudden, the melancholic rat-a-tat of automatic gun rifles ricocheted through the church premises. The pastor and his interpreter at first resisted the instinct to flee. Children wailed. Adults groaned. They ran hither thither. The ricochet would not cease. The image that has refused to leave my mind is that of the elderly woman. Frail, senescent and helpless, age couldn’t allow Grandma sprint off danger. The old woman’s back bent by age, the traditional church women scarf firmly plastered on her head, she tottered snailishly, seemingly oblivious of death that lurked by the corner. Grandma epitomizes the plight of helplessness of average Nigerians in the hands of those who lead them. Grandma must have painfully walked, with a combination of all muscles in her veins, in strides that appeared leisurely, all in the bid to beat the manic gaits of the rampaging bandits. It reminds me of the saying that, in the innermost recess of the cripple lies dance steps. He is however restrained by an inner force. The force, in the case of Grandma, was age. Yet, the gun would not cease. It boomed frighteningly.

And then, the bandits stormed the church of God.  Sporadic gunshots exploded. It was as if Eruku was Kyiv. Even before the invaders eventually stepped their infidel feet into the House of God, its premises were bleeding blood from fear of guns. When they eventually stepped their blood-stained feet on God’s sacred groove, the mainstreaming cameras caught the innermost recess of their hearts. It was thirsty for the blood of worshipers. Their physiognomy was unmistakable. It was that of our national tormentors, the Fula ethnic group, otherwise called Fulani. Dispersed across the Sahara, Sahel, West Africa and northern parts of Central Africa, South Sudan, Darfur and regions near the Red Sea coast in Sudan, this ethnic group has a sacred bonding that goes beyond the surreal.

They are a large and widely dispersed Muslim ethnic group renowned as the world’s largest nomadic group. They are monolithic, with estimates putting their population figure between 25 and 40 million people worldwide. Though native to countries like Senegal and Ethiopia, their concentration is dense principally in Nigeria, Mali, Guinea, Senegal, and Niger. They are as cohesive as ants. The glue that binds the Fula, in spite of their widespreadness, is their language, history and culture. They are like the biblical Hebrew tribe whose main features were their patrilineal descent from Jacob (Israel), their ancestral division into twelve distinct tribes, as well as their unique characteristics and destinies.

A fulani herdsman with gun

As Hebrews are a unified nation  developed into a nation with a common language and religion, so are the Fula. Though they lack an ancestral figure like the Hebrews do in Jacob, Fulani possess key characteristics of tribal structure and are almost completely of the Islamic faith, with a sprinkling minority of Christians or animists. In Nigeria, they are at the pinnacle of power. One of their topmost bloodlines in government today is Nigeria’s National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu.  So also was Muhammadu Buhari, who was once quoted to have said in 2013 that “the military offensive against Boko Haram is anti-North”. Former Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai, was also openly supportive of Fulani terror. In a viral video which had him crying and asking for retaliation, Isa Pantami, Nigeria’s erstwhile Minister of Communications, cried that there were retaliatory attacks against insurgents. In another sermon, Pantami called Boko Haram Islamic Jihadists “our Muslim brothers” who were being massacred “like pigs” rather than being accorded the privileges of Niger Delta militants. Under the Muhammadu Buhari presidency, a top official of that government shocked Nigerians when he said the Fula of countries in Africa had the “inalienable rights” to ingress into and egress out of Nigeria. They didn’t need  Visas.

Last Tuesday, the Fula tormentors, cuddling menacing rifles like a mother cuddles her newborn, stormed Eruku. They stomped in like an army of occupation. Inhabitants said they got prior Intel of their invasion which they shared with security agencies. The question is, would Fula top chiefs manning Nigerian security hurt their bloodline to appease Eruku ‘infidels’?

So, they struck. Viral videos of their clinical operation showed about five armed bandits. They meticulously ransacked the place of worship and carted away belongings of church members. Their faces were menacing, heads plastered with caps of blood, and hands bearing weapons of bloodshed. It was a terrifying sight. Children wailed. Adults cried. None of them could stop the blood-thirsty gun-wielders. As congregants scampered hither and thither, they encountered their Fula killers right inside the church. At the end of the raid, press reports claimed the attackers killed three worshipers. They must have muttered “Allahu akbar” as they did this. Kwara State has confirmed that 38 worshipers, which included the pastor and congregants, were equally rounded up and marched into the forest. But, judging by its contiguity to the southwest, does Tinubu know that the next place to walk into for the Fulani terrorists of Eruku is Yorubaland?

Twenty four hours before, the terrorists found encore in Maga. Around 4a.m. on Monday, they struck this sleepy town in Kebbi State. It was the Government Girls’ Comprehensive Secondary School, Maga, in Danko/Wasagu Local Government Area that they chose. Maga brings fond memories of Kebbi State to me.Thirty two years ago, I saw caravans of traders, travelling on their mules galloping across the deserts through Yelwa-Yauri, Koko-Besse, Zuru, Suru, Jega, down to Argungu. Maga existed for us in conversations. Carrion-hungry ravens would seem to have polluted the unvarnished peace of Kebbi. When they concluded their pre-dawn raid of terror, 25 students were matched into the bush while the vice principal and a security guard were said to have been shot dead. In an interview, Malama Amina, wife of the slain vice principal, said the Jihadists, who dressed in army camouflage, spoke fluent Fulfude.

If you follow the unleashing of terror on the Nigerian space this past week, its abnormality would strike you firsthand. Was there a choreographed attempt to foist the narrative of an inept leadership? Or Christian persecution? The incongruities are manifest. One is that, kidnap of school students, since Chibok, would seem to have receded. Why its resurgence now? Second is that, the inundation of the country with about four terrorist attacks in one week cannot be a happenstance. Piling the horrors into one single week raises a red flag of suspicion. At a time when America is firing its tempers at Tinubu from all cylinders, even an incompetent military analyst would confirm that this fusillade of attacks is not organic. In the manner of a recent lingo curated in Ibadan, Oyo State, that went viral, it looks like some persons, sitting somewhere, have chosen to cure past madness or even recent ones, with madness.

The upsurge of violence in Nigeria by Islamic fundamentalists looks like what Yoruba would refer to as egbìnrìn òtè. It is a complex and endless web of plots, intrigues and conspiracies. In this roller-coaster of intrigues, any attempt to find solution to one plot leads to more plots surfacing. It is comparable to a recurring infestation of disease.

To douse the fire of egbìnrìn òtè requires tact. Nigeria must do three things to wean this repeated violent blood-let off it. First, we must find out what the ideology of Boko Haram and other Islamists is. It is only when we know what makes them tick that we can find solutions to the insurgents’ irritancy. It is apparent that the “book is Haram” philosophy credited to the insurgents’ spiritual leader, Mohammed Yusuff, is no longer the Jihadists’ current ideology. Is the ideology a Fulanization agenda? Is it Islamic? Is it ethnic? These questions become necessary because there is so much Fulanization wrapped round the Boko Haram insurgency which makes prising them apart difficult. Second, in trying to tame this Frankenstein’s monster of insurgency and banditry, the Tinubu government must come clean with itself, just as it must be ready to clean the Augean stable.

For so long, Nigeria has accommodated seeds of destruction within itself like the proverbial foetuses within the gaboon viper, (Ọka) which my people believe will eventually kill the snake. In Nigeria’s week of terror, security forces were fingered as enabling the insurgents. Government must clearly identify military barons and their civilian accomplices who see insurgency as business, religion or tribe. Upon identification, it must go after them with the venom of the western taipan, a species of extremely venomous snake of central east Australia origin. Saboteurs are a legion at the apex of power and are agents of the multiplication of the seeds of insurgency in Nigeria. It was this crack that Donald Trump entered in performing his “disgraceful country” showmanship. If Tinubu will, this hour, de-emphasize the politics of 2027 and embrace country, we will not have to repeat this orgy of bloodshed and kidnapping of our children.