The Boko Haram menace

Guardian

11 February 2011

The Boko Haram menace

THE other week,  precisely in the afternoon of Friday,  January 28,  gunmen belonging to the  Boko Haram religious sect  killed, as admitted in their public notice pasted in parts of Maiduguri,  the  Borno State Commissioner  for Finance and Economic Development and ANPP governorship  candidate, Alhaji Modu Gubio, the younger brother of  Governor Ali Modu Sheriff,  Alhaji Goni Sheriff, two security details attached to Gubio, and  three  other persons.  The following Tuesday, members of the sect killed a senior police officer and wounded his daughter. Since July 2009 when its founder, a certain religious  zealot named  Mohammed Yusuf,  was arrested but  killed while in police custody, Boko Haram adherents have killed or maimed policemen, soldiers, and ordinary citizens at will in Borno and Bauchi States.

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It is disheartening that, faced with such huge task, President Goodluck Jonathan carries on as if each of these problems exists in isolation, localised to its immediate environment. Maybe so. But again, many localised problems have a way of growing  into a big problem, unless addressed in time. It may be politically expedient at this time, to play the ostrich with the present state of insecurity in the land. But it is certainly not the right and proper thing to do. Each passing day, precious lives are lost and property destroyed. Woolly promises to “fish out the culprits” are inadequate. It is indeed a strange response to a serious matter that Governor Sheriff would request prayers for God to intervene in the Boko Haram threat to peace. The people of Nigeria want hard proof that there is a government in charge, one willing and able to secure them and their country.