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We, the more than 200 victims of Boko Haram’s latest
savage bomb attacks, feel we must write to you from beyond the grave. Our
simple message is summed up in the phrase: Enough is enough.
As you know, we were dispatched to our sudden death
by the gruesome bombs of depraved people who think they have God’s mandate to
kill and maim others. We did not commit any crime deserving of any punishment,
much less the horrific deaths meted out to us. We were simply going about the
business of our varied daily lives. We just happened to be about when craven
men who take pride in playing god set about their heinous business of sowing
bombs the way more honorable people sow yams.
The bombs exploded in a fraction of a breath, left
us no praying chance, no time even to think swift, endearing last thoughts
about loved ones. Forget about saying hurried good byes. Incendiary, deafening
blasts, and it ended. In a flash, more than two hundred of us, men and women,
adults and children, became gored, scalded, bloodied bodies, twitching as we
turned into corpses. The bombs severed limbs, tore open skulls, disgorged
brains and viscera.
The rabid, misbegotten zealots of a twisted version
of Islam planted the explosives that killed us. But the space and idea called
Nigeria is complicit in our dastardly fate.
The pieces of our decapitated bodies had not been
harvested yet when the Nigerian state commenced its mindless business of
dishonoring the dead. The security agencies that could not anticipate and
forestall the attack that wasted our lives began its usual dumb game of statistical
fibbing. They said “only” twenty-something of us had died. And then, as the
evidence mounted about the scale of the tragedy, they revised their figures
upwards. Only seventy plus people had perished, they asserted.
Why does the Nigerian state resort to lies after
every act of carnage? Isn’t it bad enough that the country’s security agents
are unable to protect innocents from the murderous designs of evil merchants of
death? What end is served by this macabre falsehood? Is there a prize of
nobility handed out to countries that consistently under-report the number of
people who perish in acts of violence? Even if twenty-five of us died, instead
of two hundred, does that earn Nigeria some great glory? Does that make Nigeria
a rosier destination for tourists? Are foreign investors perpetually on the
lookout, waiting to rush their cash into any country that, a, routinely
falsifies the number of casualties in terrorist attacks and, b, would place the
word “only” before twenty-five or seventy-five corpses?
This morbid lying with figures is yet another way
that Nigeria violates most of its populace. Most of those unfortunate enough to
be called Nigerians are systematically degraded in life and diminished in
death. Alive or dead, Nigerians don’t count!
About this time last year, two young men, blood
brothers, set off pressure cooker bombs near the finish line of the Boston
marathon. Three persons died, with scores more injured. US officials did not
spend one moment trying to mislead the world about the number of victims.
Instead, from President Barack Obama through Governor Deval Patrick of
Massachusetts to the mayor of Boston, one message and one message emerged: the
perpetrators would be unmasked, and the people of Boston would grow stronger
from the horror.
The full power and intelligence of American law
enforcement got cracking. Investigations led to leads led to identification of
the perpetrators led to a massive manhunt that led to the death of one suspect,
the capture of the other.
Through it all, the American people, led by Mr.
Obama, remained focused, resilient, determined to learn the hard lessons and to
be more vigilant in order to avert, or at least reduce, future attacks.
What President Obama did, Mr. Jonathan, is a profile
in what’s called true leadership. Let’s contrast his admirable example with
yours.
Our torn limbs were still being gathered, it seemed,
when you, President Jonathan, took off to Kano to keep a campaign date. It was
deplorable enough that you felt the urge to proceed with partisan politicking
hours after a dreadful series of explosions killed so many, physically scarred
many more, and left uncountable numbers bereaved, shaken with grief. But the
kind of political rally you choose to have spoke volumes about your profound
confusion about the meaning and quality of leadership. You had on stage with
you musicians who played heady music, as if the slaughter of Nigerians at
Nyanya motor park was a crowning achievement of your presidency. You even
swayed to the music, titillated your fellow party men and women with a few
dance steps. Then you unleashed a torrent of lowbrow, partisan vituperations
against your political opponents.
Here’s what you didn’t do, what you failed to do.
You didn’t project a solemn expression that would have shown you were aware of
what time it was in Nigeria—aware that it was Death time, Horror time, Mourning
time. If you had to do an event in Kano, you might have used the occasion to spell
out a major policy initiative for addressing the plague of Boko Haram. You did
not tell confused, angry and terrorized Nigerians what you plan to do to
checkmate those who deal death to others in the name of fighting western
values.
No, you danced. You danced—we might as well say—on
the corpses of those who died; on the wounds of those still bleeding from their
injuries; on the agony of the bereaved. For you, sir, and for other Nigerian
officials, leadership seems to be one giddy carnival that goes on interminably,
must go on regardless of the number of corpses piling up on the streets, no
matter the depth of disquiet on the faces of “ordinary” Nigerians for whom
death at the hands of Boko Haram is a real and present danger.
You and your aides have often accused your political
opponents of sponsoring sorties of Boko Haram attacks. If this is true, then
it’s your duty to do something about it. Nigerians are sick of this ploy, tired
of the fruitless pointing at faceless, nameless nemeses. Unmask the sponsors,
now. Order their arrest and prosecution,
now. It doesn’t matter how politically or financially big they are. Go ahead:
name, arrest and prosecute them.
If you’re scared of these champions of death, if the
arsenal of your presidential powers can’t match their homicidal will, then it’s
time you stepped down from the office you hold. If Nigeria’s crime
entrepreneurs are so big that the president and the institutions of the state
must cower in fear of them, then Nigeria has zero reason to continue existing.
Mr. Jonathan, stop this carnival train that parades
streets piled with corpses! Leadership is not a party.
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