This question concentrated my mind on Wednesday, July 23, immediately news filtered in that former military Head of State, a presidential aspirant and, chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), General Muhammadu Buhari, was nearly assassinated in Kaduna on his way to Daura, his hometown in Katsina State.
The question can also be coined differently. What actually is Boko Haram? I am not really enquiring about the meaning of Boko Haram but the people behind the Islamic sect.
If we know those behind it, we will be able to know what they want, assuming they want anything. It will be easier to know if they are simply a bunch of anarchists bent on instigating a crisis that will doom Nigeria.
I am raising these questions because we seem not to know who or what Boko Haram is. For too long, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has profiled Buhari and his party, the APC, as the masquerades behind the evil group.
In fact, so damaged is Buhari politically that in some parts of the country, he has almost become a persona-non-grata. And the only weapon the PDP has against him when and if he declares his interest to once again contest the presidential election is to ratchet up the allegation that he is a patron of Boko Haram. Now the assassination attempt.
Of course, Buhari has denied the allegation that he backs Boko Haram, but he has not been able to convince some Nigerians.
Had the situation remained like that it would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, for him to disabuse the minds of those his detractors have convinced that he is a Muslim fundamentalist and that Boko Haram is a tool used by the far-right political wing of the APC in the North to dissuade President Goodluck Jonathan from contesting the election next year.
But if Buhari is a patron of Boko Haram and if APC chieftains are the financiers of the terrorist group, why would they want to kill him? From all indications, and as Buhari himself observed, the attack on his convoy was “clearly an assassination attempt.”
There can only be two explanations to that attack which claimed scores of lives.
One is that it was not carried out by Boko Haram. This will mean that Boko Haram has become a franchise, under whose banner sundry criminal groups are waging atrocious wars.
Since Boko Haram has spirits as members (apologies to Jonathan), these groups have reasoned that it is easier to get away with any atrocity committed in the name of Boko Haram. If this is the case, then we have a bigger problem on our hands.
Second, it could be that Boko Haram actually carried out that attack. If it did, it cannot be a case of mistaken identity because the hit men knew their target. If they knew and still tried to kill Buhari, it could also mean one or two things.
One is that Buhari, their alleged “patron saint” had falling out with them by what he said or did. The second reason, the most plausible, is that the attackers only wanted to instigate a crisis that would have consumed Nigeria.
Imagine what would have happened or what would be happening in Nigeria now if Buhari, a man with a cult-following, had been killed on July 23. Nigeria would have been set ablaze. The 1966 pogrom would have been re-enacted.
I can picture in my mind’s eye all the Almajiris in the North without rhythm or rhyme descending on Southerners in the North, particularly their most vulnerable targets, the Igbo. I can see gory pictures of slit throats and people set ablaze for reason of where they come from or their religion. I can see total chaos and anarchy.
Jonathan and the PDP would have had a hard time exonerating themselves. Just as some people in the South perceive Buhari as a religious extremist, many in the North would have come to one conclusion – he was assassinated by those who knew that he was going to win the 2015 presidential election and calculated that death was the only way to stop him.
These scenarios are scary.
Anybody who wants Buhari dead at this time and in the circumstance it was intended does not mean well for Nigeria and Nigerians. So, rather than playing politics with Boko Haram and using its mayhem for political advantage, the ruling party and the main opposition party should come together to confront this common enemy.
Whoever is launching these attacks across the country does not mean well for Nigeria and her citizens.
The government must thoroughly investigate this attack. With the way things are going, everybody is a suspect. The security crisis and the ease with which these evil ones hit their targets has become such that even those entrusted with the responsibility of protecting us should be investigated.
As the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) noted in its reaction, “We are witnesses to how rogue regimes in certain climes bomb their citizens under the pretext of extremist insurgents like Boko Haram.
“Our recent history reminds us of the NADECO days when we witnessed a series of bomb blasts in Lagos traced to the General Sani Abacha’s regime. This makes it imperative for a thorough investigation.”
Jonathan has no choice than to get a handle on insecurity. While we are grateful to God and rejoicing that Buhari survived this mindless attack, the death of one person, even if he is the least among us, diminishes all of us.
As John Donne, the 16th century Jacobean metaphysical poet succinctly noted, “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”