Abroad Nuhu Ribadu Opens Up On Boko Haram, Seeks To Defend Jonathan Administration

faraday2002

In a talk “Fight against Religious Extremism: What Role for Diplomacy?” given in Turkey published in ThisDay under heading “Boko Haram And the Global Terror Network,” Nigeria’s former Economic and Financial Crimes, EFCC boss, Nuhu Ribadu who hails from Adamawa, one of the Boko Haram ravaged states, expressed his opinions on Boko Haram and the behaviour of the former Nigerian Goodluck Jonathan administration.
Prelude: Nuhu Ribadu belongs to the People’s Democratic Party, PDP; the recently ousted government. Under Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP regimes past, Boko Haram, MEND, Ombatse and other terrorist organizations evolved and became violently active, (sometimes with their members employed by the government to “protect” public installations and infrastructure) leading to tens of thousands of deaths, millions displaced and unmeasurable economic destruction to Nigeria.
Reading Nuhu Ribadu’s talk, the first thing that draws attention is his opening in which the former police chief and EFCC boss confessed to have kept mute about Boko Haram up until now. For the first time and abroad, not at home, and under the new Muhammadu Buhari regime, the elite indigene of the affected state decided to “open up” on Boko Haram. His words, “When Boko Haram’s murderous campaign got to a head in Nigeria, and the media is everyday awash with, largely, uninformed commentaries, I kept mum. I refrained from saying anything. It was the period of confusion and blame game.”
One could not escape wondering why such an erstwhile respected elite and elder who claims knowledge about this terror saga, by all accounts the worst or one of the worst in recent human history, would have “kept mum” all the while rather than offering his expertise and advise to Nigerians, potential recruits and the Federal government under his party.
What also raises brows is why as is becoming so common nowadays, Nuhu Ribadu, when at last he decided to talk, did so abroad and not to the people of Nigeria. This pattern – of only opening up to a foreign audience and never to the Nigerian people – was most recently observed this January when Nigeria’s head of the Office of National Security, Sambo Dasuki likewise for a first time ever, opened up exhaustively to a foreign audience at the Chatham house in the United Kingdom.
One important reason that has been blamed for the initial unprecedented success of Boko Haram was the eerie silence of media-privileged northern elite and elders, which was at a time criticized as being actual approval or tolerance of the group’s actions. It is disquieting that knowing all he now professes to know, the former EFCC boss refused to talk earlier and when he did so at last, only after Nigeria had declared a full war against the terrorists, did he see it fit to do so abroad.
*It is important to point out that less media-privileged northern lead figures, the likes of Sheikh Jingir, Pakistani, Albani Zaria (killed by Boko Haram for speaking out), Sheikh Gumi and Muslims Against Terror organisation were the few to talk and condemn the terrorists, turning the tide against them.
The second thing noticeable from the Nuhu Ribadu talk was his direct defense of his premier and political party, the PDP government of Goodluck Jonathan. Nuhu Ribadu was not shy to come all out to defend the past regime.
It is necessary to remind of how in the prelude to the recently concluded May 29th presidential elections, in a widely published piece, Nuhu Ribadu delivered what was considered a threat to Nigeria, that the country “must re-elect a corrupt Goodluck Jonathan or face disintegration.” Defending Jonathan he said “Nigeria is at war” and as a result, must re-elect Jonathan in spite of his noted corruption or the country will be split to pieces by terrorists.
It was not the first or last time people of his party had patronized terror or used it as a political tool. Several PDP candidates including the Akwa Ibom governor and a Lagos gubernatorial candidate at the time were using Boko Haram and restive terrorists of the South south as blackmail for soliciting Jonathan’s re-election.
Ribadu’s party’s past Chairman who was later transferred to head the Nigerian Railway corporation, Bamanga Tukur bluntly defended Boko Haram as “Fighting for justice and another name for justice” in a publication in 2012 at a point when the terrorists had killed thousands in a spate of bombings of mostly Churches usually every Sunday.
Nigeria’s former president, Goodluck Jonathan had at the time rejected pleas to send the army to crush the formation in its early days with the words, “how shall we send the army to kill our family. Boko Haram are my siblings.” The Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN immediately asked Jonathan to resign for his insensitivity and embrace of Boko Haram terror.
Undoubtedly, Nuhu Ribadu’s posture using a supposed later date weapons embargo to attempt to defend the former “kid gloves approach” PDP administration he belongs to, recognized for being reluctant to fight, invite to fight or give the right to fight the terrorists for the entire 5 years of its power till as he gave account, “the past two months” and a little over when as Jonathan faced re-election challenges, engagement was finally commenced is next to impossible. Nuhu Ribadu failed to mention why a member of his PDP’s G9, a prominent middle belt politician, Jerry Gana bailed Mohammmed Yusuf, the Boko Haram founder, not once but twice!
While the former EFCC boss gave a succinct account of the origin of the Nigerian Taliban/ Yusufiyyah movement, a group better known as Boko Haram I led by late Muhammad Yusuf, his account was misleading in not explaining to Nigerians that Boko Haram II, the one led by the loony and heroin junky Abubakar Shekau is a totally different terror network that established during Jonathan’s era and had no common ideologies with the Boko Haram that had roots in the Yemeni meeting. Muhammad Yusuf’s Boko Haram as bad as it was would never go about in active pogrom, eliminating the entire indigenous population. Muhammad Yusuf’s Boko Haram fought only one notable war = a war with the state due to a burial helmet incident and police brutality. Muhammad Yusuf was an extremist, but the ideology that Boko is Haram, “western civilization is sin” is not an ideology of genocide.
On the contrary, Boko Haram II, founded by the French speaking Nigerien Abubakar Shekau after defeating his Cameroonian co-aspirant in a power tussle, from onset operated with single mission – mass eradication and displacement of all human beings and life around the resource rich Chad basin and in extension, across the entire north.
Boko Haram II who never stated an ideology unlike Boko Haram I, ISIS, alQaeda or other organizations never bore semblance to these. Taking no prisoners except forcibly conscripted disposable youth soldiers and abducting women to rape for the next generation of terrorists as they hoped, Boko Haram II was on a mission to destroy the farming in the north, conquer the oil, uranium and other resource blessed basin and eliminate the northern populace. The differences between Boko Haram I and Goodluck jonathan’s Boko Haram II is no better illustrated than by their own submission when remnants of Boko Haram I aka the Yusufiyah movement condemned and promised to expose and battle Boko Haram II to their death.

Source: NigeriaMasterweb