Oh! This is so sad. Nigeria is at an all time low in its diplomatic relevance on all fronts. The absence of its selected president, Mr. Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua meant there was no diplomatic equal, equivalence and balance to tell President Barak Hussein Obama of United States of America that misguided Christmas day never-to-be bomber, Umar Farouk Mutallab, though born a Nigerian was groomed by Britain and Yemen, perfected his act in Ghana and only included Nigeria as a transit loop. It was a great mistake indeed a grave gaffe, to classify Nigeria as terrorist nation.

Who can blame the US for mischaracterizing Nigeria because of the wrong-headed choice of twenty three years old Abdul Mutallab? While I agree in -to-to with T.V magazine personality Rachel Maddow of MSNBC that it was curious to leave Britain, India and Spain out the terrorism-prone nations club, I will exercise by liberty to objectively analyze events that Nigeria cannot get angry for big brother’s decision for finally loss it and wax it with a group of nations that it used to desperately flirt with.

Anybody can attempt to sell us the ugly stuff that Nigeria does not belong to the same class with Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Syria and all, but we know that the mendacious and deceitfully ruling class in Nigeria, for as long as anybody can remember, did everything possible to put us in the same league with fellows.

If America helps us to put a stamp of international fellowship with a fast track approach to belong in the same club to which we killed several of our compatriots in the past, why should we canvass a different argument on why we should not belong to the same group with Saudi Arabia and Libya? Leaders cannot openly accept petrol-dollar to build mosques and now refuse to accept the categorization brought on the nation by one of the product, a monster, that the entire project was aimed at achieving.  Nigerians are some of the most compassionate people on the face of the earth. Failed states like failed national leadership are same. They are the immediate bases for the unfortunate breeding of Abdul Mutallab. When in the thick of immediate post independent Nigeria, a well known leader in Nigeria campaigned and released ominous rhetoric that Islamism would advance a political agenda and would not stop until the Quran was dipped in the Atlantic Ocean. What did our founding Fathers do?

When some of our countrymen embarked on vicious killings, using sharp sickles to slit open people’s throats and burning places of worship and demanding that the nation must forcefully break apart, what did we do? Nothing.  Instead of doing something we reprised and sacrificed more than one million precious young and old lives in the name of a so called (un) civil war. Even peace-seekers who received death threats with useless religions and political hypocrisy, we continue to humiliate and denigrate as infidels and idolatrous. But none of these individuals has ever brought shame on the nation.

In the early 1980’s as if we had not learnt our lessons, after stare terrorism, thanks to Obasanjo and his militarists friends, killing and maiming our students, killing notable nationalists like Mrs. Funmilayo Ransome Kuti, we could not put in check Islamists of the Maitatsine sect and they killed several people in Kano and elsewhere. We always find the unusual euphemisms to underplay the seriousness and significance of these terrorism acts. If we say they are minor skirmishes, who are we deceiving? The world knows better even when we try to play that deceitful game.

Shortly after emerging from the shameful Maitatsine killings, the entire nation was again engulfed in wanton destructions of killings and arson. In 1983, several people were killed and burnt in the south west. Cameras caught the gory killing of notable publisher and lawmaker, Olaiya Fagbamigbe in Akure, Ondo State. Mobile policemen drafted to quell the crisis, became part of the problem as they turned trigger happy and shot indiscriminately at persons.

Down the line, people were arrested and summarily executed for rimes that were not proven. We violated ourselves, got killed by the military and for the most part, people slept without closing their eyes and say there was no terrorism in Nigeria? What else could be terrorism if people could not stay at home without the fear of being killed and robbed? Abdul Mutallab only tried to export and act upon what he had been exposed to all of his life. It takes exceptional grace for somebody to go through the culture of violence that the average Nigerian child sees and still not end up as an international terrorist.

As we talk to ourselves now, it is an undeniable fact that several fellow Nigerian have erred.  The culture of disrespect for the person and his or her life dwells amongst us. Evil is always with us. Just travel with our public transportation problem, you will be shocked at the propensity for murder and murderous conducts of our commercial drivers in Nigeria. They drive as if they are licensed to kill. And they always have the death merchants to whom they answer; they operate as a cartel, and extolled, established mafia and mob.

I do not know why we would continue to live in denial instead of coming up and getting genuine solutions to our real problems. This past yuletide season, four expatriate workers for Shell Oil Servicing Company were kidnapped and ransoms are being demanded on them in order to be freed.

In 2006, or thereabout, a cargo ship was hijacked by insurgent Nigeria, the merchant ship had Philippines nationals and they were held and humiliated against their will, they were paraded and the images were seen across the world, thus establishing a pattern of criminal conduct. One can also imagine the amount of panic and economic instability brought on the world when our compatriots in the Niger Delta decided to embrace violence, kidnap and blowing up of old pipelines for complicated and convoluted internal disagreements on revenue sharing, corruption and fraud.

On December 17, 2009, Chijioke Nnaneka Iliako Lagos lawyer and industrialist temporarily relocated to his home town of Owerri, to supervise the building of his factory. He was kidnapped and his captors demanded the payment of $3m as bond for his release. Eventually, the ransom was reduced to $70,000.  The family raised the money and they were directed to find and collect their ward in the trunk of a car. When they opened the vehicle, they were confronted with the man’s lifeless body. What else could pass for terrorism?

Abdul Mutallab is metaphor for embarrassment and tragedy that the Nigerian Child has become. Evil always lurks with us. It serves correctly when we look ourselves in the face and acknowledge what we do daily to bring shame on ourselves and our great nation of Nigeria.

Placing Nigeria on the list of terrorism prone nations is only a culmination of the sad violent events unfolding in the country, our compound and different homes every day. It only took the arrest of Abdul Mutallab to face the painful truth.

 

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