This may be the most critical moment in Nigeria for a generation. The threat of Boko Haram has been a fuse burning away in the powder keg of Nigerian political life for the past seven years, largely unchallenged. The political class, with a few distinguished exceptions, has long been in a state of smugness, complacency and collusion. A kind of informal high-grade corruption has become part of Nigerian life.
When Boko Haram began its campaign of cultural, religious and educational separatism — decrying Western education and trying to bring Nigeria under the shadow of Shariah law — it was seen as a ragtag band of fundamentalists not to be taken seriously.
At the time, the nation was distracted by the fallout from the Niger Delta protests in the southeast, the sabotage of oil pipelines and the rash of kidnappings that made the area particularly dangerous. The protests were due to the extreme environmental pollution by oil companies that had devastated farmlands, rivers, whole villages and towns. The execution of writer and environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995 was the last outrage during the long Nigerian sleep.
Illustration: Yusha
The abduction of more than 270 girls by Boko Haram has rightly drawn international condemnation of Abuja’s slow reaction to this outrage. However, the political elite has for a long time been desensitized to the plight of Nigerians.
This is one of the long unexamined consequences of the trauma of the Nigerian civil war in the late 1960s, the horrors of which have never been allowed to heal. The nation passed from a war in which more than 1 million people died into normality with no intervening act of healing the wounded national psyche. The political class does not recognize what other nations would immediately take to be gross outrages.
You can almost hear a politician say: “What is all the fuss about? We see worse in our streets every day.”
It is seeing worse, living with worse, as though it were normal, that has given rise to the somnolent response to the girls’ abduction.
There is also the history. The problem of Boko Haram germinates in the very foundation of the nation itself. The fault line was there when the British government created the northern and southern protectorate before combining them into a single nation called Nigeria in 1914. The north-south divide, at the heart of the Nigerian polity, is the elephant in the room.
There are those who hint at forces behind Boko Haram trying to bring about, through terror, a return to the hegemony of the north. It is not wise to dwell on such toxic rumors, but it is useful to mention that Boko Haram’s roots lie firmly in the north.
One of its roots could also be said to lie in the collision of endemic poverty, the politics of inequality and the politics of corruption that have been eating away at the nation’s heart. In a country rich with oil revenues, where billions of dollars vanish with no one held to account, where going into politics is synonymous with acquiring vast and sudden wealth, where slums breed in larger numbers every day, where national revenue does not improve people’s lives, it is not surprising that violent sects grow.
Still, none of these factors explains the abduction and the suicide bombings and the terrorism. There has been much talk of sinister forces at work. However, one thing remains abundantly clear: There should have been an immediate and powerful government response from the beginning. Never before has such criminal viciousness been perpetrated on Nigerian womanhood. It strikes at the very heart of the nation’s dilemma. What kind of nation does Nigeria want to be? A nation of intolerable lawlessness, or a nation of justice, courage and fairness?
For too long, Nigeria has failed to live up to the tremendous promise glimpsed at independence in 1960. Nigerians cry out for justice. The girls’ abduction from Chibok is a wake-up call, although an alarm has been ringing at a thousand decibels and no one has been paying attention.
All it now takes is for one bomb to be dropped in the middle of Lagos for the country to be precipitated into a state of emergency, summoning the unwelcome presence of the military.
Nigeria has been poised over an abyss for a long time. The attempt at cessation gave rise to one bloody war. Various groups, disenchanted with their treatment within the nation, keep raising this dangerous specter. Boko Haram raises it again.
The international community drew attention to the abductions: It took a storm of global protests to alert the Nigerian government to the seriousness of the situation. This community is now a necessary part of the solution.
The Nigerian military — by its own admission — feels unequal to the challenge; it has claimed that it knows where the girls are, but can do nothing about it because of its inexperience.
This is the moment for Nigeria to rise to its true stature and bring ethical standards to governance.
There are only two roads to take: More of the same, which would lead to further outrages and eventual fragmentation, or Nigeria wakes to the call that sounded at independence and begins again on that road toward its destiny as one of the great nations of the world.
What it does about the girls abducted from Chibok will in a curious way decide the future of Nigeria. It is odd to think that a nation’s destiny can hang on so palpable a cause for action.
Ben Okri is a Nigerian novelist and poet.
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