Abdulhamid Al-Gazali
Last Saturday, a week ago, for those of us who have their states at hearts and anguished by the agony which has befallen our absolutely peace-loving and law-abiding innocent people, and thus care to keep to count, it is exactly 6months the President declared a State of Emergency in 15 local government, for a stated span of 6months. The underlying bone of contention now is not whether to extend it or not, but is to explore the successes and failures of the policy from the time it came to being and draw the necessary conclusions therefrom, to answer the question whether it has lived up to its expectation or not, which will serve us the plausible decider to, or not, extend it.
Thus, if one would be fair enough, setting Maiduguri as place of reference, where I reside, it is absolutely difficult to say YES or NO, particularly with some of the reports of incidents of repeated assaults in other free of the Emergency rule states, such as Kano. But, by any means, one is safe to say NO, because it has failed to achieve its primary objective, which I don't necessarily bear the responsibility of enlightening the reader, that its, is mainly to restore absolute peace and free the affected states from the unpleasant atmosphere of insecurity posed by the sect group our media nicknamed Boko Haram, whose actions has held the entire nation under hostage.
The success of every undertaking in life, it is said, is its ability to achieve at least its primary objective, and by whatever means, anything short of, is a whopping failure. If I've understood what the state of Emergency means right, it affords the military operatives a free-end sort of authority to make arrests without warrant, mount search without warrant or in other short term -- operate without interference by the state -- with its command only coming at the top most echelon of the security, for a certain period of time -- all in the interest of the restoration of peace and order in the country. And therefore the curfew which accompanied it seems to be somehow different from it, on this regard.
Curfew to my limited understanding is absolutely a case apart from the Emergency rule. It is primarily a diplomatic policy used only to douse down tension during some emergency security situations, of which anything other than, the legality is under great question, especially in a democratic society. No doubt curfews are put in to effect to reduce crimes today in many other places and many people see it as the inexpensive means to reduce the rate of criminal activities. But its fundamental objective, anywhere in this World, is to water down tension, at the moment of emergency.
The correlation between the 7pm-6am curfew in these be-dogged states however, is what nobody seems to understand. One should however be reminded that, since the first day a certain team of security operatives set foot in the society of Maiduguri (in particular), during Ali Sheriff, the out-gone embattled governor of Borno, Operation Flush II, for those who memory serves well, effects of emergency rule have started to reflect because arrests and different searches were made without any warrant (without success). Hence one is, to some degree, certain to assume that the curfew is meant only to make a difference, this time. Yet, we are not sure, though.
Granted that it is not, and that we all don't know, for whatever objective envisaged by the government to have imposed such a curfew, it should be noted that it does not end crime, or say, even reduces it (and even if it does reduce, it is only temporary).
Perhaps we should be happy and appreciative of the Emergency rule policy, accompanied by its 7pm to 6am curfew, if at all they were meant to be the same, that, ever since it came to effect, if not for the disturbing spree of burning down some primary schools months ago in the city of Maiduguri, the state remains free of mid night attacks it used to suffer (though it is not consciously meant to prevent it) and whereas places that do not have Emergency rule (i.e its curfew) do suffer, Kano for example.
But besides all the attacks in the open daylight, the fact that throughout the curfew period we are free from mid night attacks is not a guarantee that there would be no such occurences after the policy is lifted. As well, this too is not a guarantee to extend it -- the Emergency rule-cum-curfew -- because no one has a certain date to tell the government or is sure of when absolute normalcy will return and of which, extending it will only amount to keeping the policy under effect for time ad infinitum.
All these aside, we all know the fact that there is no price for peace, at one hand, and at the other, we all know the negative economic, social etc effects of the state of emergency -- from the curfew to the closure of borders, etc -- on the people of these places over which it was imposed. And these people have endured (for the interest of national peace) the various hardships thereof, believing fully well that peace will come back to the nation. Six months on, their endurance promised not to be rewarded with the peace they so much crawled for.
However, still, the fact that they have endured hardships for six months, is not a reason to lift the much touted curfew or the Emergency rule as a whole, if at all there is any success in sight, no matter how minute. But, there is not. In cases like this, it is not only when we are at equals in intellect with some of the veteran war strategists such as the Chinese warriors or the professional crisis managerialists, that despite the need for some discipline of persistence, when a certain strategy fails to work out its primary objective, another approach should be tried. That six months on, the headquarter of the sect group is not yet figured out or any idea of its whereabout; that the place of hiding of the leader(s) of the sect is not yet found; or that the big guns behind the whole thing, still remain unknown; that there is no any remarkable arrest of some of its key members yet made, is, I think, even if we may choose to deliberately overlook or
ignore the hardships it caused these people -- from driving them out of their homes, resulting in high level of internal displacement, preventing them from conducting their usual businesses (which is the backbone of their livelihood) and to the cyclical harassment they suffer in the hands of security operatives (who lack good coordination)... enough to try another more potent and effective approach.
And as things stand today, what many people believed as the only level headed solution to the Boko Haram problem, is the diplomatic roundtable approach, this is not to say we are into a sort of logical appeal to majority ad populum. That, even if for trial, considering the atmosphere of persistence it enjoyed, from various security specialists, it oughts to be considered. We all know that what we need is not just a mere temporary peace, but a peace with "security", i.e, a peace we will all be assured that it will keep on, without any fluctuation. And this is the advantage of the peace achieved through the roundtable than that through the trigger, as plausibly evidenced by the case of Niger Delta Militants, and on the latter's case, by the beginning of the very Boko Haram back in 2009, of whose solution of kill-them-all only maintained peace for a short while.
Bear with me once more to clear one thing before closing this piece. We've heard people saying that, engaging Boko Haram in a Dialogue or offering Amnesty to them, is just another way of giving birth to another violent group in some other parts of the country. This, is because others, i.e the would-be-whatever-Haram, they say, in their argument, will do so knowing well that they will also be treated with softness by the Nigerian State, hence resulting in some sort of frequent occurence of violence in the Nation... thus, they say, instead, to prevent any such after-effect, Boko Haram should be utterly "crushed". They believe that Boko Haram sprung up because of what is done to the Niger Delta Militants. However, for all I know, they have done one very good thing at least, that they have, in their case, given their solution, isolating themselves from those who keep arguing without making their case.
The arguments of the crush-them-all theorists unfortunately could not stand the rigour of even the minutest logical scrutiny... one will easily notice that they are entirely built on different inaccurate and false premises. The argument that Boko Haram sprung up as the result of the Militancy in Niger Delta, is a logical fallacy assertion called in Latin, "post hoc ergo propter hoc", meaning -- A happened, then B, therefore A caused B. The other argument that, offering the type of the treatment of Niger Delta militants to Boko Haram will give rise to another violent group, is also a fallacy called... "base rate fallacy" -- i.e making a probable judgement, base on conditional probabilities, without considering the effect of prior probabilities.
Therefore, if we all believe that there is no price for peace, and that every mission we set out on, as humans, is always with the probability of either success or failure, we should, for the good of this country, disregard such solutions offered by these people, these Messrs-we-know-all activists such as Femi Fani Kayode, who are absolutely ignorant of the character, dynamics, and issues involved in the Boko Haram movement (and therefore, because understanding it defies their intellect, draw obscure and rash conclusion base on the very little they could grasp). We should "utterly" disregard them and try the more hopefully potent approach. God help us. Amen.
(NB: this is the third part of the series I wrote under the captions: "Maiduguri: A 'Mega-barracks' Or In A 'Deeper Shit'? [I]", "Maiduguri: When Will This Hell End?
Written by NEWSTRAWL ONLINE UPDATE
Sodiq Oyeleke is a Media, Human Resources, Project Management and Public Relations Practitioner
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