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Nigeria: lament of a nation

Adamu Adamu

What is Boko Haram, what role is the American CIA playing in its promotion and who else is behind it are questions addressed by Adamu Adamu in Nigeria

Apparently, it is; and the new rule is: if you can’t break them, join them. But will they join to stamp out their baby? As it is, Muslims think Boko Haram is a conspiracy targeted at them by outside powers; Christians believe it is a conspiracy targeted at them by Muslims; and one of their very unhelpful comments is saying that it is an attempt by Muslims to “Islamize” Nigeria, thereby turning a very narrow, unsupported agenda into an agenda of Muslims.

And if Christians really believe this, they are not likely to take the trouble to understand, much less develop the empathy needed to come to the aid of Muslims in the cooperative search for a solution to a problem that, though called, and calling itself, a Muslim insurgency, and overtly targeted at churches and Christians, was covertly designed to break Islam and Muslims in Nigeria to pieces.

And if Christians really believe this, they are not likely to take the trouble to understand, much less develop the empathy needed to come to the aid of Muslims in the cooperative search for a solution to a problem that, though called, and calling itself, a Muslim insurgency, and overtly targeted at churches and Christians, was covertly designed to break Islam and Muslims in Nigeria to pieces. Moreover, it was contrived to commit outrageous acts in order to further besmirch the reputation of the religion and set Christians against Muslims in a bloody conflict that will dismember the polity.

In a not implausible report released recently, the GreenWhite coalition, a citizens’ volunteer watchdog made up of Nigerians of all ethnic groups and religious persuasions, mostly in the diaspora, who are worried about the fate imperialism has mapped for their country, revealed that the current Boko Haram campaign is a covert operation organized by the CIA to break up Nigeria. Whether Muslims who always came out and claimed responsibility for the killings, the arson and all the mayhem did so in full sobriety might never be known with certainty; but the fact that al-Qaeda always claimed responsibility never altered the fact that, as former US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton officially confirmed, it was America that created it.

According to the coalition, the goal of this destabilization campaign, “fits into the long term US government’s well camouflaged policy of containment against Nigeria, the ultimate goal of which is to eliminate Nigeria as a potential strategic rival to the US in the African continent; and it will be used to ensure that Nigeria is weakened internally by intractable crises leading up to 2015 when the next general elections are expected to come up. By that year there will be so much mutual suspicion among Nigerians that the election itself might not hold, or if it did at all, will set the stage for a full rupture of the Nigerian state. By its calculation and design, the Nigerian state will be so fractious by then; it will be fully ripe for intervention and break up.”

Thus, the abduction of the girls in Chibok provided, or perhaps, more accurately, was made to provide, imperial America with the same convenient pretext that US Ambassador April Glapie presented Saddam Hussein with in July 1990; and that became the rope onto which foreign troops clung to drop into Iraq, and it was the same rope on which he himself ultimately hanged.

But the destabilization has other motives. As seen in the revelation by WikiLeaks, the African Crisis Response Initiative, which provided the seed from which the US Africa Command, AFRICOM, germinated, was formed to counter and contain Nigeria’s emerging role in what America considers its sphere of influence; and along the way also to curtail the growing influence of China, its main global rival in the sub-region.

And, as the world has seen elsewhere, the strategy is to create an insurgency or encourage and facilitate one already existing; and then feed it until it goes out of control. Thereafter, with the cooperation and help of international news media — and now social media — the situation is internationalized. Just see how, within the space of a week or two the entire world was brought to its feet for #BringBackOurGirls!

After generating such an overwhelming sea of sympathy in the world, the target country is now ready for intervention; and the realization of the agenda becomes easy. We have seen other parallels in the penetration of East Africa and countries of the Horn of Africa. The US came in ostensibly in order to protect them from the fallouts of the Somali insurgency which was created, precipitated — and then left unsolved — by the same US.

And in the same tradition of the New Middle East of ineffectual statelets that the US still dreams of creating at the end of its adventures in Kuwait, Iraq and now Syria, it also nurses plans to carve up Nigeria so that none of the resulting states will be able to challenge or supplant American hegemony in the ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) sub region.

Outside the Arab world, the US is interested in access to oil without having to worry about Muslim part-ownership of it, as happened in Sudan, and as will happen in Nigeria if they succeed in setting Muslims and Christians at war with each other, which has been the unrealized goal of all the church-bombings. While nowadays the Americans are doing everything to reduce their own dependency on outside oil supplies, they are still interested in controlling its source if only in order to deny access to it by its rivals like China.

According to Dr. Phillip Njemanze, chairman of Global Prolife Alliance Council, another major aim of the insurgency was to capture the food security of Nigeria and control Africa’s largest nation by using Boko Haram to displace indigenous farmers in the northeast, create an artificial famine in order to replace indigenous agricultural produce with genetically modified crops (GMC). That will then pave the way for GMC growers like Bill Gates and Monsanto to be allowed in by the Federal Government to establish large-scale farms to grow them here.

In an interview with Daily Trust, Bill Gates said his foundation was carrying out Satellite Remote Sensing of the northeast area to study migration patterns of people; and, according to Dr. Njemanze, the satellite images generated could be and were being shared and used by the insurgents to identify military installations, the position of the Joint Task Force and how to evade and attack them.

With a government that by common global consent is entirely and blissfully clueless, and an insurgency taking its daily toll in hundreds and creating mass penury through arson, kidnappings, killings, targeted cattle-rustlings, internal displacement and the creation of mass fear, Nigerians must swallow their pride and accept that their government has proved unable to put down a small scale insurgency without multinational help — and endure the pain of having to see them come.

So far, Britain has offered to help. So has France. Israel, which mistook criticism for invitation, has also offered to come again, even though it is already here. Some others are waiting in the wings. The Chinese have offered to help. Of course the world has seen the nature of the collateral damage and insupportably brutal method the Chinese employed in putting down their own Muslim unrest in East-Turkestan (Xinjiang). In this operation, if they do come in they may do well to remember that Maiduguri is not Urumqi, and Damaturu is not Kashgar; nor is Sambisa Altai-Sagan Forest.

The Americans have already come. And they are welcome to try and clean up what in all probability is their own act — the act of their human drones, the uncontrollable and destructive exploits of their latest Frankenstein. Even if some — or even the major — elements in it are indigenous and local, the insurgency itself is not a Borno enterprise. It is foreign-sponsored and clandestinely controlled. By all means, let them come and do the job, if they will. Thank you very much. And then get out.

Even though the circumstances and contexts in Afghanistan and Iraq — the goals, the motives and the extent of popular support enjoyed — are different from those of the insurgency in Nigeria’s northeast, we must note the failure of American intervention in both places. Today, after more than two decades of American intervention, both countries are less secure, less peaceful and more anti-American.

It must be made clear to them that Borno and North Easterners will not accept to live under the permanent jackboots of an American occupation, or be subjected to daily American or Israeli-controlled drone surveillance, as is happening today; or to their drone attacks, as may happen in future.

The reality we may discover is that the imperialists have their designs and goals for our region. Unfortunately for us, in the absence of great leadership, our differences can be, and have always been, exploited...

At the end of the joint operation, this nation and the world deserve to know what it is that has been happening in Nigeria these past five years. The truth can only be uncovered by an independent investigation conducted by an international committee of distinguished jurists, prosecutors and investigators in which the countries currently helping to crush the insurgency and the Nigerian government will neither participate, nor have the right to exercise any kind of control over its findings and report.

The reality we may discover is that the imperialists have their designs and goals for our region. Unfortunately for us, in the absence of great leadership, our differences can be, and have always been, exploited; or, indeed, as in the case of the Tiv-Fulani conflict, they can be created by them or by their local agents to advance these goals. That is the lament, but who will dry the nation’s tears? For starters, Muslims and Christians must embrace each other and refuse to allow anyone, even if it is their government, to disunite their ranks; for, a government may be here today, but it will not be there tomorrow. They must learn to hang together as brothers or hang separately as fools.

Adamu Adamu is an Islamic movement activist and has for many years been affiliated with the CI.


Article from

Crescent International Vol. 43, No. 4

Sha'ban 03, 14352014-06-01


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