With its unrelenting campaign of violence in some Northern states, the Jama'atul Ahlis Sunnah Lidda'awati Wal Jihad otherwise known as Boko Haram has done a huge damage to Nigeria, former United States Ambassador John Campbell has said.
In a chat with THISDAY at the weekend, the former US envoy to Nigeria while appraising the impact of the activities of the religious sect said "the cost is huge".
Buttressing his assertion, Campbell said: "There is considerable number of internally displaced persons, economic activities is low in places like Maiduguri, investment is low, the rhetoric of Boko Haram has driven a wedge between Christians and Muslims. That is not good for Nigeria".
While noting that the violent campaign of the sect had even made several Nigerians to question the unity of the country, Campbell maintained that he believes that in spite of these challenges, Nigeria would not break up.
Appraising Nigeria's response to the Boko Haram challenge so far, the American diplomat said, "It seems to me that the government's response to Boko Haram has been to treat it as a security challenge and thereby trying to suppress it by military means".
He said a political approach to the violence was vital. Such political approach, he said involves dialogue and reaching out to leaders of the North.
Apart from that, he said government should also initiate development plan for the region as a way of tackling the problem of poverty and the feeling of marginalisation.
"The problem I see in the North is that the sense of marginalisation is widespread, the sense of poverty is widespread", he said.
Noting that though issues about development of the North were not part of the demands of Boko Haram, Campbell said government should still initiate development plan for the region so as to deny the sect any support base. "The issue is how to reduce the support base of Boko Haram and the way to do that is by removing the factors that bring about the sense of marginalisation," said Campbell who served as US ambassador to Nigeria between 2004 and 2007.
On the recent expression of willingness by Boko Haram to dialogue with government, Campbell said he believes that Nigeria should take advantage of any opportunity to dialogue with the sect.
The former envoy, who is a Ralph Bunche Senior Fellow for Africa Policy Studies, said he was aware that government had said it was ready to dialogue but added that his concern was whether the call for dialogue by the sect was genuine.
In a surprise move on November 1, a spokesman of the extremist group which had always waved aside any call for dialogue, announced its readiness to ceasefire and enter into dialogue with the government in Saudi Arabia.
It even went a step further by releasing the list of its team and listing its terms which include payment of compensation for its members killed by security forces, rebuilding of its damaged property, release of its supporters in detention, and prosecution of immediate-past Governor of Borno State, Ali Modu Sheriff.
While the President's spokesman immediately described the group's willingness to cease fire and dialogue as "a welcome development," the killing of retired General Muhammadu Shuwa, a civil war veteran, and its continued campaign of violence in some Northern states have called to question the genuiness of the ceasefire and the proposed dialogue.
A recently released Amnesty International report on Boko Haram documented both the atrocities committed by the violent sect, and also catalogued the serious human rights violations carried out by the security forces deployed to counter the militant group, including enforced disappearance, torture, extrajudicial executions, the burning of homes and detention without trial.
Amnesty International's 76-page report titled, "Nigeria: Trapped in the Cycle of Violence", specifically faulted the strategy employed to tackle these challlenges whereby rule of law is disregarded and human rights are violated with impunity, thus creating a vicious cycle of violence.
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9/11 was the watershed marking the adoption of zero tolerance policies by the U.S. Government against terrorists and their networks worldwide. That government neither negotiates with terrorists, nor compromise. It will not overindulge terrorists with appeasements or rewards. The U.S. intelligence Service trails terrorists with unrelenting tenacity, and neutralizes them and their nests wherever they spotted. The reason? They killed Americans. Clearly, the policy keeps faith with U.S. government’s primary obligation and responsibility to Americans –to keep America and Americans safe, wherever they may be. It is also in keeping with ensuring the freedom Americans cherish dearly and contribution to making the world a safer place for the free world. So far, it has worked; terrorists no longer run rings around America and the world with the usual audacious, gleeful impunity. Their global latitude has been drastically stunted and world is much better for it. Most ironically, Ambassador Campbell appears to hold views appallingly in conflict with his home government’s policy interests he was trusted to uphold in Nigeria. It raises speculations as to his loyalty as a dedicated envoy, or if he possessed the intuitive obligation to duty, particularly on the issue of terrorism, let alone for the upholding of American values in a host community. Else, these expressed viewpoints have to be Campbell’s sly pandering to a clannish Nigerian interest base. It is quite amazing that the Ambassador would not explain why anti-terror strategies that work so well for the U.S. are not good-enough prescriptions he would make for Nigeria in the throes of the dreaded Boko Haram – a deadly terror outfit with established links with Al Qaeda in the Maghreb. It is easy to distil from Ambassador Campbell’s views a preference for the condescending option of the U.S. President sitting in dialogue with terrorists and pleading to appease and reward Osama Bin Laden for the murder of over three thousand Americans, and lavishly congratulating him for job well done. Put differently, the Ambassador’s obvious aversion for the use of the U.S. Special Forces in the operation that took out Osama Bin Laden in far-away Pakistan cannot be totally conjectural. Terrorism has the same face, color and smell anywhere in the world. But, for some obscure reasons, Ambassador Campbell’s prescription is for the Nigerian leadership to go soggy at the knees, seek dialogue with murderers, appease and reward them bountifully in order to temporarily stave off further barbaric, hate-driven rampage by maniacal zealots, and win us a reprieve from a FATWA, perhaps. His grim disclosure that the "… problem I see in the North is that the sense of marginalization is widespread, the sense of poverty is widespread…" is covert endorsement of Northern barbaric behavior and a tacit encouragement such conduct. It attempts to weave a misleading ‘a North Vs a South’ confrontational rhetoric or dogfight construct. On the one hand, the Ambassador evokes a bright picture of a Southern epicurean El Dorado, where the man-in-the-street is either a Bill Gates or a Warren Buffett of some sort, or anybody in between. On the other hand, Mr. Campbell conceptualizes this infernal, arid, decrepit Northern gloom of scrounging low-lifers and mullahs on life-support, all victims of tormenting Southern conspiracy. That was flat-out disingenuous. Not only is this manipulative gimmick a gratuitous rebuke aimed at Nigeria’s sitting President, it is also a patently malicious insinuation that this Southerner President –now only into the second year of his first term in office- skewed opportunities in favor of fellow Southerners with a design that brought down cascading misery, hitherto alien to Northern mullahs. Inclusiveness (as against “widespread Northern alienation”) must be defined in terms of leadership as an exclusive Northern preserve in our democracy for civility to prevail. It is arguable that the Northerners’ sense of tolerance for Southerners is numbed by the visceral rapacity to lead; the mullah is even unimpressed with the Vice-President being one of their own. As an expert in African Affairs, this Ambassador knows it that, for 38 out of the 50 years of post-independence Nigeria, Northern Islamic mullahs ruled the country. This “poverty/alienation” complex is self-inflicted. It is the direct spin-off from a shared value that embraced mass indolence as societal norm. The Northern elite know better than blame anybody but themselves for their choice of a suffocating cultural lifestyle, not unleash deadly barbarism on innocent Christians and Southern compatriots. The Ambassador’s innuendoes of mullah alienation by the Southerner leadership are totally roguish. A community of impoverished people is not necessarily a barbaric society. It is, therefore, an offensive, condescending, broad-brush generalization and stereotyping to attach legitimacy to acts of mass murder, barbarism, deadly impunity or general incivility you blame on “poor, alienated” people perceive predisposed to criminal conducts. The Southern Nigerian poor are not known for deadly rampage in response to decades of Northern jackboot rule, or to stoke killing sprees of ordinary Northerners living in their midst. Perhaps, their civility in the wake of decades of domination by mullahs may have been mistaken for their love for poverty, alienation, or passive complaisance with unending political marginalization by Northerners. Innocent, law-abiding Southerners and Christians domiciled across the North they called home were massacred by insane Northern islamists in an orgy of senseless violence. His Excellency the Ambassador cursorily acknowledged a “…considerable number of internally displaced persons “. But the fate befalling those murdered Southerners or the bleak future the displaced survivors face must be off the radar screen. They would ugly flies in ointment of Campbell’s self-serving narrative. Ambassadorial sorcery foresaw Nigeria’s inevitable disintegration, come2015. In a dramatic U-turn “Campbell maintained that he believes that in spite of these challenges, Nigeria would not break up”. This antithesis gives further credence to a gut-feeling that Campbell’s intrusive pandering has much to do with an existing comradeship with elements of the elite Islamic North with the monopoly of Nigeria’s crude oil business. It proves why Ambassador Campbell holds tightly to his steady mantra of misleading poverty-driven, Northern-revolt contrivance. He came to terms with the reality that Nigeria’s oil reserves are actually location in the very deep South when it was too late. It becomes illogical for Northern apologists to salivate over a phantasy economic trajectory that crashes with the Ambassador’s 2015 doom’s year. The fact remains that the people of Nigeria do not need an ambassador’s moderation to decide the country’s future. Like it or not, Nigeria is destined for an inescapable economic, political and geographical reconfiguration. At this point, the question is no longer if it ever will, it is when. The momentum build-up is quite palpable. It does not even need ambassadorial sorcery to predict the fate of those oil blocs at the end of the impending political shock-and-awe reconfiguration. It is time for His Excellency the Ambassador to realign with the right side of history.
The truth is that Campbell, during his posting in Nigeria, joined the Nigerian political elites to wine and dine. Today, he is more political than diplomatic. We have read several writeups of Campbell begging for the north to be developed, for compensations to be paid to Boko Haram, for dialogue with them, etc. Campbell, please stop tanishing your diplomatic personality with lies and falsehoods just because you want to maintain your friendship with those mini-gods you dine and wine in the north of Nigeria. To clarify issues with poverty as a cause to terrorism, were the September 11 terrorists who bombed America poor? They were Doctors, Engineers and millionaires. Campbell claimed the north is undeveloped as a factor to Boko Haram, it is a know fact that Saudi Arabia is the home to world terroism. But is the kingdom undeveloped. To cut a long story short, Campbell is nobody to regard his words as meaning; he has since sold his integrity and personality as a diplomat to selfish and tribalized politics.