DECODING SENATOR DAVID MARK

“When a dog sniffs at a shoe, you can be certain it will take it away.” Hausa Proverb

At the end of November last year, I posted a comment under the translated Hausa proverb above, when the chorus of demands that northern leaders should find solutions to the insurgency by the JASLIWAJ (aka Boko Haram) was becoming loudly registered. I recall my good friend Bishop Mathew Kukah querying me about its meaning when I sent the comments to him, and I explained that the proverb warns of an impending event, or a suspicion that remote signals would translate into certain events. Within one week in that November, last year, Mrs Sarah Jibril, Special Adviser to President Jonathan and Pastor Oritsejafor, who carries his cross like a sword all the way to the Presidential Villa both demanded that northern leaders (read: northern muslims) should do more to curtail and eliminate the insurgency. The messages in both comments were the same: put out the fire you lit before it consumes the whole nation. It will be useful to recall some parts of those that comment I made in November, 2011:

There have been other comments which suggest that northern leaders resent their inability to install Shari’a in the north; or their loss of political power, and have therefore created Boko Haram to provide a violent alternative to achieve political goals… The emphatic repudiation of the linkages by spokesmen of the insurgency does not appear to have changed minds among those who are bent on visiting the entire Boko Haram phenomenon on the scheming or failures of northern leaders.

The dangers in attempts to identify the Boko Haram insurgency as a northern issue, and to hold its leaders responsible for it, are many. One is that the view will inform the adoption of the wrong strategy to deal with the problem. Resources and energy will be directed at chasing politicians and the clergy, while the problem grows. Another is that the fight against a national threat will become politicisized and pitch sections of the country against each other…. Thirdly, a strategy which seeks to blame northern leaders for responsibility or failure with regards to Boko Haram will merely feed the insurgency. It will burn the bridges which the administration may need to build towards a resolution. It will make most northern leaders multiple victims, because they are neither safe from Boko Haram nor from the government. It will create new enemies for an administration which needs all the support it can get from politicians, traditional rulers, the clergy and the public in its fight against the insurgency. Above all, it may give the administration a false sense of accomplishment when it thinks it has identified the enemy, whereas it is far from doing that.

The north should vigorously fight this attempt to isolate it and blame it for a problem which has made it a worse victim than all other parts of the country…

So, did Senator David Mark even hint at the need for northern leaders to find solutions to the insurgency at a retreat recently? Whatever he said, or said he did not say, the point is that the nation’s number three citizen alluded to the existence of a northern problem for which in plain terms, northern leaders (muslim, clergy, politicians) have full responsibility. Senator David Mark is in good company in this respect. Virtually every one, from the President down, who is not a northern Muslim has pointed accusing fingers at the northern Muslim community. A polite version of this concert is one which suggests that a community which harbours the insurgency at great cost to itself should be more active in the search for solutions. A more popular version is one which suggests that northerners should know members of the insurgency and should do something about them, or continue to pay the price. Either way, the muslim north is accused of anything from complicity, to indifference, to collaboration, or to active support.

The vigorous verbal gymnastics made by Senator David Mark to reduce the damage which he thought his comments may have caused were actually all unnecessary. Long before he joined the chorus, the north of which he now insists he is part and parcel, has been redefined by both the JASLIWAJ insurgency, its effect, and the reactions of Nigerian leaders. The concept of a political north is now fiction. There is a muslim north which is being defined by unceasing violence, damage and destruction which will take it the best part of two decades to mend, assuming that it does begin soon. It is the base and the hostage of an insurgency which has no respect for traditional values, institutions or structures. It is impotent against a movement which strikes it at will; and against a state security apparatus which treats it as the enemy. Its economy is crumbling; its social values are being challenged and eroded by spreading poverty and the impotence of its leaders; its political fortunes have crashed; and it may remain largely peripheral to the political process for many years to come.

Then there is the north of christians and ethnic minorities who live in fear of bombs from people they used to share a political affinity with. This is the north that seeks desperately to re-define itself, and create an identity from the vestiges of deep roots with the far north, and cultivated sentiments of minorities and victims.

If there is any value in what Senator David Mark said, or did not say he said, or said he did not say, it is that northern muslims should wake up to the reality that the rest of Nigeria (including northern christians) see the JASLIWAJ insurgency as essentially a northern muslim issue. Denying responsibility for it, or throwing their hands up in hopelessness will not win them sympathy or respite. The more the insurgency takes root in the muslim north, the higher the price it will pay. If this insurgency lasts for another one year, even at current levels of hostility, the economy of the far north will be completely devastated. Its population will be among the most traumatized in the world, and it is quite conceivable that the insurgency will be stronger than it is today. The far north may as well forget any claim to the right to offer leadership in Nigeria, under whatever guise or arrangement. It will be a spectator in a political system which has room only for tribes and religious faiths, and in which intense competition will expose its frailties and weaknesses. It will reach out in vain to the rest of Nigeria for a national endeavour to find solution to a national problem.

The challenge for the Muslim north is to take a hard look at itself, and pull itself out of its paralyzing stupor. There will be no helping hands from parts of the nation which stand to benefit from the devastation of the north. There will be no help from the leadership which thinks the north should put out its own fire, or be consumed by it. There will be no help from northern christians who see only threats and hostility from an insurgency which treats them as legitimate targets.

Northern leaders with genuine commitment to its interests and fortunes should now step forward and summon the courage to look their own problems in the eye. Berating Senator David Mark or other politicians from the north who distance themselves from its problems merely expose the poverty and impotence of the region. President Jonathan appears to have given substance to the perception that JASLIWAJ is a northern muslim problem by appointing a northern muslim as his National Security Adviser. There is also talk of appointing another northern muslim as Minister of Defence. This may be dangerous tokenism, or it could be an opportunity for the muslim north to engage in some critical self assessment. Either way, the Muslim north needs to know that it is on its own.