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| Tony Uranta suggests the United States is keen on the breakup of Nigeria. " I am beginning to suspect America. I will not be surprised if it is not part of a grand conspiracy to help destabilize or make sure Nigeria fails. Don’t forget that their prediction is around the corner – 2015, they said we will fail." |
Tony Uranta is a former member of the National Dialogue Committee and Secretary of the United Niger Delta Energy Development Security Strategy. In this interview, he examined the ongoing war against Boko Haram, alleging US conspiracy to make Nigeria a failed state. Excerpts:
What is your reaction to the continuous terrorists’ bombardment of Nigeria?
I am very happy that you used the word ‘terrorists’ rather than the word ‘insurgents’ as it is being very wrongly used by even army officers and retired generals. You can understand from their expressions that they don’t understand the difference between insurgency and war and terrorism. An insurgent is a man who takes up arms to prove a point within a state, staying within a state, through his being discontent. The Niger Delta situation could aptly be termed an insurgency.
The Boko Haram members are not insurgents. They are part of the global terrorism circle that is being controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). You will notice that Boko Haram fly the same flag as Al-Shabab or Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb. They all talk about the Islamic caliphate. An insurgency is not foreign controlled. But far beyond that, an insurgency does not try to obtain land. Boko Haram, ISIL, AL-Shabab’s intention right now is to take over space, territories, and declare those territories, non-border Islamic Caliphate. The only border that keeps them all in their contiguous state is their ideology that says for, example, that slavery is proper and also encourages the enslavement of women. ISIL has come out to make a very categorical statement about that. Our Shekau has at different times asked why Nigerians are asking for our Chibok Girls. They said they have sold them on slavery because Allah allows them to sell them into slavery. This is to emphasize the fact that there is a totally new global phenomenon at play. And nowhere else in the world is that phenomenon called insurgency. Nigerians are very good at repeating like parrots. So, the moment a new word comes up, everybody says it, they say we have ‘insurgency.’ What we have is not insurgency. It is simply a mass murderous invasion of our space by local and foreign terrorists, with intent on capturing territories, massacring and depleting population that they believe is not in any way related to their belief. The Sultan of Sokoto very correctly said in his last statement that the war must now be intensified. I wish he had said that a year or two years ago when more Christians were being killed. In that statement, he said it’s because more Muslims are being killed now. This is not a war between Islam and the rest of the world or the rest of Nigeria. It is a war between certain radical fundamentalist that have Islam as their basis, and other parts of Nigeria. Therefore, like you see in Iran, Sunnis are killing Shiites in Iran; Shiites are killing Sunnis in Syria. Nobody should hide under the cover that Muslims are being killed to try to fool us that this is not an Islamic terrorist action. It is Islamic, but Muslim fundamentalist. And it does not mean that it would not decimate Muslims. It is going on everywhere in the world. Mosques are being bombed by Muslims. The Sunni mosques are bombed by the Shiites; the Shiites mosques are bombed by the Sunnis. They are all Muslims. The common derivative is that they are all fundamentalist who are committed to killing. Having established that, there is no insurgency ongoing in Nigeria. I will like that fact to be drummed into people’s ears, hearts and brains. It is your mindset that prepares you for what you are facing. You have to know your enemy. If you think your enemy is an insurgent, then your military is already incapacitated. That will make you believe that what President Goodluck Jonathan said in the beginning when he too was being misled into thinking that what we have was an insurgency and that we cannot go and start killing our brothers. For me, no member of Boko Haram is my brother. Some Christian people came to my birthday reception a few days ago; they said love your brother. That is Okay but I repeat that no Boko Haram person is my brother. Nobody who will put a baby down and stamp on the baby’s head can be my brother. Nobody who will slaughter babies and children can be my brother.
The Boko Haram members are not insurgents. They are part of the global terrorism circle that is being controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). You will notice that Boko Haram fly the same flag as Al-Shabab or Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb. They all talk about the Islamic caliphate. An insurgency is not foreign controlled. But far beyond that, an insurgency does not try to obtain land. Boko Haram, ISIL, AL-Shabab’s intention right now is to take over space, territories, and declare those territories, non-border Islamic Caliphate. The only border that keeps them all in their contiguous state is their ideology that says for, example, that slavery is proper and also encourages the enslavement of women. ISIL has come out to make a very categorical statement about that. Our Shekau has at different times asked why Nigerians are asking for our Chibok Girls. They said they have sold them on slavery because Allah allows them to sell them into slavery. This is to emphasize the fact that there is a totally new global phenomenon at play. And nowhere else in the world is that phenomenon called insurgency. Nigerians are very good at repeating like parrots. So, the moment a new word comes up, everybody says it, they say we have ‘insurgency.’ What we have is not insurgency. It is simply a mass murderous invasion of our space by local and foreign terrorists, with intent on capturing territories, massacring and depleting population that they believe is not in any way related to their belief. The Sultan of Sokoto very correctly said in his last statement that the war must now be intensified. I wish he had said that a year or two years ago when more Christians were being killed. In that statement, he said it’s because more Muslims are being killed now. This is not a war between Islam and the rest of the world or the rest of Nigeria. It is a war between certain radical fundamentalist that have Islam as their basis, and other parts of Nigeria. Therefore, like you see in Iran, Sunnis are killing Shiites in Iran; Shiites are killing Sunnis in Syria. Nobody should hide under the cover that Muslims are being killed to try to fool us that this is not an Islamic terrorist action. It is Islamic, but Muslim fundamentalist. And it does not mean that it would not decimate Muslims. It is going on everywhere in the world. Mosques are being bombed by Muslims. The Sunni mosques are bombed by the Shiites; the Shiites mosques are bombed by the Sunnis. They are all Muslims. The common derivative is that they are all fundamentalist who are committed to killing. Having established that, there is no insurgency ongoing in Nigeria. I will like that fact to be drummed into people’s ears, hearts and brains. It is your mindset that prepares you for what you are facing. You have to know your enemy. If you think your enemy is an insurgent, then your military is already incapacitated. That will make you believe that what President Goodluck Jonathan said in the beginning when he too was being misled into thinking that what we have was an insurgency and that we cannot go and start killing our brothers. For me, no member of Boko Haram is my brother. Some Christian people came to my birthday reception a few days ago; they said love your brother. That is Okay but I repeat that no Boko Haram person is my brother. Nobody who will put a baby down and stamp on the baby’s head can be my brother. Nobody who will slaughter babies and children can be my brother.
So, I will not love that person or people as I love myself. I will resist the person because the person is a devil and is from the devil. That is the way each of us must see Boko Haram. There is no insurgency in Nigeria; rather there is mass murderous terrorism.
But how come the terrorists are still making inroads despite government’s commitment to stop the mess?
First of all, let’s go into the issue of bombing. There is nowhere in the world where borders are as porous as ours. Some may be law abiding, but most will have criminal intents, because you need to have an attitude of law breaking before you start going into another country illegally. How are you going to control these people? Two, how are you going to discriminate or perceive that a woman in Hijab is not carrying a bomb? You cannot approach a woman in Hijab. You can’t stop her. And people should not make the mistake to think that these women are voluntarily suicide bombers. Most of the bombings that have taken place, I can tell you, may have been carried out by drugged women. They don’t hold the detonators. The detonators are held by God-knows whoever their controllers are, who have threatened, coerced and brainwashed them into having it strapped on them and forced them to go to the designated place. The moment they get there, they now detonate remotely. This explains why the young girl who got to the door of the school and hesitated standing there weeping, did not move into the Assembly. But her controller, most probably, had estimated that by that time, she was already in the middle of the crowd, so he detonated the bomb. Bombings, especially suicide bombing is not a Nigerian characteristic. But whether Nigerian or foreign, even in the most advanced clime, it is difficult for you to control asymmetric war, war of unconventional means.
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It was easy to target the Niger Delta militants because they have camps. You know where they are, and you can get your satellite to monitor them. But for our satellite, could you say it’s very efficient? Can we even say we have satellite in the real sense?
They were not built by us, nor manned by us. We are not that good yet. Is it we that cannot fix our electricity that can mount satellite? So, we can only use satellite to some extent. The Americans, French, British, et cetera that condemn Nigeria after Chibok Girls were taken into hostage said they were coming in to help. They all came into Nigeria, flooded Abuja and refused right from the on-set to share military intelligence with us. The satellite of each of these nations is constantly tracking movements. So, America knows when Boko Haram is about to attack, they will not warn us. They know that Boko Haram is going to hit this house or that building but they do not even consider it worthwhile to warn our military. And people will now say it is not their duty. It is their duty. You know why? Our military has been badly armed in the last few years. Under the last presidents, even including military regimes, our military was under equipped. Our soldiers don’t have modern weapons; they don’t have latest training. It was on this basis that Nigeria was tongue lashed in Congress, tongue lashed in the British House of Commons. British has come in, America has come in, why have they not found the girls? Why have all the countries that trooped to Nigeria for assistance suddenly become silent?
Can we say there is a conspiracy?
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| James F. Entwistle, U.S. ambassador to Nigeria |
America does not consider it there right or duty to help us. But when they start to pick up American citizens and beheading them the way they are beheading Nigerians, you will see the same America mounting global condemnation. At that time, you will hear America carrying out airstrikes. That level of hypocrisy must not be tolerated and cannot be tolerated by Nigerians. I don’t care if the Nigerian government reacts or doesn’t react. We the Nigerian people must take our destiny into our hands and say no to Obama and his conspiracy. We all had such high hopes on him but now that he is going around, bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia and refusing to arm us in the face of our being endangered, I do not have any sympathies for him. I support all the things he is doing for the America that are good, but his foreign affairs policies are bad. We as Nigerians have contributed to the security situation. Why? The most potent thing a military has in its arsenal is discipline. But the Nigerian media, orchestrated perhaps by myopic, uninformed civil society, who may have been influenced by shortsighted opposition, are sitting down, merely applauding every move of Boko Haram. When Boko Haram captures a place like say, Biu or konduga, they will laugh and say the military has no capacity. For me, that is a wrong approach because with such attitude you embolden Boko Haram unknowingly.
Most Nigerians are worried that the Nigerian military haven’t gotten the capacity to stop Boko Haram. Do you think otherwise?
If we sit down here and every day we are telling the private soldiers that their generals are stealing money, are we encouraging them or demoralizing them? And when they were court Marshaled for indiscipline, lawyers were kicking, saying no, you are abusing their civil rights. So, under this situation, are you encouraging the next set of soldiers to imbibe discipline? A soldier is a soldier. A soldier is a fireman and when he is told by his superior officer to go and do something, he obeys. But when a superior officer now tells his subordinate to do something and he is now telling his superior that they have to discuss it first, is that the best way to go? It shows that something is wrong. It is not only that we our army is armed, they are not getting enough support in terms of equipment from our so-called friends, global allies etc.
We are not being trained. Even America is refusing to train us. You will notice that Nigeria broke out of the training agreement recently. How do they want to train us on old equipment in the first place?
The only way we can know that they are effective is when you help them to be effective. The Nigerian military has proven over and over again that it has the heart; it has the basic underpinning of very powerful and effective Army. Unfortunately, military does not live on history it lives on today. Boko Haram is operating in a new season, a season of social media where they have all forms of communication systems communicating unimpeded. The military does not appear to have superior capacity in the areas of communication. One of the things we need to do is to make sure that the morale of the military is high and not to mock them. We owe it as a duty to support the military. We cannot afford not to support the military. How can some groups for instance tell the President not to extend emergency rule? Without emergency rule, there will be great danger you cannot imagine in the land. Boko Haram has their eyes on the space called Nigeria. They are not here to play basketball. So, we need to be very wary.
So you are in support of emergency rule?
Remove emergency rule and you will see what this country will turn into. It’s simple. If you complain about the Police, take the Police off the streets for just a day and see how the situation will look like, and see how you can survive. If the military is accused of not doing the best, remove that military for a space of just three hours and see what will feel that vacuum. You will see the level of violence that we would experience. Emergency rule must be extended and for me it is in the best interest of the country. If emergency rule is not extended then we must declare war against every area occupied by the Boko Haram as being foreign territory which means Nigerians will go out slaughtering Nigerians in the name of retrieving territories.
The national conference report, which you were a part of, seems to be kept in a cooler for now. What are some of your random thoughts about the situation?
When I and a few other patriotic Nigerians decided to revive the dream of the yearnings of seeking for a national conference, the first thing we wanted was to bring all parts of Nigeria together to get all of us talking.
If we did not have the conference, we would not have had the privilege to know that the Lamido of Adamawa were ready to secede to Cameroun among other revelations. The conference itself succeeded a great deal because from the Southern point of view the only thing that we did not have written down as resolution was Regionalism. But if you ask me, it was also achieved through the back door by saying that every state can write its constitution. It means if the three of us are states, we have our constitution and we have decided to work together towards a common goal, we have regionalized. So we have achieved it. It was a win-win situation.
However, the biggest opposition to the conference has always being the National Assembly which also created the danger of what we should do with the result of the conference. The President has forwarded the resolution to the National Assembly. He has advised that those resolutions that can be incorporated into the present review of the on-going constitution should be done and special attention given to other resolutions that need urgent attention.
To approach the report, review it, assimilate what they want methodically and calculatedly, the National Assembly has not even started. And it is not too surprising because we are in electioneering season and they are all out there campaigning.
Besides, the tempo of the partisan politics within the National Assembly itself has in fact not enabled the National Assembly to look into the report at all. I keep saying to people that if my wife is more concerned about painting the house than stopping the fire burning the house, I wonder which house she will paint when the fire has burnt the house down.
We are so concerned with the cosmetics that we have ignored the very fundamental basics that underpin the existence of this nation. Those issues of justice, rule of law and equity which are really mainly constitutional matters were the issues that were very cogent during the national conference.
As soon as the report was handed in, a special committee should have been set up by the National Assembly to immediately start going through the report and deliver their finding on the report to the committee and let us know what their position is on the issues. But as it is now, we don’t know the position of things.
Are you apprehensive the document that you people presented might go the way of other documents?
We, in the National Summit Group, are going to hold a meeting in Abuja and we will ask the question: what next? And when we decide it, a powerful delegation will go forward and meet with both the President and the National Assembly. After that, NSG will address the nation and certain things will be stated which I believe will bring about only good for Nigeria.
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