02 Aug 2009 |
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Boko Haram: Matters Arising By Reuben Abati Three points raised in my earlier comment on the Boko Haram insurgency in Northern Nigeria, ("Boko Haram and the evil of ignorance," July 31, 2009) deserves further amplification in the light of recent developments. First is the complaint about the excessive use of power and the needless bravado of the Nigerian police and the military which brought them more or less to the same level as the religious fanatics and common criminals whose daredevilry they sought to bring under control. The failure of the security agencies to approach the crisis professionally has now been confirmed by reports that hours after arresting the Boko Haram sect leader, Mohammed Yusuf, the 39-year old sectarian Jihadist was summarily executed while in police custody. Also similarly executed was a former state commisioner, Alhaji Buji Foi, who was said to be the suspected financier of the renegade Islamic group which says its own version of Islam is superior to others and that Western values/education are haram (forbidden). Having failed woefully to prevent the growth of the Boko Haram phenomenon, through the gathering of intelligence and counter-intelligence activities, the Nigerian security agencies faced with a determined band of jihadists who are determiend to inflict maximum pain on the state (they were even planning to attack Lagos) decided to resort to jungle tactics by mowing down the insurgents in their hundreds. Human Rights Watch which had most recently published a revealing report on police brutality in Nigeria must feel vindicated about its earlier findings and it has been most vocal in condemning the current human rights abuses of the Nigerian Police Force. The Amnesty International, the US Department of State as well as other human rights groups are also concerned. There is a general consensus that the Boko Haram insurrection poses a threat to national security and that it should be stopped. It can also be expected that the police would apply a certain amount of force in self-defence and in the face of heavy provocation. But the casualties profile in the Boko Haram case has shown a reckless use of lethal force by the police resulting in the murder of suspects and many innocent persons. The question that is raised by the extra-judicial execution of two leaders of the Boko Haram is: what is the standard for treating persons in police custody? The police are saying that Yusuf was killed while trying to escape. How? A man who had been handcuffed and paraded before journalists, and who the police boasted that they had captured? And who according to the police was pleading for forgiveness? Where was he trying to escape from? Was there any attempt by his followers to attack the place where he was being kept? The Nigerian military authorities who captured Yusuf have since absolved themselves of any guilt by pointing out that they handed over Yusuf to the police alive. The incident needs to be investigated and President Yar'çdua must take personal interest in it. The murder of the Boko Haram jihadists by the Nigerian Police Force makes nonsense of this government's avowed commitment to the rule of law; it puts the government to shame. The application of the rule of law cannot and ashoudl not be selective. At the same time that President Yar'çdua had turned himself into a letter-writer trying to preach the rule of law to the Lagos state government on the issue of the 37 Local Council Development Areas, his men in the police were busy across Northern Nigeria executing insurgents in police custody. Only the corpses of Yusuf and Foi have been paraded, several other persons may also have been similarly executed and their bodies dumped in umarked graves. The photographs of the corpses as displayed offer hints of police brutality. Both men were murdered and subjected to great indignity. A police institution that seeks to enforce the rule of law cannot also violate the same rule of law. What the police have simply shown is that Nigeria is one large jungle where state officials can hide under institutional cover to act like criminals. The police would have been better off following due process. The proper thing to do is to charge all suspects to court and to allow the courts to determine the quantum and nature of punishment for proven crimes committed. A person in police custody is not without rights. No matter the degree or the obviousness of his crime, he remains a suspect, and is fully entitled to the right of fair hearing. Police powers of arrest, detention, interrogation and prosecution are not absolute; they certainly do not include the power to order a summary execution of a person in custody. In Udo Udo v Queen, this point is well-established, a police offiecr who shot a fleeing prisoner who was not armed was charged for murder and convicted. By refusing to follow due process, the police in the Boko Haram case, have become a law unto themselves, and they have done as much damage to the Nigerian state as the criminals they were trying to control. One form of impunity feeding off another. Sections 33 and 34(1) of the 1999 Constitution provide for the dignity of the human person and the right to life. These provisions are in pari materia with Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 5 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, and other international conventions to which Nigeria is a signatory. But the Nigeria Police have routinely broken the law. They have no respect for either these or the provisons of the Police Act and the Criminal Procedure Act. I recall making this one of the major planks of my presentation at a special retreat of the police in Ada, Osun state, the attack on my presentation by the officers was so vicious, the Chairman of the Police Service Commission had to remind the police elite that I had been invited to come and tell the truth not to massage anyone's ego. The real danger that we face is that the police are unwilling to change. The men who pulled the trigger on Yusuf and Foi must be identified and charged for murder so that the right message can be sent across. The Nigeria Police's customary abuse of power has been well-documented for example in all the Annual Reports on Human Rights in Nigeria by the Civil Liberties Organisation between 1988 and 1995, in Ayo Ajomo and Isabella Okagbue eds., Human Rights and the Administration of Criminal Justice (1991) and in Human Rights Watch and Commitee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) Reports on Nigeria. This includes the summary execution of suspects, revenge killings by the police, the torture of suspects, excessive use of lethal force at checkpoints. It is not as if the police are not aware of the position of the law, but they consider due process a "waste of time". For many police officers, a distinction between innocence and suspicion is a mere waste of time. Police stations also function as butchers'dens where human beings are executed at night and their body parts sold to ritualists or dumped in an unmarked grave. Nigerian policemen consider this to be a faster way of dealing with crime than going through the seemingly laborious process of gathering evidence and presenting same before a court of law. This is a sign of Nigeria's underdevelopment, the crisis in its justice administration system and the politics of power within its borders. Yusuf and Foi would have ended up as principal figures in a trial of all the arrested suspects in the Boko Haram case. A third person, Yusuf's deputy also died in police custody during the week. Obviously, he too was eliminated. The police made no attempt to collect evidence from these persons before they were killed. And so useful information about the operations of the Boko Haram, their network of cells, sponsors, source of financing and future plans have been most conveniently erased. What kind of police force goes out of its way to destroy the evidence in such a serious matter as this? What is the Nigerian police trying to hide? Would allowing the protagonists of the Boko Haram to live have resulted in revelations that could rock the elite boat? Are there persons in high places in Northern Nigeria who belong to the Boko Haram who were afraid that the game was up and that the evidence needed to be buried? What the police have helped to do is to buy protection for hidden Boko Haram fanatics! But it is more frightening that the seed for future violence is already germinating with some wives of the militants openly boasting that "the struggle continues" and that their children will never embrace Western education. There is long-term work here for the Federal Government, the states and the local councils: the biggest threat to Nigeria's security is not external, it is internal, located in the warped minds of a large population of its people. Professor Dora Akunyili says it is at least a good thing that the leaders of the rebellion have been taken out of the way. "Yusuf's demise is positive for Nigeria," she says. "What is important is that he has been taken out of the way to stop him using people to cause mayhem." She and her boss should worry more about the unknown jihadists that are still at large who may be tempted soon to exact a revenge. Nigeria should seek help from abroad where it can, about the methods and profiles of terrorists and the nature of religious and political terrorism - for this is a sad reality that the country now grapples with. In the earlier comment, I had complained about the failure of intelligence. But now, the intelligence agencies, the National Security Agency and the State Security Service are protesting that there was more than enough intelligence about the activities of Mohammed Yusuf. The SSS even interrogated him twice and prepared "numerous reports" on him and the activities of his group and collaborators. Yet, nobody deemed it necessary to address the threat that he represented. The investigation that must be conducted into this sordid affair must identify all the state officials who saw these reports and refused to act. They are to be held responsible for all the innocent lives that have been lost and the disruption of social and economical life in the affected states. There are too many persons in high places who practically sleep on duty! The buck-passing that is now going on is not amusing at all: the military, the SSS, the NSA are all excusing themselves and everyone is pointing a finger at the other: it is a clear sign of confusion and absence of team spirit in the Yar'çdua government. This shoddy handling of the crisis by the security agencies has further given rise to yet any another ugly fact: namely the politicisation of Boko Haram along ethnic lines. The silly suggestion is now being made in certain parts of the North that President Yar'Adua is deploying lethal force against his own people whereas he is busy trying to please Southern Nigerians by granting amnesty to the likes of Henry Okah and Niger Delta militants. Boko Haram has not generated enough outrage in the North, certianly not among the educated elite and the more orthodox Islamic groups who should be speaking up more loudly for the truth, but the ethnic champions are beginning to launch a revisionist campaign. They miss the point. More people have been killed in the Niger Delta over the decades, and even under the Yar'çdua government. Has anyone forgotten Odi or Gbaramatu, or the continuing presence of military forces in the Niger Delta, or the threat of more military action in the Niger Delta after the amnesty period? Or all the lives that have been lost and potentials that have been destroyed due to environmental degradation in the Delta region? Seeking to turn the matter at hand into a North-South division in terms of official response is mischievous to put it mildly. Blinded by ethnic sentiments, too many members of the Nigerian intelligentsia are unable to distinguish betwen what is right or wrong trapped as they are in the castles of their ethnic skin. Boko Haram further presents a challenge about the need to rebuild institutions of state, national security, and focus on human capacity development in order to turn Nigeria into a more enlightened community where persons will be less willing to take up guns, bows and arrows against the state and other human beings. In this regard, violence, impunity, and state failure have no ethnic colour, but the colour of that which needs to be done in order to make us better. It is most sad that the SSS is now claiming that it provided enough intelligence about the activities of the Boko Haram. In a failed state, nobody acts until things go "completely out of control." Rescuing Nigeria from the destiny of Somalia is the task that must be done.
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