Etymologically, by loose Hausa translation, Boko Haram means 'Western Education is Sin'. How exactly a bunch of Fulani herders intend to pass that across beats the imagination, but then I am not Shakespeare.
Yesterday, hooligans claiming righteousness held an academic institution to ransom, many academic institutions if truth be told. What i want to understand now is the reason behind, not their righteous parade, but the compliance by members of the said institutions to their wishes.
In times past, the colleges of learning, the universities and schools have been bastions of hope and support at the times when it seems the entire world has gone to hell. Professors and teachers, have remained the solid wall of reasoning and logic when all seems lost and the leaders of countries and nations are wringing their hands in despair. That was years ago, and probably not in this country.
The Northern militants decided to make maximum use of their newfound publicity and threaten the sanity of Nigerians with bomb attacks on their children. This time they said they would spread their tentacles southwards and attack my school. Wrong move.
Naturally, as it is when things like this happen, conjectures started to fly. People remembered when 9/11 happened and how, apparently, the US had foreknowledge of the disaster and were unable to prevent it. They didn't forget the UN bombing of a few weeks ago (GOD rest the souls of the departed), and how the SSS had foreknowledge which was not acted on and the disaster which resulted. This time around they argued, (those disaster-mongers), GOD has given us the opportunity and we would not mess it up.
Plans were made and next thing we had previously job-seeking young men thronging our gates searching those coming into the campus and those going out! Still, when the time came and the week of bomb-wise annihilation came up, students still walked the campus without fear and with total disregard of whatsoever form of threat the now decentralized Bokos had in mind. That was until wednesday.
What is the definition of a man of GOD? According to popular hearsay, a man by that title went on International Tv and told everyone, very conveniently, that something tragic was going to happen on the University campus at 3 O'clock. No p.ms or a.ms, just 3 O'clock. Naturally panic descended and students of a university, people learning to examine problems from a logical perspective flew into fright and tried to escape school.
By the next morning, as early as 2 a.m, pandemonium had descended fully on Ugbowo campus and trickle by trickle, the students poured out of school. That in itself is understandable, most of the students, like it or not, are children and the situation was too much for them to handle alone, after all those that they ordinarily would have turned to had fled the scene.
At the very moment when all seems to be lost and insanity has replaced the sane mind, and the world turns usually to the masters of logic, they were nowhere to be found. The reasoning they hid behind was the age old cliche, "Better safe than sorry", forgetting that the man who was predicting [according to the grapevine],the bombing could scarcely predict the results of an all too obvious match up, [something even octopi can do], perhaps one should start taking only the opposite of whatever this man prophesies.
3a.m passed, then 3p.m, and then some people started wondering whether he meant 3 O'clock Eastern time. I do not blame any one who ran away from their duties due to a bomb threat, and I commiserate with the girls in the school hostels, it wouldn't have been easy coping with that trauma, it's a hard time our country is going through, we need but pray and hope.
The Boko Haram sect has declared war upon the citizens, Government and Constitution of our great nation, it is our ill-luck to live in such a time, nevertheless it is a blessing, for now we have a chance to turn the tables and raise the bar on this nation. This is a war of terror, and the winner is the one who is able to establish fear and thoughtless incoherence on the other. We wouldn't lose this war. We would not show fear, we would not let Boko Haram win us. Instead, we would not relent and with our heads held high, we would stand and fight back and strike fear into the hearts of our oppresors, the cowards.
In the Holy Qu'ran, Sura 42, it says; "All those who fight (back) when oppressed shall incur no guilt, but Allah shall punish the oppressor."
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