Boko Haram: The End of All Things? By David Augustine

The sad end of a once promising nation has come, more swiftly than American expertise could predict, more quickly than any beginning of the year political prophet could prophesy. Nigeria, I can safely say, has come to an end. The requiem mass is being diligently conducted by hooded Mullahs, playing the orchestra of booming bombs, raising a cascade of smoke and bonfire, producing an incense from charred remains of infidels. Darkness is descending so fast on us that even the elders have lost their voices and the youths their strength. Our leaders are caught in a morass of confused hopelessness. Every day frightened citizens look up to a leadership that can no longer offer any hope or provide soothing excuse that we could hang our optimism on. 
The Mullahs know our fears, yet they have conquered theirs. They offer death and accept death, provided we die. They bomb the infidels to hell and gladly join the chariot of fire in a cheap flight to a paradise of seventy-two virgins. Who can save the country from the Mullahs? Uncle Jonathan? Ah! What agony to ask a man to catch the wind! Uncle Jona has removed the big hat and replaced it with a smaller, smatter type, perhaps to see if he could see clearer. But as he is looking towards Damaturu, the Mullah would sneak into Portiskum. When Jona sends his rag-tag men to Yobe, the Mullah answers him from Adamawa, dispensing deaths, blood and tears.
The Mullah is bold and un-Nigerianly more organized and efficient. In a country where nothing is run efficiently, the Mullah has thought us that things could be well planned, and efficiently and effectively implemented. They daily mock our inefficiency, targeting our most hallowed security shrines. The Mullah sent a strong signal when he first made a bonfire and a sacrifice of their martyr inside the nation’s most visible symbol of security, the Police Headquarters in Abuja. Typical of us we explained their audacity as nothing unusual; after all, terrorism exists, even in America. We went back to our sweet song; “Goodluck to everybody, Goodluck Nigeria…hee!” 
The Mullah went to the United Nations building, disuniting souls from their loved ones, announcing our ignoble arrival as a terror nation. We shrugged it off; after all, it happens every day in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Lebanon. The Mullah became more daring, throwing his lethal stones at churches, dispatching reluctant worshippers to early meeting with their God. We said it would fizzle away, as if kidnapping we said the same about had been exterminated. The Mullah has shaken our faith and fear has gotten the better of us. Today we hesitate to go to church. We put off nightly worships and avoid large congregations. We soon forget our prayers and that soothing song that the lord that answereth by fire would always answer. Panic has become a second nature in a country we had hoped would one day forge into one. 
The pathetic silence of our elders, especially those who should speak to the ruffians in the north, now signposts a muted acquiescence to the reign of terror fast consuming the world’s largest black nation. As the clouds gather around what we knew as Nigeria, the Mullah got bolder. He scoffed at our inept security aperitif, poked his crooked fingers at our security and in one fell swoop, sent sacrificial bomb smokes to Allah in whatever goes by the name of security in Kano. The AIG’s office received them, and so did eight other police formations. The State Security Service was not spared, the Immigration service, all received the rampaging Mullah. The nation quaked and as at the last count, 162 souls had gone the way of all mortals, but theirs, was in a chariot of burning furry. 
But is the Mullah a servant of God? Not necessarily. He is a politician in a religious turban. He is a hooded political terror, clutching at volatile religion to achieve a most despicable political end. For the Mullah, it is a battle to reclaim a lost political heritage, now sacrilegiously held by an infidel from the watery fringes of the country, where it is only right to take from and never right to give to. The Mullah is a demanding demi-god, one not ready for any compromise. How can you get a compromise from a man who leaves you with no choice? He leaves no room for negotiations. Take a teaser from our Mullah. He says he wants all his men released. It does not matter what crime they have committed. He sought for and got compensations for his murderous leader wasted in the wee hours of this struggle. A hefty N100m was paid that may most likely go into procuring more weapons.
The Mullah says he has a score to settle with Christians. “Why”, we asked anxiously. He said Christians and the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, had killed, and in most cases eaten the flesh of Muslims. You begin to scratch your head. When did Ayo Oritsejafor and his men kill and share this sacred meat without remembering us here? Or are we no longer Christians? However, when you look deeper you discover that it was just another impossible barrier to peace. Nigeria has always had the history of Muslims, fighting for Allah, killing Christians and innocent southerners. You begin to look for a way to placate the Mullah. 
What do you say to him? Would you just tell him that we have eaten before, and we hope not to kill and eat Muslims again? Another impossible proposal, wrought to ensure that there was no meeting of minds. How do you negotiate with a man in hoods? How do you make peace with a man sworn to exterminate you? The Mullah is fast achieving his aims. Cause panic, destabilize the government; make the country ungovernable as was threatened and then achieve the result of a band of political soldiers waiting in the wings, seizing power and returning it to where it rightfully belonged and then, Allahuakbah! 
Southerners are negotiating with their legs, running back to their roots. The alluring music of one Nigeria is fast becoming a dirge no one wants to sing. The Mullah is a tactician. He knows his military strategy. He knows that the two most effective means of provoking a war is religion and ethnicity. He combines the two to achieve maximum result. Allah needs some blood and it must be the blood of southerners and Christians. Leave our region and don’t come back, the Mullah orders. Like frightened chickens, we flee. But who would have stayed to be roasted? Who would have dared them when they have the reputation for doing what they threaten to do? Who would depend on a government that can hardly defend her institutions? Then, the exodus begins. Hungry helpless men and their crying women and children embark on the hazardous journey back to a root they hardly know. They encounter ambushes and are killed. When they succeed in getting “home”, they become strangers, because they had fled from where they called home that no longer wants them. 
The conspiracy of silence is deafening. Those who are ready to occupy Nigeria are not interested in a Nigeria that has no oil. It is always the oily world that needs to be occupied. Who wants to occupy a Boko Haram-infested Nigeria? So, silence became heard over the dint of the boisterous carnival of Ojota subsidy dance. Silence ruled in the land of the rising sun, where the Ohaneze and the southeast governors simply went to sleep because the Mullah had no offices to share; he had death. In the north, silence resonated, drowning the noise of evening prayers. Emirs, Elders, governors, spoke only to their pillows. No one wanted a visit from the Mullah, who had sure death to dispense. Yet all of us wanted a Zakari Bui, a police commissioner to be a superman. He had a choice between releasing a Boko Haram suspect and risking his life and the lives of every member of his family and his extended family. The choice was easy. Release the Mullah. The Nigerian state is more amenable. You could even live long enough to be decorated one day with the National Honour of the Commander of the Order of the Niger.
The Mullah has defied everything thrown at him. He ridiculed us with scorn when we imposed an emergency. He is the wind, going wherever he wanted, spreading his terror beyond the bounds we created for him. He has no native. Today he is in Damaturu, tomorrow he is Birnim Kebbi. The fire is growing and very soon, there will be nowhere to run to. After all, did we not hear that he went to Port Harcourt? Uncle Jona knows him better than all of us do. Uncle Jona says the Mullah is a spirit; he is everywhere, including Aso Rock. So, we have no idea where we are headed. Can we survive this onslaught? Can the nation come out of this, and still remain the same? The answer, my brother, is still blowing in the wind.
I think we should listen to the Mullah. Can he be allowed to wave his Koran around his territory, while the children of the infidels trace their final roots down south? Is it possible to share this formless cow without further blood let? Do we continue playing the ostrich, burying our head in the sand, while the cow bleeds to death? How many more souls are required to let the Mullah be? Believe it or not, the end is here. Or do we still hope to maintain our one Nigeria when Uncle Jona is finally driven out for the preferred to take over? We should remember that the watery infidels still have their own weapons, concealed under the cover of an amnesty. In the very likely event that Jona is chased away, can anybody reasonably expect that the black gold will still be available to all. 
The Mullah has changed the course of the history of Nigeria. We can never remain the same. While terror continues to grow, and the blood of both infidels and the righteous are daily wasted to bombs that hardly know religion and tribe, let us come together and talk. The Holy Scripture asked a question that is very pertinent at this point in our distress. The Holy Bible asks; “Can two walk together unless they agree?” Lets reason together, the Niger and Benue rivers are fast turning red with the blood of Nigerian Christians, Muslims, Igbos, Yoruba, Hausa, Ibibio, Angas, Birom and the rest. The time to act is now!