“Boko Haram Was Brought To Nigeria By Foreigners” – Shehu Of Borno

Abubakar El-Kanemi, the Shehu of Borno, has stated that foreigners, who were looking to learn the Qur’an, were the ones who brought the insurgent group, Boko Haram to the northeast of Nigeria.

The traditional ruler highlighted that the area has suffered at the hands of the insurgents in all aspects of life during a town hall meeting held by the Yateem Faqeer Global Foundation on Thursday in Abuja.

The Shehu of Borno stated that a lot of people were unaware that the insurgents had a corrupt ideology that was propagated among young people and has now caused chaos throughout the country.

According to him, “Borno has witnessed so many things, both good and bad. Boko Haram is something meaningless, mindless and without any sense of direction as none of the Holy Books, either Quran or the Bible, indicates that you show disrespect to others, burn and destroy their properties. And I want people to know that Boko Haram was never initiated or started by people of the Northeast Zone. It is something they just brought to us from nowhere.

“Boko Haram insurgents came to Borno and the North-East in the guise of acquiring Quranic education while not many knew they had an ideology which was polluted as well as promoted into the minds of the youths, and created havoc in our area. Our airport had been vandalised. We were not receiving visitors; no commercial flights, and no roads. The only road we had was Maiduguri – Kano road as all other roads were besieged and taken over by Boko Haram. At that time, Maiduguri was hosting over two million people as IDPs and the majority of them were women and children suffering very seriously.

“Honestly, we have suffered; the people have suffered. The palaces of our Emirs were destroyed; some of them were killed including other traditional rulers, religious leaders and district heads, and so many other people were killed. The Northeast has so many problems. But, before we had this administration, out of the 27 local governments in Borno, 17 were under the control of Boko Haram. But now, not any local government in Borno is under the control of Boko Haram.

“When these things started, we were telling people that something has to be done otherwise it will escalate to the other part of the country; they thought it was only a Borno affair, but look at it critically, everywhere today there is the problem of kidnappings, pipeline vandalism, cultism, communal clashes, and cattle rustling. So, the only permanent solution to this problem is prayer and provision of useful and credible intelligence to the security agencies.”

The former Chief of Army Staff, General Alwali Kazir (retd), insisted that there were clear evident ideological differences between the bandits and other armed criminal gangs operating in different regions of the country, from Boko Haram insurgents in the North East, dismissed the belief that they were related.

Alwali suggested both kinetic and non-kinetic responses to insecurity to ensure continued peace and harmony in the country.

He said, “The terrorists or the insurgents are very smart. When they find it difficult to operate in a particular place, they will look for softer ground. Now don’t forget, those operating in the Northeast may not be the same people as those operating elsewhere. Don’t forget, when Boko Haram started, they were not kidnapping people for ransom. They were kidnapping people to convert them for their own purposes. Later on, the issue of kidnapping for ransom. reared its ugly head. For such people, their own motives and ideology must be different from that of Boko Haram.

“The security agencies must be up and coming with dealing with such criminals. Also, don’t forget, there’s also another way out – Dialogue. Yes. When do you dialogue? How would you dialogue? With whom would you dialogue? That is the situation. Those two must be used i.e. the kinetic method and then dialogue.”

Dr. Umar Buba Bindir, National Coordinator of the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs’ National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), urged the creation of a 15-year regional policy and strategy to rebuild and develop the Northeast after the Boko Haram era.

He said, “In the national interest, if Nigeria does not understand that it should work with us to help the Northeast, it should note that a danger to one region is a danger to all regions. If this thing continues in the Northeast, it will reach Lagos. There is no gap to danger. So, in my opinion, we would have done more quality infrastructure. But how do we do this? We must have a deliberate regional development policy and strategy.

“We have universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education in all these states. All of us here have sons and brothers who are professors and PhD holders. We must put these people in a room to develop a strategy to actualize this, and then new put all our political leaders irrespective of their party, and the governors will have to accept this and then subscribe to it.”