Mr. President, Muslim Lives Matter!

There has been a cacophony of voices in response to the threat by the President of the United States, Donald Trump, to commence a military action in Nigeria should the Nigerian government continue to fail to rein in terrorists killing Christians in the country.

Some see Mr. Trump’s threat as a welcome development since they had hoped for some external intervention to tackle the myriad of challenges they had found difficult to deal with. For many Nigerians, the government of the day has become so intolerant and opposed to democracy that they are ready to hop on any intervention in the hope of any redemption no matter how elusive.

For others who think themselves more patriotic than the rest, President Trump must be resisted because he is a divisive figure who is perceived to have not only divided America but also seeks to export his divisive tendencies to Nigeria. These people speak as though it was Trump who indented and explored ethnic and religious cleavages to gain political power in this country.

One thing is clear now: patriotism in Nigeria is measured by how far or how near you are to political power or to the economic resources of the nation or both. As soon as those who previously threatened Nigeria with fire and brimstone get close to the levers of power, they speak in affected tones that deceive many with sound bites of hollow patriotism that become obvious when critically analysed or juxtaposed to their well documented thoughts. Hypocrisy is their routine game to power and those who are rich in dissimulation pretend they are smarter than others.

Irrespective of what the citizens are saying, we need to peep into the words of government officials in order to deal adequately with the official stance.
For President Bola Tinubu, it was a typical government response that employs nice words but offers no comfort because of hollowness, vacuousness or paternalistic pretensions.

The president said, “Nigeria stands firmly as a democracy governed by constitutional guarantees of religious liberty.

“Religious freedom and tolerance have been a core tenet of our collective identity and shall always remain so. Nigeria opposes religious persecution and does not encourage it.

“Nigeria is a country with constitutional guarantees to protect citizens of all faiths.”
At a time like these, Nigerians are not interested in what is written down that are observed in the breach.

In an earlier statement, Special Adviser to the President on Public Communication and Orientation, Mr. Sunday Dare, said all faiths were affected by Islamist terror groups.

He said, “Nigeria is a multi-religious nation founded on principles of freedom of worship, mutual respect, and coexistence. Its Constitution guarantees religious liberty for all — Christian, Muslim or adherents of any other faith — and successive governments have consistently upheld this right.

“What Maher and Cruz have labeled as a “Christian genocide” is, in fact, the brutal wave of terrorism and banditry that Nigeria, like many other nations, continues to battle. These acts are carried out by non-state actors — violent extremists and criminal elements — whose objectives have nothing to do with faith or theology but with chaos, profit and destabilisation. They target soft civilian populations, attacking churches, mosques, markets, motor parks, schools, and villages indiscriminately. Their victims are Nigerians of every religion, ethnicity, and creed.

“To suggest that these atrocities amount to a campaign of Christian extermination is to misunderstand and oversimplify a complex security challenge. It also plays directly into the hands of the terrorists, who thrive on division and global misperception. By framing Nigeria’s collective struggle against terrorism as a religious war, such narratives undermine the sacrifices of both Christian and Muslim communities who have stood together in defiance of terror.”

So, for the government, as long as the killings in Nigeria are not framed as Christian genocide, everyone can go home and sleep.
Other people, including government officials, have opined that since Nigeria is a sovereign nation, no external party should invade it even if the purpose is to rid the country of terrorists, especially as both dominant faiths in the country have had their fair shares of the brutal impact of Islamist terror groups.
The argument is like the postulation of the previous government headed by the late Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (Rtd).

When the heat was turned on the government about the killing fields of Nigeria, what the administration did was to argue that there had been more killings during the time of the previous government headed by President Goodluck Jonathan. What an argument!

We should not forget that the Boko Haram group started as an ideological group with the aim of fighting corruption in government, police brutality, and unemployment. It said that political leaders had failed to govern by Islamic principles. If it aimed at Islamic revivalism through violence, it would hardly be strange if more of its victims were Christians.

Besides, terrorism in Nigeria has been compounded by new groups. While Boko Haram had given birth to splinter groups, there had been the emergence of more groups such as bandits and deadly Fulani herdsmen who target Christian communities especially in the Northeast and the North Central. If predominantly Christian communities had been violently displaced by bandits and Fulani herdsmen whom the government had been treating with kid gloves, would it be wrong to impute genocide on the thousands of Christian casualties?
Perhaps, we can admit, for the sake of argument, that Muslims have been more victims of Islamist terrorists operating in Nigeria. In which case, my stand would still be: Mr. President, Muslim lives matter! Every life lost to non-state actors is an indication that the state is failing in its primary responsibility of protection of lives and property.

In an earlier intervention I had written that political philosophers had long ago settled the issue of the purpose of the state.

The article had posited, “Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau had written extensively on the social contract that the citizens enter with the state. We will not in this piece make a distinction in the writings of these philosophers. However, it is settled in political thought that individuals surrender their might to the state in exchange for protection and defence of their rights, especially their fundamental human rights.
“When a state cannot fulfil its basic obligations, it has lost the reason for its existence. Nigeria cannot continue descending into a state of anomie. It is either the state wakes up to its responsibilities or embraces its eventual disintegration. It is disingenuous for the head of a household to be pursuing rats when their house is on fire except they are the ones that set the house on fire.”

In 2015, Tinubu had sold General Buhari as the man who had the capacity to deal with insecurity threats in Nigeria.

The then National Leader of the All Progressives Congress, Tinubu, had said, “Every nation has a period of their own challenges. When America was challenged, they turned to one great man, their ex-military general, General Eisenhower. When the French were challenged, they turned to their general, Charles de Gaulle.

“When Britain was challenged, they turned to their general. Today, Nigeria is economically and physically challenged so we turn to General Muhammadu Buhari. He is the right man for the job. If you talk about military experience, he has it abundantly. He has courage, simplicity; he has it abundantly.

“If you talk about great determination, a combination of vision and ability to perform, honesty and integrity, he has it abundantly.”

Alas, the great General, in Tinubu’s words, left Nigeria worse off. If the man Tinubu said had all it would take to handle Nigeria’s security challenges left the country worse off, this civilian who had told us lies does not have the capacity to do better. It is therefore in the nation’s best interest to seek help from anywhere possible.

Human lives are sacred, no matter the creed they subscribe to.

Everest AMAEFULE, PhD, is the author of the book, “Technology & Development: An African Perspective.”