Boko Haram: Desperate Efforts to provoke the “Christian” retaliation

The (now former) IG of Police said the over 100 members of Boko Haram (BH) the police have arrested are mere foot-soldiers and that the sponsors, the real “BH” are still at large. Pawns also certainly are the over 60 fanatics mowed down by the military at BH armory in Yobe.
But is the real BH really at large and unknown? Don’t the top northern elites know before who they have been cowering, as they are unable to voice any criticism against BH actions? Indeed, governors and senators have had to issue public statements in support of BH at critical times. For example Kano’s Kwankwoso (see Vol 14 No 4) and ex-governors Ali Modu Sheriff and Danjuma Goje (from Borno and Gombe states respectively, Goje is now a serving senator), all came out big time to advocate for, or apologize to, Boko Haram! (see Vol 14 No 3)
Moreover, we all know who it was who swore to make Nigeria ungovernable just days before the BH menace moved from being the child-play it was (local scuffles with guns, bows and arrows) to deployment of sophisticated high-tech bombs. And one wonders why the case against the serving Senator from Borno State, Ndume, named as a major sponsor of BH, cannot be accelerated in a season like this.
Anyway, as the cruel sadistic killing of innocent citizens continue, and apparently the security forces seem to be finally waking up, Boko Haram’s game plan to keep the country ungovernable obviously is a desperate effort to turn the battle into a major Moslem- Christian conflagration. In Vol 14 no 3 we highlighted how the original BH retaliatory war against government agencies developed overnight a new life of its own, groping for new causes to justify, expand and sustain its senseless killings – from the Plateau palaver, to an ethnic Hausa-Igbo one, before finally the Church was chosen as having the best possibility of starting a really big and sustained chaos.
Thank God, even in the face of extreme provocations that has now seen Christian festivity periods become seasons of carnage, the Church has been able to largely keep her members in check. Though the Christian Association of Nigeria has (rightly in our opinion) instructed that Christian communities make every necessary effort to defend themselves if attacked, most Christians realize the futility of killing back other (usually innocent) individuals, supposedly to avenge previous killings of innocent souls by Islamic fanatics. Whereas incidents whereby some aggrieved individuals spontaneously carry out reprisal attacks cannot be entirely ruled out, reports about organized Christian groups carrying out pre-meditated retaliatory killings are merely what the brains behind Boko Haram are wishing for. It is alien to Christianity.
However, either due to naivety or plain deliberate mischief, some news media houses are working extra time, attempting to fan such embers, wherever they perceive one, into the inferno BH hopes for. Any incident around mosques (such as reported incendiary attacks at an Islamic school in Sapele, or some chaos at Maiduguri) are given maximum coverage and are touted as possible retaliatory moves by Christians! With the current situation of things, however, any bomb at Maiduguri can be safely ascribed to BH – whether it targets a church, school, or “the vicinity” of a mosque!
Of course, even in BH’s madness, there is a method. While scores are killed in attacks on Churches, the make-look “retaliatory” attacks at mosques are only symbolic. As it were, the only time BH truly hurt moslem interests was the deadly Kano bombings. Many BH operatives were reportedly saddened as they lost several members of their own kiths and kins. And no wonder, Mallam Sanusi Lamido the ultra partisan governor of Nigeria’s Central Bank threw all decency and pretense aside as he authorized an unprecedented compensation of N100 million out of public funds to the victims! (for an account of a little known antecedent of Mallam Sanusi in Islamic fanaticism, please see http://eghes.blogspot.com/2012/02/mallam-sanusi-lamido-sanusi-boko-haram.html).
It is not only foreign media such Al Jazeera that are furiously trying to sell this dummy of supposed Christian retaliatory strikes. Even local newspapers are giving serious publicity to unknown fringe groups threatening to be preparing to carry out Christian retaliatory strikes. (For examples of such nonsense, see www.vanguardngr.com/2011/09/boko-haram-christian-extremist-group-akhwat-akwop-threatens-retaliation/, www.vanguardngr.com/2012/01/boko-haram-group-vows-to-retaliate-further-attack/, etc).
More than any other development, this desperate search by Boko Haram for new fuel materials to stoke its expiring fire is one major evidence that the days of BH are numbered. May this politically sponsored menace die a sudden death the same way it rose to prominence.

Post Script
Emerging events show a cornered rabid Boko Haram on its death throes. First there was the arrest of a major BH field officer, Kabiru Sokoto – at a government House in Abuja. His arranged escape by top police echelon has turned out, like everything Satan does, to be a further big mistake. Not only does the event show the extent of infiltration of government security units, as well as the clout of people calling the shots in the name of the organization, the incident has provoked a major necessary re-arrangement in the security apparatus, including the inglorious sack of the IGP. Moreover, Kabiru Sokoto has been re-arrested and is presently talking like a parrot, shedding invaluable light on the operations of Boko Haram. As at press time, the BH phenomenon has all but shed its Islamic toga and is now being portrayed as the Northern reaction to inequity in national wealth distribution. Kicking off this strange and senseless proposition was none else but Central Bank governor, Lamido Sanusi; and who else will join the train but the coalition of Northern leaders, the Arewa Consultative Forum, and lately the Northern Governors’ Forum. At least BH is no longer hiding under façade of Mohammed Yussuf’s rag-tag religious body. In its last dying days, the real BH is coming out of hiding