ot all occurrences that become repetitive or cyclic fall into the category of the "unusual". Their significance may also be processed unconsciously even with the outcome of events they create persisting and manifesting through real time experience. There are perhaps various reasons and albeit explanations due. People often react to a prevailing situation as if what they are concerned about in the immediate is new to their consciousness; invariably memory lapse accounts for some, intrinsically too short to recapture reality even when observed in the first person and closely too. Otherwise why would the events of the past weeks as coming from the burrows of Cambridge Massachusetts constitute a tool kit, and one heretofore dubbed the classic "Teachable Moment" for America on race relations? In reality there was nothing new coming out of Harvard this time around that had never happened before. So, where is the beef?

advertisement

To set the table, and for the sake of those running very late on the news events, a call was made by a neighbor in the mid afternoon of July 16, 2009. Miss Whelan saw two people laden with backpacks standing on the front porch of a nearby house. One of them proceeded to "wedge" the door seemingly in attempt to break in. Instantly suspicious, curiously concerned, she alerted the police. Apparently the officer on patrol and closest to the neighborhood at the time responded to the distress-call ahead of the central police backup and support. Officer Crowley arrived at the house in question; Miss Whelan the caller was standing on the street corner at a distance; she identified herself, confirming she had seen two black males attempting to force entry into the particular house. The officer then approached the doorway and looking through the glass panes saw a black man standing in the foyer. The black man in question has since been identified as Professor Henry Gates, Jr. a prominent scholar at the Harvard University, African Studies Institute. According to the police report, officer Crowley asked the black man to step out and meet him at the porch. The black man said, "No I will not", demanding to know who was beckoning or ordering him so and why. The officer identified himself, explaining a home break-in had been reported as on-going and he was around to check it out. The Professor responded angrily, opened the door in a double, followed with some terse expletives, "Why because I'm a black man in America?" There, the "Comedy of Errors" switched gears, moved into the auto-driver, what would sooner than later become another dress rehearsal in the theater of "Racial Profiling".

Until this point in the narrative, the police officer had his story clearly stated but the order of events seemed to have been turned into a free for all, a shouting match that got every participant roiled up to the boiling point. They must have been yelling at each other, making sense to none. Was Professor Gates reacting to the memory of an occurrence that had nothing to do with the very reason why Officer Crowley was in the neighborhood? Hard to say! To imagine a man whether or not a professor of any standing, is duly arrested in front of his own house for reasons soon to be lost in a "he said, he said" argument might be confusing to the uninitiated. The irony is that Sergeant Crowley and Professor Gates were both right, not necessarily by what they did but certainly by what they did not do to each other. In the process of being right they expended energy, stretched the limits of trust and patience; they ultimately lost the little respect each person might have had for the other. However, the condition made possible by the "Institution of Law and Order" - what is commonly called the "Rule of Law", the ultimate arbiter for equal protection principles kept the two angry protagonists, long enough to appreciate their folly, the difference between being right sometimes to be wrong most of the times. Professor Gates would not back down; he had found sympathy in a popular cause.

If it was happening to him, the professor, at his own home, as it had hitherto happened to people of his kind elsewhere, then no further evidence would be necessary or even required to show the new face of an enduring victim. Officer Crowley duly on duty with the possibility of walking into a real time home invasion was no doubt exposed to both known and unknown situation, potentially dangerous and risky; unless indicated otherwise, he was essentially standing in the line of fire with no guarantees for speculation or imagination; should such a situation seemingly changing in multiple seconds with every harsh word uttered, turn ugly and further south quicker than reflexes and reactions could handle, the odds would definitely be against the ultimate victim. Second chances were limited with no room for guesswork. Professor Gates handicapped by his own space may never have contemplated turning his own house into an instant crime scene no matter how deliberate in his actions.

The consequences of such contemplative reactions were not redeemable even if all the options were viable; but unfortunately not. However, for the recalcitrant seemingly engaged in a heated argument with an armed police officer standing in the front porch, the single chance towards exercising any option could not be minimized any further; the space would not be considered covered enough for safety either. Ultimately the situation maturated into the irrational both for the vocal and the stoic; thus every action or inaction tended towards satisfying the minimum condition reserved for the Professor's targeted class. Either way, what could have happened to break the last fuse setting off one huge fire-ball in the maddening skies of Cambridge never came to pass. Officer Crowley only arrested Professor Gates, charged him for being unruly and tumultuous; he did not fire any shots in the fog of what might have been perceived as a case of mistaken identity by the unknown jury of their peers. Keeping those hot rounds in the cache was not enough to earn any credit for the officer. Charges and citations against Gates were dropped. None of that made any difference either; the news media still had a field day, choosing instead to spread the professor's mug shots in every cycle, covering extra mileage in sensation and outrage.

Then the President could not be spared a briefing moment. The last question asked at that July 22, 2009 press conference to address universal healthcare for America became the news of the day and more so thereafter. President Obama weighed in on the Cambridge controversy. Rightly or wrongly, the president described the police as having "acted stupidly". That statement was anything but fuel for love. Within a 24-hour news cycle, the White House had issued additional coatings to the luster of events unfolding so quickly, it was drowning the message, undermining the course of healthcare debate. The president decided to pour some beer on the wound with the hope it would at least sanitize and quench the itching sensation. As one thing led to another, who would have guessed that by Thursday July 30, 2009, a local police officer, a college professor and the president of the United States would be heading to a "Beer fest" on that weatherized picnic table behind the back walls of the White House? The Vice-President did not want to encourage an appearance of impropriety, what would amount to a gang-up of two black guys against one white man. The real reason he joined the party could be Mr. Biden was not about to miss the opportunity for free booze on peanuts. Whatever the ancillary reason, those still wondering how settling domestic quarrel, healing the wounds of history could ever begin even "Under the Influence", let them follow the brew to the White House.

That "Beer Summit" has since come and gone. The outcome might not necessarily be as important as the fact that it happened, regardless of how it happened. The real "Teachable Moment" did not begin at the White House picnic table; it came quite early with the outcome at the scene of occurrence. Officer Crowley did what he did in the interest of law-enforcement. In other parts of the world familiar enough to many, the police would not even answer to a home inversion, be it any as serious as an unfolding armed robbery incident or as minor as a domestic fight between a drunken husband and a battered wife.

The chilling response would be, "Madam, sorry there is no gasoline in our patrol vehicle; calm down and stay safe and out of danger". Thank God, Cambridge Massachusetts is one among other cities in this country active in community policing. On the other hand, Professor Gates did what he did in defense of historical propriety, still nursing the wound on behalf of the aggrieved, past and present; in doing all that, the professor was very lucky to live to tell the story. If both "Angry Individuals" were wrong, none would have had the stomach for any "Beer "after all the facts. America would be mourning the loss of at least one victim. That both men are still alive and safe to engage in further discussions is a testament to the power of that unique system no matter how imperfect that continues to guarantee individual rights and privileges; both men are living witnesses to their respective convictions, still willing to continue pampering and nurturing America's fragile mold of race relations in their palms. The "Cambridge Experience" constitutes a true "Teachable Moment" not just in America but elsewhere; it is particularly pertinent to a complex society like Nigeria whose own "Race Relations" have turned into a human tragedy, grossly uncertain for both ethnic and faith-based accommodations.

While the "Institution of Law and Order" is helping to organize the civil society in many places around the world, the Nigerian situation seems to be following the Mugabe pathway, unraveling with every turn in acrimony, destruction and greed. The repeated incidents and cyclic nature of violence have become as predictable as April showers in the mangroves. The latest wave in slum head-haunt would not have been considered significant in any scale or proportion if the victims of Islamic fundamentalism were exclusively limited to the "Usual" targets. When Christians are hacked and Churches are burned down, the North Country pays little or no attention. Unfortunately, Shirk Mohammed Yusuf and his "Boko Haram" have proved they possess an equal opportunity agenda. They are strictly Islamic constructionists, anti-education, anti-modernization, and anti-intellectual, "Ba Truenchi"; while the members are strongly committed to their chosen cause, straggling on borrowed robes, tokens and handouts, the leadership is living large enjoying the fruits of so-called "immoral" luxuries deriving from western values and lifestyles openly detested and condemned in their fold. By their doctrine, the rank of the "Nigerian Infidels" has been redefined as all inclusive. They are ultimately opposed to any government not based on their own terms, the reductionist interpretation of the Quran; thus they empower themselves in Islamic code of principles, doing everything else in the name of Allah, including the killing of innocent others, condemned as unbelievers.

Since Sunday July 26, 2009, members of the Boko Haram pitched their camp for a rampage destroying lives and properties belonging to non-conformist unbelievers. Borno, Adamawa, Kano and parts of Katsina and Maidugiri are littered with dead bodies. The actual number of the dead and the injured will remain an estimate. The North Country and what remains of the place called Nigeria, have never been good with census figures in good times, talk about chasing this Boko Haram ambulance? Over one thousand dead and four thousand maimed for life would sound like the lottery numbers for picking mass graves. Obviously Nigeria is surely making some progress for a country fully engrossed in "Politics now, politics tomorrow and politics forever" until doomsday. For a change and at this particular historical moment, the death-squad is killing and destroying its own; thus the North Country has been receiving a special treat, getting a little taste of the same potion usually reserved for those others, the non-indigene Nigerians. Not too long ago the "Imperial Presidency" of Olusegun Obansanjo assured Nigerians and the rest of the world, the scourge of Islamic fundamentalism would be cured through "Political Solution".

Mohammed Yusuf and his crusaders seem to have waited too long for true dividend of the Sharia ecumenism rebranded early in 2000, sponsored by a cabal deep-seated in corrupt political activism. The "Wahhabi" experience in the North Country has since been reduced to censorship in lifestyle and habit, essentially an obnoxious morality policing program aimed at checking and holding down the faithful, also the most vulnerable.

Not quite sure who the Ayatollahs of the North are, it is hard to know the center-point of the controlling power; could it be residing at the government house of each of the abiding states or the Imperial Chief Imam at Aso Rock? In any case, the politics of religion and the religion of politics have become so diffused and comingled, Islamic puritans see the enemies of their faith in the government. Thus, in less than ten years of active mobilization, the government has become as "Unclean" as the Christian infidel, deserving no less punishment. If the assumption is that Mohammed Yusuf and his Boko Haram are capable of articulating their argument in this fashion to justify the July 26, 2009 incident, it might have become easier to assess the success or failure of "Political Solution" as a strategy for solving problems in Nigeria. The Teachable Moment in that case would be no less valuable than the Beer fest at the White House.

But the Nigerian situation is definitely more intriguing, yet more confusing. The so-called State Security Services (SSS) knew all about Mohammed Yusuf; the authorities knew his pay masters hiding behind pretentions of Islamic charity donors; those who knew the activities of this group also had every reason to acquiesce and stand aside, waiting for the return of the Maitatsine, the rumble in the desert, usually following the tune of the swan song. Obviously the North Country and its security agents gave Alhaji Yusuf the platform to spread the toxic manure, propagating the new and improved jihadist "Wahhabi" ideology more potent than the model inspired and tested by the likes of prior hate-preachers, Zaki-Zaki and Alhaji Gumi. It would be too simplistic and certainly too early to assume the controlling authorities relied on their usual best guess, that only Christians would be killed with the outcome none different than the "Usual"; the displacement of the wounded innocent, the commencement of a midnight journey, the unidirectional exodus to nowhere near and all that sound of fury would be too familiar to the non-indigene refugees. They are usually southerners, mostly Christians lucky to be alive to leak their own wounds, braving the harsh elements of a scorched earth still simmering in desolation, hate and anger; as they embarked on that long trek through the wilderness, many lost the battle, dead on track.

Incidentally "What goes around" sometimes takes time to "Come around"; when it does, it manifests itself with whirls and swirls. Fortunately by their measure of past experiences, there are not too many southern Christians still testing the waters up North, waiting to lose one or two limbs before heeding to the natural advice of self-preservation; they would prefer to die if they have to, in the arms and company of those who know them best. To the many condemned unbelievers still living in a country caged within obnoxious social, political and faith-based structures that endure by picking winners and losers based on controlled-power, getting that second chance remains an ultimate luxury; that luxury is one the northern "Taliban" like the Boko Haram would neither give nor guarantee. Thus finding accommodation and solace closer to home and anywhere in the South has become the only choice. With fewer Christians in the stable of death, the blood suckers of the North Country have turned the siphon onto the new face of an old enemy. This time and for the Boko Haram, it is the "Infidel Stupid" - government has become the infidel and the infidel is the government.

The commission of inquiry to assess the immediate and remote causes of the disturbances might produce some results, but never hold any breath to the outcome as it was in the beginning and ever shall be. For a government seemingly out to find the truth the choices have been internally consistent; the best of them was certainly to kill its prime witness. Alhaji Yusuf knew where all the bodies were buried; he knew his paymasters and benefactors by name; he had sponsors even within the same government pretending to be shocked and surprised by the potency of its own balm. The question should be asked - why? Those who know the reasons would never appear before that commission even if invited and they would never be compelled to do so. Those who do not know claim the outcome was a misguided adventure on the part of Boko Haram.

But who provided them with AK47 and other dangerous weapons? Who was responsible for bringing in that Ukrainian aircraft supposedly forced to land at Kano Airport a few weeks ago laden with arms? The short answer is that the unitary government must as a "Matter of urgency" pump in more funds to rebuild the North Country. This latest round of destruction is different because it is seen as a crime against the government. Those who own the same government now have reasons to provide for their members, the select few, rehabilitating them the chosen ones, providing service to the welfare of their families and friends. The same group has been crying "foul" claiming former President Obasanjo denied them special privileges during his tenure. They were essentially "marginalized" by Aremu's "Kampe" and "Come Chop" policy; now the gravy train is back at "Ground Station" and time to scoop with both long and short spoons. This outcome is certainly another measure of the efficacy of "Political Solution".

Either side has every reason to complain to justify subsequent actions. Incidentally and since the year 2000, there have been any number of riots in the North; none of those Christians displaced and who also lost personal and material possessions have ever been compensated. But this time, the government is the victim, one very expensive "Infidel" for which the Boko Haram experience provides yet another "Teachable Moment".

Continued on Part II ----------