fter Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to blow up a Delta Airlines plane over Detroit last Christmas Day the shock of his bid at mass murder was immediately felt in his native Nigeria. Many Nigerians were surprised that one of their own could actually be a terrorist in the mould of the followers of Al-Qaeda, suicide bomber and all. Second was the apparent explosion of the prevailing---if light-hearted myth---among Nigerians that their compatriots loved their own lives too much to take it.
Nigerians readily point out that despite the scourge of poverty that has blighted their country for decades, the country still has one of the lowest suicide rates in the world. Thus, the argument goes, if we love life or the fact of a plain existence well enough that we wouldn't even kill ourselves to get out of seemingly unending personal misery, why would we kill for any faith?
Many who have lived in Nigeria in the last three decades or have followed news about her within that time period know how specious the rationale above really is. It may be true that Nigerians have an affinity for plodding on with life in whatever circumstances they find themselves, largely opting to preserve their lives and those of others within the context of the popular "E Go Better" philosophy. Still, there has always been an exception to this norm when it comes to matters religion, especially in the part of the country from which AbdulMutallad hails.
If you are a Nigerian and you don't have your head buried in the sand, you would bear witness to the myriad of religious crises that have regularly rocked the country since at least the early 80s. There was the Maitatsine onslaught in December 1980, in Kano, during the Shehu Shagari government, which claimed about 5,000 lives. Between that and the recent infamous Boko Haram uprising, thousands of lives have been lost in numerous religion-based riots and uprisings that erupt with frightening frequency. Even as one writes this, a riot borne out of religious animosity has claimed many lives in Jos, Plateau State.
The mass bout of hand-wringing that erupted among Nigerians after the AbdulMutallad suicide-bombing attempt was pretty amusing. Of course, an attempt at mass murder that was only averted by the kind hand of Providence cannot be "amusing". And it isn't funny that "potential suicide bombers" has now been added to the legion of bad labels Nigerians both at home and in the Diaspora have to wear, since AbdulMutallad decided the best way to "defend" his religion was to pack his underwear with explosives and hop into a crowded plane bound for the home of the apocryphal "Great Satan", without minding the fact that many other Muslims even more pious than him in faith were on board that plane. Just like the empty heads that hijacked the planes on 9/11 and flew them into the Twin Towers conveniently ignored the same fact.
However, Nigerians are not telling themselves the truth when they say they never thought one of their own could kill or attempt to kill others in the name of religion. Pray, what has been happening in their country these past three decades with frightening regularity?
Perhaps an explanation for this incredulity in the wake of the AbdulMutallab attempt is that Nigerians never imagined one of them would decide to export a staple known so well locally to most of them. Even more surprising to such Nigerians, it appears, is the fact that the "exporter" would be a scion of one of the so-called wealthy and upper-crust families in Nigeria. "The boy already had everything", many Nigerians wondered. "He occupied an oasis of extreme wealth in the ocean of poverty called Nigeria. What else did he want?", others queried.
Those perceptions are, of course, borne of another set of myths: that what is local and purely Nigerian cannot become international within the twinkle of an eye---especially in this age of "instant everything"---and that the rich who have everything would be hesitant to give it all up in the name of such an esoteric pursuit as religion.
The latter myth can be quickly exploded by mentioning just one name: Osama Bin Laden. Last time his pursuers checked, the Lord of Al-Qaeda was holed up in a cave along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, even though he was born into a life of extreme wealth and privilege in his native Saudi Arabia. If Nigerians also cared to look carefully, the rich and mighty in their midst have often sponsored the orgy of religious violence that frequently consumes large swathes of the country. An eye-opener was the former state Commissioner accused of financing the Boko Haram sect, and who was murdered in cold blood by security agents during that conflict.
As for those who believed the Nigerian version of local religious extremism they had endured for decades could never go international, I would simply say I am not surprised.
Why?
Many Nigerians, especially those in the Diaspora, looked askance and bemused when former US President George Bush declared his War on Terror after the 9/11 attacks. For some strange reason, those Nigerians never made any link between the religious crises that frequently rocked their country and the international variant that encouraged hijacking planes and hurling them into high-rise towers full of innocent people, all in the name of a twisted devotion to political causes masked as religious piety. The few among them that urged support for the fight against global "religion-based terrorism" were looked upon as strange specimen who were insincere at best in such professions of support.
It was disheartening to see that even those Nigerians whose religious compatriots suffered death and destruction at the hands of religious zealots at home sneered at Uncle Sam when the latter sought to bring the hammer down on those that constituted the international brotherhood of those same zealots. Many of these bumbling and already over-fed Nigerians even declared that certain issues concerning their own professions here in the US were more important to them than a "so-called" War Against Terrorism---as if someone blown out of a plane on US soil, for example, can be bothered with the inanities of the American health care system!
Sadly---but finally---the chickens came home to roost for such Nigerians in the skies over Detroit on December 25, 2009.
But should this be any comfort, it must be noted that it is not only Nigerians---both local and in the Diaspora---that have cast an eye of suspicion on the "War on Terror". As this writer has had cause to note on previous occasions, a troubling number of those who call the United States their country and home hardly embrace the struggle against the Al-Qaeda brand of religious fanaticism. Many of these harbour cultural and existential grudges against a society they believe does not afford them an opportunity for personal self-expression. This, in turn, translates into such people's apathy---and even hostility---to any talk of a "War on Terror", which they regard as an "establishment cry".
Strange but true. As if, for example, Al-Qaeda has any plan or inclination to back same-sex marriage if it somehow prevails in its present struggle against the "Great Satan"!
What has been of more interest to this writer is how the aborted act of terrorism by Nigerian citizen AbdulMutallab has affected the Presidency of American President, Barack Obama. While many of Obama's domestic detractors decried what they said was his initial lukewarm reaction to the bombing attempt, others have gone ahead to label the president as a weak leader ill-suited to wage a war against global religious terror. I disagree with both propositions about the president. But I also tend to think that his administration's brush with AbdulMutallab has clearly driven home the lesson that the fight against A-Qaeda did not end with the exit of George W. Bush from the White House, since it was not the former President that declared the War in the first place. Osama bin Ladin did.
But just before the charges of apathy and indecisiveness against the American President could take root, Mother Nature came to his rescue, in the form of the recent deadly earthquake in Haiti. With his response to that catastrophe, many now say while Obama may not be at his natural best in reacting to the deadly antics of terrorists---domestic and foreign---he surely bests George W. Bush when it comes to responding to the occasional furies of Mother Nature. Compared to Bush's response in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Obama now gets deserved praise for his decisive actions in the wake of the devastating Haiti quake, actions that far exceed what even the Haitian government (if one ever existed in that blighted country!) can do for its own people.
In other words, it has taken murder in the tens of thousands by an otherwise nurturing "Mother Nature" to take the world's eyes---even if temporarily---away from the attempted murders of hundreds that a Nigerian allegedly tried to pull off on a significant religious holiday, thus forcing his compatriots to pull their heads out of the proverbial sand.
Hopefully.
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