El-Zakzaky, Shiites and the imminent evil days

By Charles Kaye Okoye

I hope I will not have to make any more posts on El-Zakzaky, his Shia group, the danger they portend to Nigeria, and the imperative of government’s decisive action now!

For a start, I have heard people, while decrying the continued detention of El-Zakzaky, point out that that was how Boko Haram started. And I always laugh at that claim. They are right to an extent anyway.

Admittedly, those that point us to this fact still have fresh memory. However, there’s one thing they failed to realise! Even if the founder of the Boko haram had not been killed, we would have been faced with insurgency from them. Maybe, all his killing did was to bring the evil day forward.

When, in 2002, Mohammed Yusuf founded the sect that came to be known as Boko Haram, his objectives were clear. He did not like western education, he was uncomfortable with the sort of government Nigeria operates; he felt it should be an Islamic government with full implementation of Sharia. He hoped to carve out, sometime, some parts of the nation, if not all parts, that would be under Islamic rule.

He began by gathering poor youths in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno, and began indoctrinating them.

The president then was Obasanjo. He and his government were not unaware of Yusuf and his sect, nor the security threat they posed. Obasanjo had intelligence on the group and duly placed Yusuf and his group under security watch list.  Unfortunately, the nation’s constitution conferred on every Nigerian the right of association and freedom of worship. So, any attempt to stifle the budding sect and prevent it from maturing would have meant infringement on the members’ human rights. Now, again, this throws up the vexed issue of national security versus human rights!

Obasanjo watched them, unable to do them anything while they grew in rank. The killing of their leader, Mohammed Yusuf only hastened the assignments they would have taken eventually. Whether or not he was killed, Boko Haram would still have picked up arms against the Nigerian government at a point.

Now, this is the same with El-Zakzaky and his Shiites.

This is a sect that has never recognized Nigerian government. A sect that has clearly expressed its desire to have an Islamic state. A sect that has fought with every government.

Must we, in this nation, play politics with everything?

Whoever told us that ignoring El-Zakzaky and his people is the best thing to do!

Why should any Nigerian government tolerate a sect which pays allegiance to a foreign country? A sect that holds military parade, wields machetes freely and never had any qualms taking on a whole chief of army staff with his armed entourage?

Must we play politics even with our own lives? I never really loved Jonathan, but even when the military under him, in 2014 killed many Shiites, including 3 biological sons of the leader in one fell swoop, I couldn’t condemn Jonathan even though I didn’t like him that much. I had followed the case and noted the activities of the sect and acknowledged that they had had it coming. Why would people who excused Jonathan then and decried the sect’s actions suddenly fall in love with them today? Is it because of Buhari again?

For those who think that releasing El-Zakzaky would save Nigeria from the potent threats of Zakzaky’s Shiites, you know nothing! We have with us animals already, fully indoctrinated and highly militarized dark souls who should not have humans as their neighbours.

I still cannot understand how successive governments watched this deadly sect with hands akimbo while they grew into what we have today.

Government should just proscribe this sect, and brace up for the consequences, whatever they may be.

Anything else is simply postponing the evil days, which are, anyhow, imminent.