NIGERIA has a leg over the brink of sectarian convulsions and another massacre like the one in Madalla on Christmas Day may suck it into a catastrophic maelstrom. Boko Haram is trying hard to provoke a religious war in the country and it is very close to achieving its diabolical aim.

Boko Haram has been targeting and slaughtering Christians in the North since 2009, but the sect is only the new hideous face of religious barbarism. Boko Haram’s gory gauntlet will almost certainly be taken up by the ethnic and religious groups of its victims if the government does not stop the sect’s killing spree soon.

A Boko Haram bomb left Nancy Maduka without close relatives and she is only 13 years old. She had the grisly task of identifying the charred remains of her parents and two sisters in their burnt-out car. It is now eerily quiet in Nancy’s empty home, a home that was alive with happy chatter only a few hours before the Boko Haram bomb suppressed the hum of conversation and shattered bodies at St Theresa’s Catholic Church after early morning mass on Christmas Day.

The bomb wiped out whole families and scalped a baby. Some American Indian tribes in the past scalped enemy fighters killed in battle. The baby was alive and well when it was scalped by a Boko Haram shrapnel. Dozens of worshippers suffered shocking injuries that may lead to permanent disability.

Nancy must be a little confused following her colossal loss, but there must be those whose minds are concentrated by the desire for revenge. A boy swore revenge after his father was killed in the Boko Haram car bomb attack on the police headquarters in Abuja in June.

The Igbo were regularly set on and butchered in Kano until they fought back. A journalist, who is a northerner, witnessed the killing of a young Igbo man by his Hausa neighbours. The Igbo man had not quarrelled with his Hausa neighbours. Someone far away had made a comment about Islam which some neurotically sensitive Muslims in Nigeria considered blasphemous. Muslim youths in Kano attacked southerners, especially the Igbo, and hacked many of them to death.

The young Igbo man escaped from the scene of frenzied slaughter and must have believed he was safe when he was about to scale a high wall. The horror of spurting blood and piercing screams had galvanised the young Igbo man, but his pursuers were intent on merciless murder. According to the journalist in his published report, one of the Hausa attackers leapt into the air like an African American basketball star about to execute a slam dunk and grabbed the Igbo man’s leg. He was killed before he could futilely beg for his life.

The Igbo were well prepared when the next unprovoked attack came. They confidently defended their homes and businesses and this alarmed the junta. It ordered the surrender of all unlicensed firearms, but it was largely ignored. Kano’s vicious volatility is now less frequently on display.

Christians in the North have been told to defend themselves if further attacked, but they may not need such combative exhortation in the South if Boko Haram and other religious monsters continue to massacre southerners. Reprisals may lead to a conflagration and Nigeria may no longer be recognisable.

Boko Haram should be destroyed now or it may be too late for ethnic reconciliation in Nigeria. Two men whose feud is inherited are unable to enjoy their last-gasp reconciliation in ‘The Interlopers’, a short story by Saki, Hector Hugh Munro’s famous pseudonym. They are pinned down by trees felled by a strong wind one night in winter in a disputed forest and the wolves get them before their men arrive to rescue them. It seems Nigerians have been thrown to the Boko Haram wolves.

The security agencies have some of the sect members in their custody. Some of them were caught with their hands on the detonator and should be able to lead security agents to their cell leaders. They may have to be persuaded to sing.

One of the leaders of the sect likes the sound of his own voice. He phones journalists to gloat over the sect’s terrorist atrocities and his hideout should not be too difficult to locate. Nigeria has the money to buy the necessary eavesdropping equipment and should hire foreign experts if necessary.

Nancy is the last of her family of five. But she will not be safe until Boko Haram is confronted and decisively defeated.

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Your view

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On dangerous doctors

Before you publish an item of such magnitude you need to understand the training and hierarchy of the field. This is not to disprove a few relevant facts stated but the quackery permeates all possessions, including journalism. Medicine is solely learnt via apprenticeship. Picture a government hospital without the necessary facilities and you expect the health workers to make appropriate diagnosis? It takes two to tango. Encouragement to perform optimally is based on numerous factors all of which are practically absent in Nigeria. 
Olujide Ogunmodede, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Re: Pride in perversion
When are we going to get a bill against adultery? I am highly disappointed in your article to say the least. It is not that I am in support of it, and I am not against it either, but it is not worth the prominence given to it!

There are more pressing issues than that requiring attention. Also, it is a futile exercise, for those hell bent on doing it, they can still engage themselves in the privacy of their rooms and for those really affluent, they can get a legal backing from any of the western countries that supports or recognises such.

The holier than thou attitude of Nigerians is our major setback, once we are able to jettison that unnecessary toga, the country will be better for it.

Anyway, I like and enjoy your style of writing but on this issue, I beg to disagree!
Kayode Yusuf, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Our leaders are addicted to corruption and it will be difficult to do away with it because this is a country where you see white and call it black or vice versa before you can be recognised. Truth is far away from our leaders and that’s why the country is in total hardship. The day our leaders will know the truth, then Nigeria will be free from corruption and all the problems facing our dear nation. It’s Nigeria that celebrates corrupt leaders even organising thanksgiving in their honour right in the church of God. Oloyo Toyin, TAC LAWNA Secretariat, Lagos, 08057195427

What a brilliant piece on corruption in Nigeria, but will they do anything about it?
Ibrahim I.A., Ilorin

I appreciate your scholarly article on ‘The road to secession’.
Adeniran Wale

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