Paris Attack: A Need To Flush Out Boko Haram

The recent attack by Islamic State, ISIS, has become one too many and there is an urgent need to curb the activities of these terrorists before they turn the whole world into a war zone.
Friday’s attack by the Islamic State in Paris, France, in which over 128 people were killed calls for more seriousness in the way Nigeria handles the menace of insurgents in our own part of the world. France has already launched fresh airstrikes against Isis targets in Syria while the Pentagon chief urged European countries to join a military coalition to fight these terrorists. Now, the world seems to be taking a more serious approach to the menace of these killers who hide under the cloak of religion to terrorize others.
In Nigeria, since the government of President Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in on May 29, terrorists in the northeastern part of the country seemed to have upped the ante, carrying out daring raids into military territory and in the middle-belt state of Plateau. The military forces in doubled their efforts and in collaboration with neighbouring countries like Chad, Niger and Cameroun, the insurgents are gradually being dislodged from their hideouts in Sambisa forest and other locations, although they regrouped and they were bombed out
of hiding again in a continued onslaught on their hideouts all over northeast Nigeria.
These days it is suicide bombers, most of them female, who go around bombing places of worship, markets motor parks and other places where there are likely to be crowds. This year alone hundreds, if not
thousands, have died or been injured while thousands have been displaced from their homes and farms, turning them into refugees in their own country.
No doubt, the activities of these criminals have affected business, not only in northeast Nigeria but all over the country and this must not be allowed to continue. Prices of farm produce which used to come
from these places, which have become the insurgents’ playground, have soared while economic and social activities have been disrupted or in some cases grounded. Education has also been brought to a halt and people now live in Internally Displaced People’s, IDP, camps.  President Buhari must not allow this country grind to a halt before
he pounds the Boko Haram into dust. Even if the Federal Government wanted to negotiate, which some Nigerians think is a wrong move, with whom will we discuss when the terrorists have remained faceless.
Their grouse, they have not really stated. Western education cannot and will not be stopped for upon it lies the foundation of our civilization as presently constituted, so, saying no to Western education is a no-win situation.  How do we justify the struggles of the founding fathers of this country if a few people now decide that
Western education is evil?
Now, more than ever, there is a need for us to examine why a group of people would decide to change our society in this day and age for  reasons best known to them. We wonder why these terrorists think they can hold our society hostage, daring it to change after all these years.
Despite the moves the Nigerian state has made to curb the activities of the Boko Haram insurgents, the group continues to move around at will sowing destruction in its path, and taking advantage of the freedom that defines a democratic state.
Come to think of it, terrorists are a political movement with nothing to offer than the conviction that the parent society was unjust. Democracy is the in-thing all over the world and our embracing it has now led to the creation of dissidents who kill and maim at will because the greater  society refuses to see things their way.
The democratic process that benefited the terrorists is also their worst political enemy because now, more than ever, the citizens have continued to condemn their actions as it hurts those who the terrorists believe they want to protect; and have become their enemies because of the killers’ activities in the elimination of both friends
and foes.
The prime objective of the Boko Haram, it seems, is the elimination of the democratic process, converting justice to injustice in order to arouse members of the Nigerian society to sympathise with the terrorists but this has backfired and one wonders again what the Boko Haram, like the Islamic State (ISIS), wants to achieve. Is it to destroy the partial peace we now have, or destroy our part of the world?
But we cannot allow this to happen. These criminal elements are no longer mere abstractions, they are real. They have cast themselves out of the civilized community and have to be hunted down like a pack of rabid dogs, one way or the other. We believe President Buhari can deal a decisive blow to these criminals through the cooperation of other like minds who see the activities of these dissidents for what they really are.