Pastor Ladi Thompson is the Founder of Living Water Church, located in Anthony Village, Lagos. Besides, he’s a researcher, philanthropist and champion of resettlement of religious crisis’ victims in the country. In this interview with SEGUN OTOKITI and TAIWO AYANGBILE, he spoke on the Boko Haram insurgency, plans to Islamise Nigeria, government’s complicity and why it will be hard for government to contain the Boko Haram assault/ Excerpt:
You are one religious leader who has conducted extensive researches on religious crisis in the country and from them forecast, almost accurately, the pattern and nature of the next attack. With your knowledge and experience about the phenomenon, what can you make out of the continued Boko Haram assaults on the country?
The costliest mistake Nigeria ever made in the case of the Islamist sect was the premature extra-judicial killing of Muhammed Yussuf, the head of Boko Haram. I said so because Muhammed had been operating in Maiduguri for more than 12 years, he was well connected in government and all over the country. They have been striking prior to that many times. But what happened was that in that particular year the mistake he made was that God turned his head against the police, because the police shot one of his boys in the foot at a checkpoint. That report came to me in February and we sent out an alarm by March that there was a build up in Maiduguri and that it’s most likely to be the next execution point in the country.
We sent the advance report to Kaduna State based on the reports we have sent out earlier. Yussuf would have been useful because he was very belligerent. Before the Western press hijacked what is happening in Nigeria, they are known as Yesufua in Maiduguri. Boko Haram was the western coinage, a diversionary tactics to sell newspapers to the western audience. But unfortunately while they were doing that, they removed from the threat the real and present danger that Yesufua represented. So when they killed him, Mallam Sani Umaru took over as he signed as acting leader of Boko Haram in 2009 and he restated the objectives of what we are calling Boko Haram in Yesufua. Now within, a lot of other sects are operating that Nigerians are also calling Boko Haram. So people don’t really know the degree of what we are facing yet. But when we tell you what is going to happen next, you will see that the wake up call is not far now.
What is it that is going to happen next?
The guy who took over from the one that was killed has pointed out what their objectives are. That they have started a jihad in Nigeria and no force on earth can stop them and that their aim is to Islamise by force the whole of Nigeria and ensure the rule of Muslims in the country. They swore that they will teach us a bitter lesson. They told us there would be series of bombing in southern and northern Nigeria cities: Lagos, Ibadan, Enugu and Port Harcourt. And they said that the bombing will not stop until they have levelled up the cities. Now this man said publicly that they would make this country ungovernable for all those who oppose the rule of Sharia, whether Muslims or Christians. The Nigerian state cannot remain with the vision of what we call Boko Haram. Then they called all Northerners in Islamic states to stop following wicked political parties in the country. Later on, a lot of things happened that justified their attempts and everything we have said.
What is it that the country has lost in the killing of Mohammed Yusuf, the former leader of the Islamic sect?
Had they not killed Yussuf, a proper interrogation would have made it easy for Nigerians to see how widespread the connection of Yussuf of Boko Haram was. Remember that Mallam Yussuf, if you go into police records in Nigeria, has been arrested before and whisked to Abuja when it became so dangerous within the region. But he did not spend a long time in the hand of security officers because instruction from higher places was responsible for his release with the collusion of names you would never believed. When they released him, that was when they first made the first Boko Haram strike in Maiduguri. Not really the first but was the most publicised one.
What people forget is that 90 per cent of Yesufua remained active, even after the Nigerian Army have crushed their rebellion. And you have to remember that they held the army on three fronts for more than 10 days before the Nigerian Army could subdue them. The police was never a match for them, it’s the army that was a problem for them. And the ones that were put in prison, for you to know that this people are very intelligent, a jail break was organised that freed a lot of them.
Had it been Yusuf was interrogated properly, we would have uncovered how many friends he had in high places, who as well think like him and who are using him as a vanguard to what they believe. Investigations revealed that his sympathisers include former military leaders, influential businessmen, emirs and even academics of northern origin, some of whom are former vice-chancelors.
Is there any link between the sect and the pattern of attack during the last killings in the North over the result of the last presidential election?
Again, you ought to remember that when the last elections were coming up, it was the first time in Nigeria history that the colonial policy or formula was rendered impossible, because when the colonialists left, the legacies they left was that there should be perpetual domination of Southern Nigeria by the Northern Nigeria to make sure that the identity of the Northern Nigeria is different from that of Southern Nigeria. They deviced the identity so that it is greater than the identity of the whole Nigeria and the perpetuality of that formula was based on the ability of the Northern Nigerians to always have a concensus candidate. But for the first time in Nigeria, no concensus candidate who could have won the presidency was agreed upon, paving the way for what I called ‘rogue candidates’. Let’s look at a man like Muhammadu Buhari, who has been known to be an intolerant Islamist all along; his activities, rallies in Kano, his utterances were clear. Now, an Islamist like him who has no real political capital in Northern Nigeria, had only one option when he was campaigning as presidential candidate. The party contested for the presidency and never really contested much for other posts. The whole thing was just about his personality, and his strategy was very intriguing; it was based the only two things in history that united the Northern Nigeria. The first, which has always been used from colonial time, is language. That all speakers of Hausa language, which was what they used in the last election, will want to believe them through language. But because of opposition and the number of candidates from the North, the language advantage became split among about three or four candidates. So the language was not going to deliver. The obvious second thing is population. In late Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s days of politics, it was in Kano House of Assembly that they tried to demonstrate to the South that there were more Muslims. It’s a formula that always worked in core areas where there are more Muslims than Christians. So, Buhari was very intelligent to realise that he has no political capital and that northern Nigerians are not supporting him. So he talked straight to the most disenfranchised Northerners, the Almajeris and fanatics, he appealed to them directly. So they walked straight and all he did was that most of his campaigns was in northern Nigeria, he did very little campaign in southern Nigeria because there was really no need, and what he had promised them in the North was the fulfilment of Islamists’ dream, which is an Islamized Nigeria. They’ll tell you that some of those things when they were announcing that Buhari has won in those states. He took advantage that this people are ill-educated or half-educated. The instructions had gone before that if they tried to obstruct his new Islamist era, nobody should give room for it. So based on these instructions, when they first announced that he was leading in those states, a lot of them thought that because he has won in Bauchi and Borno states, it means that he has won all over Nigeria. Now do you see the trick he played on the intelligence of those people? The moment it came out that he has lost, it was interpreted to them that cheating had occurred and their votes have been stolen. So before the final result was announced, they started slaughtering people in Buhari’s name. And what betrayed them was the pattern of their attack. By training they are not trained to attack institutions of government, they are trained to attack churches. That’s why so many churches and Christians fell victim during the post-election attacks.
What do you think can be done to bring an end to the menace?
Right now, I don’t think we have the moral strength. Nigeria’s present leadership does not have what it takes to execute what can save the country. I can assure you that if Jonathan is not Nigeria’s last president, the greater chances is that he is the first of the last presidents that would ever rule Nigeria. In my report in 2008. I mentioned that one of the Boko Haram cliques has about 1.5 million registered followers who have submitted their lives for the group. The fact that nobody has ever been penalised for cutting off the head of a Christian like the one in Kano or the woman, Olusesi, in Gombe in 2007, who was slaughtered
before her children, speaks volume of why the Islamist terror group is gaining ground by the day. Till tomorrow, justice was never done. No Christian nor church has ever been compensated, nobody has ever been brought to book. Infact, if anything, damages were only awarded to the late Mallam Yusuf of Boko Haram. He was the only one who has been awarded damages for killing people. His family was awarded about N50 million because the government killed him. And I’m sure if we trace it, the money would have been paid behind. Now, that exposes the degree of organisation behind the Boko Haram menace. So in the report, we stated that first of all there’s going to be a revisiting of the laws of the land and that test cases have to be run. I, for instance, met with one of the governors, the Governor of Gombe State, Danjuma Goje. He was the one who blocked every attempt to seek justice. What he didn’t know when I met with him was that I was the one who engaged and paid the lawyer, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) who was to pursue justice. The lawyer served him, his commissioner for justice and others who needed to be served. When I had a meeting with Goge some years later, he told me he did not even know that the family was agitating on anything, not knowing that I that he was telling this lie to was aware that he was telling a lie. As we were pushing to make sure that Goje’s state would be responsible for the family of Oluwashesi, by coughing out a punitive amount of money, lo and behold, the Youth wing of Christian Association of Nigeria gave him an award for being religiously tolerant. And this was coming with the blessing of CAN under Archbishop Onaiyekan. So, I was going to scuttle the award and when I made it known to all leaders in CAN that I don’t think the award should hold, they arranged a meeting for me to meet them and the government side within a day or two. At the meeting, they told me they wanted to compensate the family with N200,000. I was shocked that such an amount could have ever been proposed as compensation to someone who has lost so much. They said I should allow the victim use her discretion but I refused. I asked what kind of discretion was there for the victim to exercise given the immeasurable loss. I said they burnt her car, attempted to kill her baby, burnt the mother alive and you are taking of N200,000 compensation. I said the family would not accept anything less than N80 million. His commissioners began to argue with me, that I should leave it to their discretion. I said ‘no’. That what we are after is this. Let them take it or not, that, I, talking, am not receiving a kobo from the family. When it is paid, I don’t intend to collect one penny, not even for all the lawyers I’ve hired but that it should be on record that it shall be a sum of money that serves as a deterrent for further occurrences of killing in the name of religion, ethnicity or whatever it is.
There were Christian leaders who argued with me because of how much they have donated to a few people. So, I know that if we don’t wake up to point out that indoctrination of children to murder adults forebode ills, then religious indoctrination is going to be lethal and costly. If it happened in Borno State, one can imagine in how many other states children are ready to slaughter adults. They didn’t listen. What did we later have? The report that came in after Buhari’s incitation revealed that 11, 12, 13 year olds were part of those killing people. So how do you forge ahead in a nation where children in one section of the country are trained to kill adults? But leaders pretend they don’t see the problems. Listen to me, there need to be a measure in all those areas. You need to make sure that there’s punitive measures taken. Let’s make sure that deterrents are put in place. Now go back into history. The Governor of Kano State once sponsored similar killings. In his own case, the memos are still available if you do your research very well, where the then president of this country advised him not to take certain actions. They said there was something happening in Jos, a group appealed to former Governor Shekarau that they would like to have a solidarity march. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo replied quickly that he knows the nature of Kano State and that he would not approve the solidarity march. Shekarau approved it and those purportedly doing the march slaughtered nonsense in retaliation. How do we know that there’s government comlicity? It was through the government vehicles and agencies that cleaned up the city of the remains of people they slaughtered, so that there would not be any evidence afterwards. While the killing was going on in Kano, there were conflicting reports because when the Presidency phoned that it heard something was going on, they said ‘no’ there’s nothing going wrong. It’s the same person that attempted to become the president of Nigeria recently. He was even rewarded with a title, “Mutuwale Kano” by Kano Emirate. The former president that died was “Mutuwale Katsina”, his son-in-law is “Mutuwale Bauchi”.
Now how can we be so stupid to think this problem will go away when they have really invested on it and in it? There is a literature of how to make bomb that came from my colleagues in northern Nigeria, confiscated from people who were almost recruited into Boko Haram. Like I said, the name is generic. So, who says this thing will go away? We advised them that the Nigerian Army should be strengthened beyond lines of religion because not until then, the only force that could curtail them is the Nigerian Army. Right now, the Nigerian Army, except something is done, cannot curtail them because they have already been divided from within. Whoever has been working for the group has worked well.
The reports from Plateau State made it clear that in many places, many victims were murdered by Islamists wearing Nigerian Army uniforms. There are people who should have been arrested, that were not arrested based on Nikky Tobi’s report. The reason why those people kept walking free in Plateau State was because instructions from the highest places in government would not allow them to be arrested.