Nigeria's a Mess & Abuja is Burning, so I'm Back in London

My dear readers, I have relocated to England. I will return to Abuja one day, but boy, Nigeria is in a BIG mess. I can't even begin to tell of what I've been through.

So after the first explosion in Abuja, my family were calling me from England and asking me to reassess my habitation in Abuja amidst the growing insecurity. So I did.

The crazy thing was that I was in Nyanya on the Saturday before the first blast for a wedding, and drove past the scene of the explosion, which is by a very busy motorway. Nyanya is a densely populated, poorer area on the outskirts of Abuja where many civil servants live because the rent is much cheaper there than in the Abuja metropolis (average rent is around N500, 000 a year for modest lodging in Abuja, whilst in places like Nyanya it's around N100, 000 or less).

I imagine myself like I'm in one of those movies where the city is under attack and buildings are erupting in small explosions behind me everywhere as I dock and weave my way to safety, finally I leap in slow motion and grab unto a swaying ladder hanging from a helicopter labelled 'BRITISH AIRWAYS', and as the helicopter veers away the whole city finally explodes in a huge ball of yellow inferno, and I look down on the burning, hot mess with a tear in my eye, all bruised and battered from my two and a half year life living as a returnee to Abuja.

I will write about distinct aspects of my bad experiences in another post, as this post will concentrate on my departure and why Boko Haram is winning the war in Nigeria.

The First Nyanya Bomb
Firstly let me make one thing clear: the official death toll of around 75 for the first Nyanya bombing on Monday 14 April has been grossly under-represented. I was working for a broadcast media station in Abuja before I left and was responsible for their social media output, and from reports and eye witness accounts, I can confidently tell you that at least 400 people died in that explosion. Yes, 400, and I believe even much more.

One of our freelance journalists who lives near Nyanya called me to tell me he saw four burnt out buses after the explosion, and each of those buses would have been full at the time of the bombing (around 7am on a Monday morning) and each bus carries 50 people. But with the way Nigeria is, I believe if the official capacity is 50, at least 55 would have been on these buses.

I count seven burnt out buses here, and I believe they would each have been full of people that fateful morning. 

Another row of four burnt out buses. Still believe that only 71 people died?

Other pictures from the scene show a row of up to eight burnt out buses, not including kekenapeps, motorcycles, pedestrians, commuters queuing to board buses, street hawkers and cars nearby also loaded with people. A bus park like this is usually heaving with people trying to get into town for work. And remember that some of the injured would have died later in hospital.

So it really pisses me off whenever I see reports from CNN and Nigerian media of the death toll in the 70s, it's a gross injustice to the actual number of people who died, and dangerously underplays the enormity of the blast.

Such unrepresentative figures of the dead in these situations come from eye witness accounts usually from a journalist from Reuters or something who counts the bodies they see before them, but don't take into account bodies in other areas of the scene, the obliterated bodies (human parts were strewn everywhere) or those that die later in hospital. And Nigerian reporters, inadequately equipped to take proper account of the dead, and without a streamlined system for recording those missing, or forensics taking details of bits they find (it usually takes weeks before the final death toll figures are released) and the propensity for Nigerians to regard as correct information from CNN rather than figures from their own people, the initial report stands and is rarely updated.

The numbers injured, officially in the 100s or 200s, should also be much higher.

Some reports also say it was a suicide bomber, then there was a picture of the supposed suicide bomber (with body in tact, is that possible?), then other reports say it was a car bomb. One of my colleagues, who also lives near Nyanya and would usually have traveled to work that fateful morning but was late, says there were rumours that it was a boy with a bomb. The freelancer that called me told me an empty car was seen by commuters parked in front of one of the buses, and as a bus driver horned for the car to get out of the way, it exploded.

But can one car bomb make such an impact, with reports of a huge crater at the scene of the carnage and the rows and rows of burnt out vehicles? Reports of petrol tankers nearby that exploded too might explain the level of impact, but who knows?

This image has been touted all around Nigeria as the suicide bomber. But has there ever been a suicide bomber found intact like this, whilst other victims of the blast were obliterated?

The fact remains we don't know what type of bomb it was, how many people were killed and how many are still missing presumed dead. And nobody will ever find out.

The Second Nyanya Bomb

I heard about the second bomb on Friday May 2 - which occurred right by the scene of the second bomb - after I'd arrived back in England. And judging by what I now know of the first incident, the official figure of 19 dead is most likely 119. I'm serious. People die in Nigeria and nobody knows or cares to find out the details. Again the hospitals were filled, there were calls for people to donate blood, and President Jonathan called another security meeting afterwards to access the issue. Nonsense. But more on President Jonathan later.

I heard reports that the bomb supposedly exploded earlier than planned, and the target was for the following day or Monday? 

Either way, Abuja proper, the central areas that is, are still safe (for now), and Nyanya is quite a distance away. But the point is that Boko Haram have now infiltrated the nation's capital. 

FACT: Boko Haram are Mightier than the Nigerian Army

This is sad but true. Boko Haram not only have better weapons and transportation, they are also united in their purpose and vision, something the Nigerian army (thanks to lack of funds, tribalism and various motives for joining the force) are not. 

And I think the numbers they say Boko Haram have killed in Nigeria in the past five years is 1,500? Well triple it and you'll get closer to the right number. Hundreds have been killed in Borno, Yobe etc, but because these are remote states, no official eye witness is there to count, unlike in Abuja, and see how the numbers there were still under-estimated. My mind boggles at the carnage BH have caused, not just the trail of countless dead, but the maimed, blinded, orphaned, widowed, homeless, income-less and whole communities that have been destroyed. 

And the army, although celebrating a few successes here and there of foiled bomb attacks, and despite the $6bn in funding they receive annually, they are not performing. I've heard reports that the huge funds are siphoned away by the generals and 'ogas at the top,' and the soldier on the ground gets a pittance to live on; they sleep on the bare ground when on duty, have three pure water sachets allocated to each of them and faulty, aged weaponry, some of which are from the Biafran war of the 60s. I have a friend who is a lieutenant who tells me some of their challenges.

And they resort to lying to look as if they're performing, not just lying about finding the missing Chibok girls, but also about catching Fulani militants. The military/police released the pic below, supposedly of Fulani men, but they most certainly are not. They don't look Fulani at all, and rural Fulani men rarely ever wear boxers even. Lies.

These men are not, nor were they ever, Fulani herdsmen in any shape or form

Boko Haram's leader, Abubakar Shekau, in a video claiming responsibility for the Nyanya attack, not only taunted the Nigerian president and said 'catch me if you can', he also boasted that the Nyanya attack was a small one compared to what they're planning. They also confirmed they were behind the school girls' abductions, and said they'll sell the girls off.

His video online was so odious it hurt my ears to listen to the Arabic/Hausa, although I read somewhere there was close to 20 minutes of his rantings, yet I can only find a 1 minute video which was cut mid-sentence. Hmmm. 

#BringBackOurGirls

The way that the whole world has campaigned for the release of the over 200 girls abducted by Boko Haram men dressed as the Nigerian army (Umm...who supplied them with army uniform??) from their boarding school in Chibok, which is in Borno State, has been astonishing, heartening and wonderful in a sad, uplifting way.

Firstly, the exact number of girls kidnapped remains unknown. it's been 85, 197, 234, 250, etc over the weeks since their abduction, with reports it could be up to 300, as students from neighbouring schools were brought into Chibok at the time for exams. The names of the girls have been released, and the majority of them are Christians, but I believe the number abducted is more than 300. 

Now I'm aware of some in the Muslim community both in Nigeria (see here) and around the world (see here) who forcibly kidnap Christian girls and marry them so that they convert the girl and the eventual offspring become Muslims, and there are reports that the Chibok girls have been married off to the militants, who need both cooks and wives to tend to them in their camps. Some of the girls have also been reportedly taken out of Nigeria into neighbouring Chad and Cameroon.

Street protests in Abuja, Lagos, London and everywhere else have taken place about the issue, the kidnapping is front page news on the BBC and CNN websites, and widespread attention has been given to the issue, with American and British celebrities, politicians etc speaking out on the issue. It's a BIG story. 

Yet am I being pessimistic when I say that, from what I've seen and heard, those girls will never be found? Remember that another group of girls were kidnapped in similar circumstances weeks before these ones in Chibok, and those ones were never found, and they're out of the news.

  

And everyone knew, after a couple of days, the location of the Chibok girls. They were in the Sambisa forest, as locals saw groups of girls, many still in their school uniforms, been loaded and unloaded unto trucks and driven away. 

Some of the parents of the girls tried to go into the forest themselves to rescue the girls, but failed. I believe the military also knew where the girls were but were afraid to go into the Sambisa forest, maybe due to an agreement between themselves and the terrorists to stay away from that area (this is very possible) or because they are inadequately equipped to go in, rescue the girls, detain or kill the kidnappers and emerge safely. That takes a lot of planning and fire power, all of which were probably beyond the capacity of the soldiers.

I know I sound negative and condescending about the power of the Nigerian army, but dear readers, I've seen these things. It annoys me so much, the way corruption and ineptitude has made fools and wicked men out of a force that should be strongly focused on citizen's safety.

I pray for the girls too, and God bless every non-Nigerian that has lent their voice to the campaign, and the Nigerians whose hearts bleed at the injustice of having children stolen and the government unable to do anything about it, despite it seeming so easy to get them back, and knowing if you lived in a different country such a thing would never happen, and if it did, it would be the government's priority to find them and they would have done so by now. It's excruciatingly awful that the Sambisa forest was off-limits to soldiers because of the might of Boko Haram, who operate with impunity and can kidnap more students again at any time.

This report by the Guardian newspaper quoted a source from Nigeria's intelligence agencies who said: 

“We in the intelligence were ready to penetrate the sect but they [the government] wasted too much time concentrating on irrelevances. Now it is too late, the intelligence guys are not ready to risk their lives any more after all the frustration from the managers in Abuja. We have given them all the information they need including the level of sophistication of the insurgents; it’s up to them to act.”

Those girls should have been found days following their disappearance. Now I fear it's too late. And if BH decide to release some (I've heard reports the Muslim girls have been released), it would be their own decision independent from force or any negotiations.

A Nice But Dim President
President Goodluck Jonathan seems like a nice man. He would have been a great lecturer I'm sure, but putting him in charge of the most populous, richest and most troubled country in the whole of Africa was a big mistake.

Not only because he lacks the 'killer instinct' to be tough on the bad guys in the Nigerian system, but also because his political enemies (mostly the Muslim North) are hell-bent on making his tenure a mess, because they feel that, in the grand tradition of the turn-by-turn Christian/South then Northern/Muslim system of voting in Nigerian presidents, that it wasn't the South's turn yet. (Former President Yar'Adua, a Northern Muslim, died in office, leading to his vice president Jonathan taking over prematurely).

So repeated attacks by Boko Haram have been orchestrated to frustrate Jonathan and make him look inept, and the feeling is that if he contests and wins Nigeria's national elections next year, things will be worse.

His Presidential media chat yesterday in which he answered questions and showed he had no idea where the missing girls were (he told the journalists present that they knew more than he did about the situation) and in which he said that many people were stealing government money in Nigeria but that this was not corruption, was sad to see. (Read more about that Presidential Media chat here).

The powers that be in Nigeria are mostly there to 'chop,' their minions on the ground have become mean due to lack of money and resort to bribery at every turn, and the ordinary man exists in a helpless void of knowing you're all alone, and the government will most probably hurt you rather than do well for you in your life time.

So...I Left
Yup. And as many Nigerians looked upon my decision to opt out of the mess with envy, saying I could never claim to be Nigerian when I can so easily disengage and run off, I say yes. And you would too if you could.

You're proudly Nigerian because you have no choice.

I'm back in England now, where things are so decent it's almost boring, and although there are challenges, I don't have to worry that my siblings could be stolen from their schools never to be seen again, or that my government doesn't know I exist, neither does it care and it could in fact kill me tomorrow and bury the evidence.

The fact that I automatically got an NI number through the post when I turned 16, and if I turn 100 the Queen automatically sends me a birthday card, and my details are on countless systems somewhere, all attesting to the fact that I exist and the government knows me and is watching, is a source of comfort to me. Absolutely.

Nigeria, my Motherland, I tried to love you, I tried to make it work, but it was just too much of an uphill battle. Adios, for now. I will visit for sure, but I shall never live with you again, even if I become fabulously wealthy and could afford all the trappings of the West in my house.

Two good female friends of mine, born and bred in the UK, relocated to Nigeria (Lagos) recently and are thriving: they've launched successful businesses, enjoy a vibrant social life and are living large. I believe if you have lots of money (which I didn't) and have an entrepreneurial flair (which I don't), you can make it in Nigeria.

But I'm just not built for all that. I don't want to live in a beautiful castle in the middle of a gutter, next to a den of robbers and adjacent to a brood of vipers, knowing that if the outside gets in, I'm on my own.

There's just too much wrong in Nigeria for it to ever be OK for me.