When Al Qaeda and its affiliates were terrorizing the West decades ago, many Muslims rejoiced at their jihadist exploits. There were live-streamed executions and explosives detonations with the murderers uttering Islamic chants to justify their acts. Today, for every reported case of such attacks in the West, there are multiple such cases in the heartlands of Islam – the Middle East, against Muslims. Similarly, when Boko Haram started their attacks, their primary targets were churches and Christian communities. Today, Boko Haram is arguably more injurious to Muslims and Islam generally than to Christians or Christianity. The onslaught of Fulani herdsmen, Bandits, and their different derivatives is because of the metamorphoses that happened to Boko Haram. As we speak, the Unknown Gunmen of Southeastern Nigeria are playing the same playbook that AL Qaeda and Boko Haram played, and the leaders of the Southeast are irresponsibly behaving like the leaders of the Islamic North.

History repeats itself because men and women refuse to learn its valuable lifesaving lessons. When the Unknown Gunmen released a two-minute, fifty-four seconds video clip on April 21, 2022, with four masked gunmen who were seen in a forest wielding automatic weapons, it became clear to objective Igbos that the Southeast is on the verge of becoming another geopolitical zone that will experience a total breakdown of law and order if urgent steps are not taken. One of the gunmen declared. “We the unknown gunmen in Biafraland have come to make our position known to the public. We are here to protect our fatherland by all means. We don’t have any sponsor. And we are not planning to have one. We are not under the command of Simon Ekpa, DOS, or Uwazuruike. Any government giving any of these people money is wasting their time. Only the release of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu can calm us down. Monday sit-at-home is sacrosanct. Nothing can stop it apart from the release of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. There shall be no election (in the Southeast), and anybody that attempts any election matter will die.” If you read between the lines of this declaration, you will see two troubling groups of words. The most troubling is “…anybody that attempts any election matter will die.” The second is “…We don’t have any sponsor”.  

Any group that does not value the sanctity of life should be declared a terrorist organization. This is one of the many failures the leaders of the Islamic north perpetrated against themselves. They refused every call to designate Boko Haram or Fulani Herdsmen or Bandits a terror organization until it was too late. The violence that has been credited to the unknown gunmen is nothing short of organized terror. The second and key claim in the declaration is that they do not have a sponsor. No organization can survive without funding. It is money that often fuels most conflicts and wars. And the unknown gunmen are no exception. Unfortunately, the leaders of the Southeast and Nigeria are not equipped to deal with the dangers that the unknown gunmen pose. To date, the federal government has been unable to reveal and persecute the sponsors of Boko Haram and Fulani Herdsmen. This failure is arguably the biggest reason why these terrorist groups are still a menace. Southeasterners must wake up from the romance they presently have with IPOB and Nnamdi Kanu. The unknown gunmen are a present and future threat to the Southeast’s peace, prosperity, and progress. And the leaders must do all to delete or domesticate this monster while they can. The leaders of the Niger Delta must also start strategizing fast on how to protect their domain from the spill of violence after suffering from multiple spills from oil exploitation.

Ata Ukuta – Editor, Towncryyers