The culture of fear, accentuated the other day by female suicide bombers in Maiduguri; one of them as young as 10 years old, is too horrific to be considered as just another suicide attack. This new havoc-wreaking tactic, whereby Boko Haram deploys young female suicide bombers as human bombs, is the most debasing, disdainful and dehumanizing onslaught on the girl-child and a brazen attack on women across the world. It once again demonstrated the primordial viciousness of Boko Haram to stand civilization on its head, in a shameless and cowardly manner by turning children, especially girls into agents of death. If Boko Haram is unmindful of the history of the faith they claim to defend, they ought to be dutifully reminded that their atrocious assault against women are antithetical to established practices of Islam, which they parody with their grotesque campaign of human savagery and barbarism. All Nigerians must rise in strong condemnation of these dastardly acts.
In a spell that shocked an already scarred population to the marrows, at least 19 people were killed after explosions rocked the Monday Market in the Borno State capital, Maiduguri. A female suicide bomber said to be just 10 years old, blew herself up in a crowded market, at about mid-day when it was packed with shoppers and traders. Eye-witness accounts said the blast happened as the girl was being searched at the entrance to the market; and the bomb was believed to have been remotely detonated. The blast split the suicide bomber into two and flung one part across the road, raising questions whether she actually knew what was strapped to her body.
Boko Haram launched its first female suicide attack in June last year in Gombe and there have been a spate of bombings since, including four in a week in Kano in July last year. At about the same time, security forces in Katsina arrested three Boko Haram suspects, among them an 18 year-old lady and a 10 year-old girl, wearing suicide vests, amid fears that young girls were being forced into becoming human bombs rather than through ideological motivation. Forced conscription of young men and boys by Boko Haram has been well-documented. Last July, three women said to be female Boko Haram recruiters were arrested. The arrest came after a female suicide bomber detonated an explosive amidst a crowd of graduating students checking their National Youth Service Corps posting at the Central Administration block of Kano State Polytechnic, killing herself and two others.
Before all these, the harvesters of death had desecrated the Sallah celebration when female suicide bombers unleashed terror at five different locations in the same Kano State. This was besides the arrest of 16 female bombers, with their male trainer, by the Joint Task Force, also in Kano. These incidents of madness have only reiterated how much disregard the terrorists have for the sanctity of human lives. While deployment of teenage girls as dynamites has existed for years in areas bedeviled by insurgencies and terrorist activists, it is a novelty in Nigeria. It is therefore pertinent to interrogate the warped theology and fundamentalist ideology that informs the madness of those who conscript teenage girls as suicide bombers.
One of the most terrifying evils that can happen to humankind is for women, out of whom the human species came forth, to be used as suicide-bombers to destroy that which they nurture. It is an uncanny negation that man uses a woman to destroy that which by her natural vocation as mother, she brings forth and cares for: life. The woman’s position of supremacy in the cultivation of human civilization is unquantifiable. The combination of these natural attributes and a gracious biology prepare the woman by her character and personality to complement the man. Without the woman, man is incomplete. The woman is the vessel that brings forth humanity; hers is a natural vocation that entails love, fecundity, and proximity to the source of creation. The primacy of women in the spirituality of the universe is captured in all cultures of Nigeria which depict the mother as a golden treasure. Consequently, to use women against humanity is to damage the critical balance of the human equilibrium and to offend the essence of creation.
Why would any group of fundamentalists that claim to be in a faith and seeking conversion of others target women and innocent girls of the same faith for extermination? Any claim to purity in a faith that launches assault against women is fallacious. Over two hundred years ago in Nigeria, Nana Asma’u, daughter of the great Usman Dan Fodio; founder of the famous Sokoto Caliphate flourished as a prolific poet, scholar and an illustrious luminary of the education of Muslim women. Erudite and versed in Arabic, Greek and Latin classics, she represented the number of highly educated women of the time. Had she been used as a suicide bomber, would the huge corpus of poetry and other intellectual works of her illustrious life have become the rich heritage the world now has?
And so, by their ruthless abuse and reification of the girl-child, the leaders and doctrinal molders of Boko Haram are standing civilization on its head. What is even more bizarre is the fact that this cowardly exploitation of women is carried out with the sect’s awareness that all religious cultures, including Islam, which they parody by their bloody adventurism, are custodians of the heritage of civilization. Are these men not aware of the primacy of the woman, which make her the mother of the earth? Are they oblivious of the spiritual immensity and sacredness that womanhood bears? Does it mean anything to these insane maniacs that the society they desire to take over would be obliterated should they turn all girls into suicide bombers?
By its deployment of girls as suicide bombers, Boko Haram has certainly reached the zenith of their cruelty against the human race. Beyond religious repugnance, women or girls are covered by extant international conventions that prohibit their objectification and exploitation as is being witnessed now. What this calls for is for every Nigerian to be under high security alert; the fight against terrorism cannot be left to security forces alone. Unless Nigerians are prepared to make sacrifices, the country risks devastating consequences. In this regard, the human community must rise and fight this scourge.
