Rev 2:13 “I know thy works and where thou dwellest, even where Satan seat is and thou holdest fast my name, and has not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth.”
We’ve all read about the activities of the Tomahawk . We’ve heard about its actions in Syria, Libya, Palestine, and a few other places where America has deployed it since it was created in 1970. You’ve watched its glorious movement across the sky on television screens. But for most in Nigeria, it has never been encountered. It is a distant dream. It will never come here, so we think, because we are not as involved in the international wrangling. We are content with being called the giant of Africa even though by military standard we are Lilliputians.
But on the night of December 25, the reality was brought home to Nigerians that as long as the world remains, domestic issues can spin into international disputes and the most dangerous of military arsenals can be deployed on the tiniest of nations; nowhere is safe. On this night of December 25 I was doing my last beat as I do every night scrolling my You Tube before I go to bed. A friend who keeps late nights like me sent me a short tweet from President Donald Trump of America. I read it and behold the seemingly impossible: a Tomahawk cruise missile had been fired on a tiny village in Sokoto. President Trump was proud of what it had accomplished. “Its precision is such as can be accomplished only by America,” he said proudly. He had warned the terrorists in Nigeria to stop killing Christians, that if they did not he was coming to devastate them. Those who thought America came only because of Christian genocide missed the whole point. Since the 9/11 AlQueda attack, America has been in running war with terrorists all over the world. The terrorists in Nigeria did not heed Trump’s warning. They did not and now he had fulfilled his word. He greeted the American soldiers who had fought gallantly ‘‘Merry Christmas.” He also included as he puts it the “dead terorrists.” President Donald Trump deployed that crude mockery to tell Nigerians that many of the terrorists had been killed in the attack.
The US Tomahawk missiles were launched from a US Navy warship, operating in the Gulf of Guinea, off the coast of Nigeria. The missiles targeted ISIS camps in Sokoto State, specifically in the Bauni forest area of Tangaza Local Government Area. The following morning, the government of Sokoto State said there were no civilian casualties, but nobody was talking about casualties among the terrorists. But why Sokoto? Sokoto is the headquarters of the caliphate in Nigeria. It was where Uthman Dan Fodio began his jihad. The Sultans who reign there are the perpetual presidents of the Supreme Council for Muslims in the whole nation. The Yoruba, which warehouses a large percentage of Muslims, second to the north, had questioned why the Sultan, whoever he is, should be the permanent president of all the Muslims, but there has been no change. This suggests a kind of superiority of the Sokoto Caliphate, yet the people of Iwo, a town in Osun State, say they accepted Islam before Sokoto, and they claim they were the first to receive Islam in Nigeria.
But Sokoto doesn’t regard itself as equal to anybody in Nigeria. That is why it chose for itself the appelation of “Seat of the Caliphate” on its vehicle plate number. Then there’s the ‘born to rule’ mentality. But that is physical, the spiritual and the psychological aspect of Sokoto’s superiority and ownership remains and is waxing stronger everyday. The Fulani or Hausa Muslim will not pray behind his or her brother and sister Muslims from any other place in Nigeria however learned that person is. That was the main reason of Uthman Dan Fodio’s jihad. He was accommodated by the Hausa in Gobir which was part of the Hausa kingdom. But he later formed a group which he taught. He taught that the Hausa did not have pure Islam. Therefore he took it upon himself to purify Islam among the Hausa, although scholars have argued that the purpose of Uthman Dan Fodio was more political than religion. After he conquered Gobir, he established the city state of Sokoto which became the headquarters from where he ruled and from where by conquest and preaching and teaching of Islam by traders and missionaries, Islam spread to other areas that today constitute the northwest of Nigeria today. For Uthman Dan Fodio and those Sultans who have succeeded him since then especially after the amalgamation of the south and north of Nigeria, the whole of Nigeria is the heritage of Uthman Dan Fodio. Not only did he and his succeeding leaders own Nigeria they also must rule it perpetually. That was why Abubakar Gumi, the father of the current bandit-loving Ahmad Gumi, and the Grand Khadi of the Northern Region and the chief advisor of the Premier Sir Ahmadu Bello, said it was over his dead body that a southerner will rule in Nigeria. That got fulfilled until Olusegun Obasanjo was elected president in 1999. By that time the senior Gumi had died.
Sir Ahmadu Bello, the first and only premier of northern Nigeria pronounced it boldly and publicly that Nigeria is the heritage of Uthman Dan Fodio. The north must therefore resist the possibility of any leader from the south ruling the nation. Rather, the Quran must be dipped in the Atlantic Ocean. The British colonizers helped further this dream of the Sokoto domestic colonizers. What caused this on the part of the British? The Southern politicians were educated and therefore challenged constantly all the shenanigans of the British but the North was more submissive and reactionary. It is not aggressive and neither does it want any change. The acceptance of its oligarchic system by the British helped create a camaraderie between it and Britain. The colonizer was in Nigeria to cheat and exploit and Sokoto would help in that even after independence. Britain helped Sokoto to win majority seats at the centre where Ahmadu Bello pushed his ally, Tafawa Balewa, to be prime minister while he stayed back in the north as the premier of a north that was deliberately made bigger than the other regions of the south so that the north would always dominate. Thus Sokoto, not even Kaduna, which was the headquarters of the northern government where Ahmadu Bello had his administration, was the de facto political headquarters of Nigeria while Lagos, where Tafawa Balewa, the nominee of Ahmadu Bello ruled, was the de jure capital. All orders flow from Sokoto. The premier was a prince of Sokoto who contested the sultanate but lost. The Sultan of Sokoto is still today the “head honcho” of the entire north. It is not immediately visible but a discerning person can know. Sokoto remains the political capital of Nigeria even when the capital was moved to Abuja. Sokoto rules whether the physical capital was in Lagos or later in Abuja. That is the power of the Fulani. All emirs in the north submit to the Sultan. Though the relationship is complex, the Sultan of Sokoto is the primus inter pares.
Why did Trump go to Sokoto to attack it with Tomahawk? Why Sokoto? The area of operation of the insurgents is Borno State in the northeast. Ordinarily, since the focus of America is the insurgents namely ISIS and ISWAP and Boko Haram, natural wisdom demands that it strikes first in that Borno axis. But Trump and America struck hard with what he called a deadly attack in Sokoto. Banditry started in Sokoto, which includes the current Zamfara State. Bello Turji started it. He rebelled when his cows were rustled and given to an emir. An emir? You asked. Yes, an emir who was supposed to be a judge of fairness but had become an accomplice to crime and a receiver of stolen goods. When Bello Turji could not recover his cows by existing law, mind you Sharia was operational in Sokoto and Zamfara, he took to the bush, sold his remaining cows, bought a gun and became a bandit. He grew to become the head of the bandits. Sharia had failed him, and he was going to take the law into his own hands. Once the former governor of Zamfara State, Bello Matawalle, allegedly bribed Bello Turji and his team with 60 million naira. They dropped their guns for a little while but picked them up again and continued banditry.
Bello Turji is thought to be a bandit and not an insurgent. His concern was to avenge the injustice done to him by the emir and to maim, kidnap and get ransom. But why was he found among ISIS insurgents and terrorists? ISIS, ISWAP, Boko Haram are supposed to be in Borno state. But Trump knew from American intelligence that the terrorists were in Sokoto, the political and spiritual capital of Nigeria. They were in the northwest. What ignorant Nigerians did not know is that there is more to banditry than meets the eye. We don’t know that banditry and insurgency are one and the same and they pursue one purpose. That purpose is not money which they collect in huge amounts. Ignorant Nigerians continue to wonder why the lifestyle of the bandits have not significantly improved despite the huge ransom they collect. Little did they know that banditry and insurgency are one and the same thing and that both had merged for the same purpose, the purpose of jihad to conquer Nigeria for Islam. Bandits collect the money which finances the insurgency and both moved to Sokoto from two villages called Jabo and Tangaza.When they got to Jabo and Tangaza, they transmuted into Lakurawa. Like Lakurawa, they were thought to be bandits but in reality, they were terrorists in disguise. Lakurawa was said to be very deadly. They established their authority over the villages and communities; they were collecting taxes from local farmers. When the Americans fired Tomahawk at Jabo and Tangaza, it met there Bello Turji and others of his group, as well as the disguised Lakurawa. The Nigerian Army had made fruitless searches for them for years but now they are reportedly dead within a few hours of the devastating strike by America. It’s a welcome relief, some Nigerians are saying.
Did the Sultan of Sokoto, Saad Abubakar, know what was happening in Jabo and Tangaza before the Americans went there? Ordinary Nigerians and even the Sultan himself will deny it, but that denial will be very difficult swallow. If we take the testimony of the government that they gave the US intelligence, then we will believe that the government knows. The next question will be if the government knew why it did not go for broke with them. The contradictions in the testimonies of different government sources on the strike is enough proof that America did not cooperate with Nigeria at all, neither did America exchange intelligence with Nigeria. America can’t trust broken Nigeria with its intelligence. The government didn’t know they were there but chances are that Sultan Saad Abubakar knew, Sheik Ahmad Gumi, the Islamic cleric and vocal terrorists’ defender knew, so also did Professor Usman Yussuf, a professor of medicine and former Chief Executive Officer of NHIS knew since they have been visiting the bandits in the forest. What will Sultan Saad Abubakar know? This is because he is the real power-holder in Sokoto. He is the spiritual leader of the Muslims. If the problem of banditry and insurgency is spiritual, then the Sultan knows more than the eye can see.
The headquarters of the insurgents and bandits merged together in disguised Lakurawa as shown by the video released by America of the scene of the strike on that fateful December 25 is Jabo and Tangaza. It has at least one house painted white. It may have been hidden from the eyes of the Nigerian military who deliberately did not want to know, but it was not hidden from the eagle-eye of American intelligence and the American Tomahawk missile. With just 12 missiles fired at the territorial headquarters of the insurgents each costing $2 million the American Tomahawk missile wrecked havoc on the insurgents.
What is a Tomahawk missile? That's my innocent question to Meta AI in my curiosity to know this deadly weapon that can fire from a war ship in a long distance and wreck such havoc. Meta AI gave an awe-inspiring view of Tomahawk. It says: “Tomahawk missiles, that’s some serious business.” Tomahawk is really some serious business. A long-range and all weather missile developed by the US. “It’s like the ultimate precision-guided package deal.” No wonder President Trump was so proud of the Tomahawk missile. That is why he said only America could have hit with such precision. Even Meta AI was proud of Tomahawk. What Nigeria faces is more than a natural battle. Gumi and his group would not mind wiping out the last Christians in Nigeria. Ahmed Yerima, the former governor of Zamfara and the first man to clamp Sharia in his state said recently that the goal of every true Muslim is to ensure Sharia in every part of Nigeria. The powers-that-be from Sokoto has compelled the Tinubu government to tell lies about the actual nature of the Christian genocide. An Arab lady who worked as a reporter for Aljazera was seen in a YouTube video giving testimony about how her employers told her the words she must use in describing the Christian genocide. She must not write persecution or genocide, rather she must write farmers-herders conflict. Is that not what the Nigerian government is saying too? President Tinubu’s voice has been seized to say what Sokoto wants said. At every turn they threaten President Tinubu with withdrawal of northern votes and since he is in office not for truth but for lies so that he can win election, waste another eight years and leave he agreed with them. The idea of negotiating with the terrorists was sold to him but Sokoto and Tinubu bought it by putting in the defence ministry two ministers from the North who favour negotiations with the bandits. President Tinubu was compelled to retire General Christopher Musa as the Chief of Defence Staff. In less than five weeks, he was back as the minister of defence an accomplishment that he said “can only be God.” Since he assumed duty, he has faced battles with Sheik Gumi who kept attacking him and America. Sokoto is the powerhouse of Nigeria. What Britain came to rig in the independence of Nigeria to favour Sokoto, America has come to put right. President Trump and his officials may not be aware of this reality. Why did America first strike at Sokoto? From now on the backbone of Sokoto is destroyed and Nigeria can be renegotiated. Trump and his Defence Secretary Pete Hesgeth have said more strikes will still come. They must keep coming until terrorism is dealt a deadly blow in Nigeria. Then we can assume peace and progress. The headquarters of terrorism has suffered great devastation so that Nigeria may be reset.
First Published in METRO
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Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.
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