By the time my wife came back from the market last Saturday, I had just finished discussions with a respected family residing within the Apo Legislative Quarters who told me categorically that the “Boko Haram insurgents” the State Security Service (SSS) claimed they engaged in a “shootout” were in fact harmless economic migrants known by people within the area. Unfortunately, before I could even share the distressing story, my wife started her lamentation about a particular cart pusher at Garki market who was among the “Boko Haram” people gunned down in cold blood.

The story began in the early hours of last week Friday when soldiers and SSS operatives stormed an uncompleted building within Apo occupied illegally by some artisans and immediately began shooting sporadically. By the time they were done, no fewer than seven persons were killed on the spot (with another one dying a few days later) while 16 others sustained various degrees of injury. By daybreak, SSS spokesperson, Marilyn Ogar, had issued a statement to the effect that their team had led an operation “to the uncompleted building where arms were purported to have been buried...No sooner had the team commenced digging for the arms than they came under heavy gunfire by other Boko Haram elements within the area.”

Even though the dead cannot speak, virtually all the injured people have disputed Ogar’s claim and their stories remain consistent: they were illegal occupants who were paying a rent of N200 per head to the security guard manning the uncompleted house but the real owner had given them an ultimatum to vacate his premises otherwise he would bring in soldiers to deal with them. That was the threat which was carried out last Thursday night to devastating effects.

Even before stories began to filter within Abuja last Friday about the real identities of the victims of the Apo violence, it was obvious that the SSS statement just did not add up, especially given the patently false claim that nobody died. I watched Ogar’s press conference and noticed how she was hesitant, tentative and edgy about the arms cache that were purportedly (her exact word) buried in the building where the gruesome execution was carried out. The fact that is coming to light, even from official quarters, is that the young men who were brutally gunned down were not Boko Haram members.

For the sake of argument, let us even agree with the SSS that those boys were Boko Haram insurgents who had taken abode within the uncompleted building in a section of Abuja where the Senate President and our lawmakers live. Given the gravity of such penetration, should it not be of interest to a serious security outfit to tail those boys, gather intelligence about them – who they meet with, where they meet and who their sponsors are, if any? The inference from the statement of the SSS is that rather than carry out even a simple operational investigation, they chose to confront these “Boko Haram” guys with some trigger-happy soldiers who mowed them down. The other side to the story, however, is that those who carried out the execution reportedly on behalf of an aggrieved landlord (said to be a relation of a former president) perhaps went beyond their brief with the SSS now inventing stories to justify the extra-judicial execution. That has added a dangerous dimension to the challenge of security in our nation if officials of such a critical agency could operate almost like licensed thugs, or hired assassins.

Last Saturday, the United States Embassy in Abuja issued a terse security warning to American Citizens resident within the Federal Capital Territory that was pregnant with meaning. Barely 24 hours after the SSS claimed that the people killed at Apo were Boko Haram insurgents, the US embassy warned of “the potential for civil disturbances in and around Apo area, Wumba District, Abuja, throughout tonight and over the weekend…a violent incident in the early hours of September 20th involving squatters in Apo may be the trigger for such disturbances.” It says so much about the credibility of the SSS that the Americans who ordinarily see terrorism in every violent act would believe that the people murdered in Apo were not Boko Haram adherents but innocent squatters.

Here I must state that given the enormity of the Boko Haram challenge to our national security, my sympathy has always been with our security authorities. But it is also obvious that their strategies not only alienate them from the communities they seek to help, they are also becoming part of the problem. For instance, I have it on good authority that one of the reasons people within the Borno/Yobe axis hardly offer information to the security agencies about the activities of Boko Haram is because several families have lost relations to the operations of these same security agencies who kill innocent people and label them Boko Haram. Some of these cases have been documented by the United States-based Human Rights Watch reports, which the federal government was quick to dismiss and disparage early this year.

Perhaps time has come for the security authorities to reexamine their strategies because it is evident that while they may be winning some battles, they are gradually losing the war which would require the trust of the communities where Boko Haram have taken roots. For instance, I understand that those living in Maiduguri and environ have practically been cut off from civilization with serious consequences even for security. This was the import of a distressing mail sent out last Monday from his United States base by one of Nigeria’s most respected professionals in the Diaspora, Dr Zakari Tata, on an open forum.

According to Dr Tata, many of the people who were killed recently inside some buses by Boko Haram were actually travelling to Damaturu, the Yobe State capital to make telephone calls. Whatever may be the security justification, the absence of wireless lines presents hardships to the people of the state. “The few privileged that have access to telephone cannot help the poor to make calls as they fear the wrath of the army. Some of the people that go to Damaturu to make phone calls from Maiduguri etc send text messages to many of us asking for help”, said Dr Tata, who then went on to highlight the danger posed by the current strategy: “People cannot call if they are sick. They cannot call for money to help their families etc. We are raising a generation of disaffected youth who will develop a deep sense of grievance against the government later. Two or three call centers were allowing the public to make calls and the soldiers closed them down. The government could at least allow the operation of call centers where calls could easily be monitored by the authorities. I know the security challenge we face as a nation is not peculiar to us but it cannot be right that many of our citizens are shut out from the world and living a very primitive pre 1950s experiences with no landlines or cell phones. Yet we have become so numbed to injustice and poor governance that this effective act of making Nigerians aliens and refugees in their own homes by cutting them off from society has become acceptable. How does a citizen report suspicious activity? How does a citizen get simple help? So many questions for which nobody is providing any answers…”

Dr Tata has raised a very fundamental issue about the danger of completely alienating millions of people in the name of fighting terrorism which requires their cooperation and collaboration. I hope the authorities concerned would see the need for a rethink on some of the strategies that could in fact become a breeding ground for young people who could, out of anger or desperation turn against the state. On the specific case of the Apo killings, I believe that President Goodluck Jonathan has to wade in because a society where the lives of innocent citizens could be taken in such a cynical manner, and with official imprimatur, is in serious danger.

There is a critical and frightening underpinning to it all. Official hysteria about Boko Haram has led to a heightened militarization of the national space with active military operations involving the massive use of weapons going on in at least 29 of our 36 states. But on the specific Apo tragedy, if the state insists those killed were indeed Boko Haram members, it should do simple things to prove it: show us their weapons caches, provide reconnaissance tapes of the movements of the group before their execution, indicate how difficult it was to arrest them etc. But if otherwise, not only should the perpetrators of this most heinous crime be brought to book, there should be hefty compensation for the victims and their families. It cannot be the duty of the Nigerian state to mastermind the progressive erosion of the bonds of citizenship by allowing brazen deeds of madness by the very agencies set up to protect the people.

•This piece by Adeniyi (shown in photo) originally appeared in his column “The Verdict” in today’s edition of ThisDay. He can be reached via olusegun.adeniyi@thisdaylive.com

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