Like Nistrodamus who saw into the future, Founder of Living Water Church, Pastor Ladi Thompson appears to have been proven right by his past statements on the current security challenges in the country. Besides being a pastor, he’s also a researcher, philanthropist and champion of resettlement of religious crisis’ victims in the country. At the break of Boko Haram onslaught in 2008 he got so actively involved in providing intelligence reports to government on the menace and foretold the likely security risk the country was toying with if not nipped in the bud in time. Today the nation is reeling from one form of security challenge to the other. In this interview with WorldStage Newsonline, as retrospect on the unrelenting end ever expanding security crisis in the country, he relives his thoughts on the Boko Haram insurgency, government’s complicity and why it would be hard for government to contain insecurity in the country. Excerpt:
You are one religious leader who has conducted extensive researches on religious, insurgency and banditry crises in the country and from them forecast, almost accurately, the pattern and nature of attacks going on in the country today. With your knowledge and experience about the phenomenon, what can you make out of the current pervasive assaults on security of the country?
The costliest mistake Nigeria ever made in the case of the Islamist sect was the premature extra-judicial killing of Muhammed Yussuf, the head of Boko Haram. I said so because Muhammed had been operating in Maiduguri for more than 12 years, he was well connected in government and all over the country. They have been striking prior to that many times. But what happened was that in that particular year the mistake he made was that God turned his head against the police, because the police shot one of his boys in the foot at a checkpoint. That report came to me in February and we sent out an alarm by March that there was a build-up in Maiduguri and that it’s most likely to be the next execution point in the country. We sent the advance report to Kaduna State based on the reports we have sent out earlier. Yussuf would have been useful because he was very belligerent. Before the Western press hijacked what is happening in Nigeria, they are known as Yesufua in Maiduguri. Boko Haram was the western coinage, a diversionary tactics to sell newspapers to the western audience. But unfortunately while they were doing that, they removed from the threat the real and present danger that Yesufua represented. So when they killed him, Mallam Sani Umaru took over as he signed as acting leader of Boko Haram in 2009 and he restated the objectives of what we are calling Boko Haram in Yesufua. Now within, a lot of other sects are operating that Nigerians are also calling Boko Haram. So people don’t really know the degree of what we are facing yet. But when we tell you what is going to happen next, you will see that the wake-up call is not far now.
What is it that is going to happen next?
The guy who took over from the one that was killed has pointed out what their objectives are. That they have started a jihad in Nigeria and no force on earth can stop them and that their aim is to Islamize by force the whole of Nigeria and ensure the rule of Muslims in the country. They swore that they will teach us a bitter lesson. They told us there would be series of bombing in southern and northern Nigeria cities: Lagos, Ibadan, Enugu and Port Harcourt. And they said that the bombing will not stop until they have leveled up the cities. Now this man said publicly that they would make this country ungovernable for all those who oppose the rule of Sharia, whether Muslims or Christians. The Nigerian state cannot remain with the vision of what we call Boko Haram. Then they called all Northerners in Islamic states to stop following wicked political parties in the country. Later on, a lot of things happened that justified their attempts and everything we have said.
What do you think can be done to bring an end to the menace?
Right now, I don’t think we have the moral strength. Nigeria’s leadership does not have what it takes to execute what can save the country. In my report in 2008, I mentioned that one of the Boko Haram cliques has about 1.5 million registered followers who have submitted their lives for the group. The fact that nobody has ever been penalized for cutting off the head of a Christian like the one in Kano or the woman, Olusesi, in Gombe in 2007, who was slaughtered before her children, speaks volume of why the Islamist terror group is gaining ground by the day. Till tomorrow, justice was never done. No Christian or church has ever been compensated nor any culprit brought to book. In fact, if anything, damages were only awarded to the late Mallam Yusuf of Boko Haram. He was the only one who has been awarded damages for killing people. His family was awarded about N50 million because the government killed him. And I’m sure if we trace it, the money would have been paid behind. Now, that exposes the degree of organization behind the Boko Haram menace. So in the report, we stated that first of all there’s going to be a revisiting of the laws of the land and that test cases have to be run. I, for instance, met with one of the governors, the Governor of Gombe State, Danjuma Goje. He was the one who blocked every attempt to seek justice. What he didn’t know when I met with him was that I was the one who engaged and paid the lawyer, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) who was to pursue justice. The lawyer served him, his commissioner for justice and others who needed to be served. When I had a meeting with Goje some years later, he told me he did not even know that the family was agitating on anything, not knowing that I that he was telling this lie to was aware that he was telling a lie. As we were pushing to make sure that Goje’s state would be responsible for the family of Oluwashesi, by coughing out a punitive amount of money, lo and behold, the Youth wing of Christian Association of Nigeria gave him an award for being religiously tolerant. And this was coming with the blessing of CAN under Archbishop Onaiyekan. So, I was going to scuttle the award and when I made it known to all leaders in CAN that I don’t think the award should hold, they arranged a meeting for me to meet them and the government side within a day or two. At the meeting, they told me they wanted to compensate the family with N200, 000.
N200,000?
I was shocked that such an amount could have ever been proposed as compensation to someone who has lost so much. They said I should allow the victim use her discretion but I refused. I asked what kind of discretion was there for the victim to exercise given the immeasurable loss. I said they burnt her car, attempted to kill her baby, burnt the mother alive and you are taking of N200, 000 compensation. I said the family would not accept anything less than N80 million. His commissioners began to argue with me, that I should leave it to their discretion. I said ‘no’. That what we are after is this. Let them take it or not, that, I, talking, is not receiving a kobo from the family. When it is paid, I don’t intend to collect one penny, not even for all the lawyers I’ve hired but that it should be on record that it shall be a sum of money that serves as a deterrent for further occurrences of killing in the name of religion, ethnicity or whatever it is.
What was the reaction of other Christian leaders to the matter?
There were Christian leaders who argued with me because of how much they have donated to a few people. So, I know that if we don’t wake up to point out that indoctrination of children to murder adults forebode ills, then religious indoctrination is going to be lethal and costly. If it happened in Borno State, one can imagine in how many other states children are ready to slaughter adults. They didn’t listen. What did we later have? The report that came in after Buhari’s incitation revealed that 11, 12, 13 year olds were part of those killing people. So how do you forge ahead in a nation where children in one section of the country are trained to kill adults? But leaders pretend they don’t see the problems. Listen to me, there need to be a measure in all those areas. You need to make sure that there are punitive measures taken. Let’s make sure that deterrents are put in place. Now go back into history. The Governor of Kano State once sponsored similar killings. In his own case, the memos are still available if you do your research very well, where the then president of this country advised him not to take certain actions. They said there was something happening in Jos, a group appealed to former Governor Shekarau that they would like to have a solidarity march. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo replied quickly that he knows the nature of Kano State and that he would not approve the solidarity march. Shekarau approved it and those purportedly doing the march slaughtered nonsense in retaliation. How do we know that there’s government comlicity? It was through the government vehicles and agencies that cleaned up the city of the remains of people they slaughtered, so that there would not be any evidence afterwards. While the killing was going on in Kano, there were conflicting reports because when the Presidency phoned that it heard something was going on, they said ‘no’ there’s nothing going wrong. It’s the same person that attempted to become the president of Nigeria recently. He was even rewarded with a title, “Mutuwale Kano” by Kano Emirate. The former president that died was “Mutuwale Katsina”, his son-in-law is “Mutuwale Bauchi”.
Given the narratives above, what’s your position on the possibility of the crisis being overcome?
Now, how can we be so stupid to think this problem will go away when they have really invested on it and in it? There is a literature of how to make bomb that came from my colleagues in northern Nigeria, confiscated from people who were almost recruited into Boko Haram. Like I said, the name is generic. So, who says this thing will go away? We advised them that the Nigerian Army should be strengthened beyond lines of religion because not until then, the only force that could curtail them is the Nigerian Army. Right now, the Nigerian Army, except something is done, cannot curtail them because they have already been divided from within. Whoever has been working for the group has worked well. The reports from Plateau State made it clear that in many places, many victims were murdered by Islamists wearing Nigerian Army uniforms. There are people who should have been arrested, that were not arrested based on Nikky Tobi’s report. The reason why those people kept walking free in Plateau State was because instructions from the highest places in government would not allow them to be arrested.
