Sahara Reporters

My Neighbor, The Terrorist By Okey Ndibe

Last week, President Goodluck Jonathan finally made his most direct response thus far to Boko Haram’s plague of violence. The president’s declaration of a state of emergency in designated local government areas in four states – Borno, Yobe, Plateau, and Niger – has earned a spectrum of reactions running from guarded praise to derision.

Mr. Jonathan should be given his due. The man has done, for now, his best. But the situation is so dire that his best is clearly far from enough.
 
Before our very eyes, parts of Nigeria have been transformed into mini-Baghdads and Kabuls. If you stand in a crowd in many a town in the northern part of Nigeria, chances are that the man or woman standing next to you is, quite literally, a ticking explosive. In traffic, the car in front of you or behind you, or to your right or left, may well be a vehicular bomb seconds away from detonating.
 
In such a situation, life is nasty, brutish and (potentially) short. Worse, circumstances of such extreme volatility and unpredictability mean that fear – a crippling brand of fear – is a constant companion to life. The psychological cost to citizens compelled to live in a constant state of fear is incalculable. If people perceive themselves to be under a death sentence, or believe that death lurks round the corner, then hyper-fear is bound to emerge as society’s condition and most significant emotion.
 
I got an illustration last week during a telephone conversation with a friend who resides in Abuja. Asked how he and his family were coping in the aftermath of the horrific bombing of a church on Christmas, this friend said they were holed up at home. “I don’t think any of us will go to a crowded place any time soon,” he said.
 
Those who trade in the tools of terror relish such responses. They win when their would-be victims cower in the (merely relative) refuge of their homes.
 
When the terrorists of September 11 flew hijacked planes like missiles into New York’s Twin Towers, then President George W. Bush appealed to Americans to be vigilant, but to go about their normal business. He made the point that the terrorists would have won only if Americans radically altered their routines in reaction to the terror attacks.

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