By Rotimi Fasan
ALMOST on a daily basis one year ago when Nigeria’s Umar Farouk, the so-called crotch-bomber, put Nigeria’s name on the international terror list by his failed attempt to bomb an airline on Christmas day in faraway America, Jos, the once-peaceful city in the centre of the country, erupted in violence.

The Farouk attempt has been linked, directly or indirectly, to Osama Bin Ladin’s Al Quaeda. And as if to complete Farouk’s unfinished business, terrorists in Jos detonated explosives in several busy parts of the city, including, most significantly, churches. Al Quaeda’s name is once more making the rounds, telling us the enemies are with us already.

The attackers sure had a sense of timing. The cheeky irony that these cowards would explode their deadly devices on Christmas Eve, around churches among other places, and at the very hours people were likely to be around, makes clear their target, if not the perpetrators of the act.

The point is, there’s no way we can be certain that those who planted the bombs were Muslims as a cursory reading of the ethnic and religious politics of the city might lead the unwary to conclude. Criminals out to cover their trail are not beyond such tactics that are meant to cause confusion.

For all we know, the perpetrators of the act might be persons with motives far beyond the immediately obvious. These might be politicians or others whose purposes are best served by such confusion.

It’s clear that the ethnic combatants in Jos are not neatly divided across religious lines. There are Christians, Muslims, as well as traditionalists, on the various sides. There is, therefore, serious danger in putting a wholly religious ring to the attacks, tempting as it might seem.

Whatever terrorist throws such religious stone is bound to hit their own people, as the casualty figure from the latest attack must be revealing. No less than 82 Nigerians have been officially confirmed dead, as direct fallout of the attack, as at the time of writing this.

The actual figure might be at least twice that. Which means human life increasingly becomes expendable in Jos, a city whose intermittent bursts of sectarian violence now makes it Nigeria’s face of terror. The terror attacks in Jos are different from what we were familiar with. It’s different from the kind of violence to be linked to members of the Oodua Peoples Congress; MASSOB, Arewa Peoples Congress, Egbesu or Niger-Delta militants.

The kind of violence that is being entrenched in Jos is deadlier than any thing known before now in Nigeria, not only because it seems to combine the worst of both ethnic and religious violence- it is deadlier than the others precisely because it is undiscriminating in its target and is largely unprovoked.

The targets of such attacks are guilty by association, by the very fact of their connections and not because they’ve done anything in their personal capacity to provoke the attack. The injury wrought by such violence runs deep and is often difficult to heal.

Those who were killed while attending Christmas prayers or for coming together to enjoy the pleasure of the Christmas season died because they were Christians or because they associated with Christians. Or so would the terrorists want us to believe. But what crime did they commit for being what they were or doing what they did? What gave another person or groups of persons the right to terminate other people’s right to life on the basis of their professed belief or ethnic affiliation?

This is what is frightening and worrisome about the nature of terrorism that is fast breeding in Jos. It’s the kind of terror that turned Hindus and Muslims against one another in India and Pakistan, fighting and killing one another over generations on matters as ordinary as the location of places of worship. The Jos terror brings to mind the sectarian wars in Lebanon and Northern Ireland before the peace accord.

The escalating violence has to be arrested with every force at the disposal of the authorities. There is little to be achieved from blaming the security agencies if it cannot be proven that they started the violence.

Governor Jonah Jang has in recent times been quick to push responsibility for the attacks at the doorstep of the security agencies, perhaps because of their failure in intelligence gathering or their slow or alleged partisan response to the attacks. Before now, he blamed the Army.

Now it’s the Police. The Army, the Police as well as Governor Jang are victims of the terrorists- except their own complicity in the violence can be shown. Otherwise, the task before us all is to muster strength and go all out to take on perpetrators of these deadly acts of terror. This would mean setting aside politics (as opposed to finding a political solution where necessary) which appears to be the bane of any solution to the Jos crisis.

The criminals responsible for the attacks should be seriously investigated, identified and prosecuted, and, where guilty, should have the severest sanctions imposed on them. We are yet to see such dogged pursuit and prosecution of previous perpetrators of terror in Jos. It’s one reason the matter seems to defy a solution.

Politicians seem to have taken over the situation in Jos; they use the ethnic and religious tensions to cover their track to perpetrate serious acts of terror. They also see to it that politics is read into any attempt to address the violence.

Their motive might be no more than to create an atmosphere of insecurity in order to portray those currently at the helm of affairs, both in Jos and Abuja, as incompetent. But they’re doing it in such a way that is likely to make the future of this country more insecure not only for those living today but for those who would come later.

The matter calls for reflection. We must find a way round this intermittent loss of lives and property in Jos. More importantly, the picture must never be created that the authorities have been swarmed by the terror challenges; that the terrorists are wining the battle. Nigeria cannot afford to remain in this atmosphere of terror. Now is the time to act. And decisively too.