By Rotimi Fasan
LAST week, on the very ominous 13th day of the month, terrorists struck in India’s largest city, Mumbai, killing 17 people with more than 100 injured.

A remarkable thing about the Mumbai incident was the swiftness of the response from the authorities. They were quick to assess the situation despite the admission on their part that there was no prior intelligence of the attack.

They ruled out none of the terrorist groups known to them even as they continued with their investigation. What is more, they were prompt in their condemnation of the attack, as were other members of the ‘international community’, showing their readiness to take on the terrorists.

Compare this to the response to the attack on the Police Force Headquarters in Abuja where the Police were not only quick to identify the source of attack, even if they hinged it all on suspicion, and provided figures of the dead. But just a few days later they recanted and even wanted Nigerians to accept that the entire attack was a mere detonation of explosives and not a suicide attack as they had earlier claimed.

The Inspector General of Police, Hafiz Ringim, who it appeared was the target of the attack we would be told in the new version of the tale had not been trailed into the premises of the headquarters and had, in fact,  been in his office long before the attacker(s) struck. The Police, it seemed, had to ‘sexy up’ their account of events in line with their reading of what they thought might be the thinking at Aso Rock.

And the thinking, if there is any going on there, is flawed precisely because it is characterised by fear and indecision. For how else can one explain the decision of the Presidency to negotiate with Boko Haram?

At about the time of the Mumbai attack the Nigerian city of Maiduguri had been run aground by Boko Haram terrorists and residents were escaping out of the city in their thousands. Motor parks were jammed and other states had to send transport to convey their indigenes trapped in the boiling cauldron.

There couldn’t have been a more damning picture of a failure of governance. It was clear from the situation in Maiduguri that people could no longer trust the Nigerian state to protect them in spite of appeals that the city should not be deserted.

Who wants to die where even the authorities in Abuja and the State appear jittery? While politicians in the National Assembly were calling for outright withdrawal of the military rather than sanctioning erring members of its personnel where they are found culpable of misbehaviour, Abuja simply gave resonance to its earlier call for a dialogue with the devils called Boko Haram.

The response from the authorities, particularly the Presidency, is leading people to imagine what an Obasanjo or, more appropriately, Mohammadu Buhari would have done faced with the same situation as Goodluck Jonathan. The general impression is that there would have been very vigorous response from the duo. Obasanjo, despite later criticism, did it in Odi and Buhari, when he led the Nigerian onslaught against Chadian invaders encroaching on Nigerian soil, did it in 1981.

The point is not so much the appropriateness of the response as it is the courage to act. The Jonathan presidency increasingly appears diffident and confused as to how to treat any form of unconventional attack on its authority. This is carryover behaviour from the Umar Yar’Adu administration who had the task of pacifying Niger-Delta militants, genuine and otherwise. In the end, a programme of amnesty was arranged for the militants.

The fact that someone from that restive region of Nigeria is now president no doubt has played a key role in the pacification of the militants more than any amnesty programme could, in my reckoning. But no sooner were the militants pacified than the Boko Haram matter escalated, especially in the wake of the April presidential elections which Muhammadu Buhari lost to be followed with a lot of inflammatory rhetoric and attacks on Nigerians from outside the region of the perceived losers of the election.

Which makes it difficult to know how much of the present attack by the Boko Haram is sponsored by politicians and how much of it is a genuine reflection of the angst of the fringe group. The worst part of it is that those who started the fire of the Boko Haram nonsense with their inflammatory rhetoric may no longer be in the know of the activities of the terrorists now on the prowl, to say nothing of being in control of the foot soldiers let loose on innocent citizens. Their inflammatory talk has only given opportunity to criminal groups to seize the initiative of the state of things to strike.

There is no point in looking back with nostalgia at a past era of military despotism to seek answer to our present problem. A confident leader should know when to act, with or without military training. Barack Obama didn’t have to take instructions from soldiers to know when and how to take out Osama Bin Laden. Nor are the civilian rulers in India calling on the military to take over in order to control the menace of terrorists that is almost a routine part of life in that part of the world.

People must not seek to claim through the backdoor what was lost at the polls. A more critical issue to be addressed pertains to whom exactly the government would be talking to in its planned negotiation with Boko Haram? How do you negotiate with a faceless group that has no known address, members or leaders?

And what would be the terms of negotiation with such group whose ways are as extreme as they are retrogressive? What would be the point of discussion with a group that seeks to abrogate what it foolishly calls Western education even while it randomly appropriates a lethal product of that education in bombs cowardly tossed at defenceless humans? Should we all go back to the Stone Age in order to pacify a confused group like this or rise with one voice to run them out of town?

So because Niger-Delta groups that had legitimate political claims were put on some programme of resettlement, then we must dance to the tune of every criminal group that harasses us all? This government is like a theocracy of mullahs that would eat pork in order to avoid controversy. It may be a short term solution. It is never the path of courage. Nor leadership.