TWO governors of the Central Bank of Nigeria – one serving, one retired – have justifications for Boko Haram’s unleashing of bombs on Nigeria. Without those reasons, the bombing would presumably stop.

“I have long held the view that ethnic and religious violence in Nigeria has its roots in poverty and deprivation and perceived marginalisation. I always said this about the militancy in the Delta while fully condemning it, the truth remains that militants tapped into a groundswell of frustration.

In addressing that problem, we have gone to an extreme now where the levels of poverty in the North are recreating the same conditions and results we saw in the Delta. I made more or less the same points in interview on Al Jazeera,” Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, serving CBN governor said after his interview with Financial Times of London.

Adamu Ciroma, former CBN governor, former Minister of Industries, Agriculture, and Finance said last September that Boko Haram was the consequence of bad government.

In 1979, Ciroma was a presidential aspirant of the National Party of Nigeria, NPN. He was a Minister until 2003 and still a prominent member of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP that has been in power since 1999. Which bad government was he referring to in his interview?

If they were not eminent characters in the Nigeria drama, their views would have been dismissed as bunkum. Sanusi from his high position knows what he says is considered important.

We are wondering if dissatisfaction with revenue allocation is a good reason for destabilising Nigeria. Are those allocating revenue in barracks, churches, and markets, the sect’s targets? Has bombing become a legally accepted manner of protest? Boko Haram is bombing Kano, Kaduna and Abuja, which are outside the North East. Did those places deny North East resources Sanusi said marginalised it?

Sanusi is brilliant enough to draw parallels between protests in the North East with the Niger Delta which used kidnapping and other crimes to draw attention to its case against the exploitation of resources in the region and the despoliation of its environment.

Even then, nobody was under any illusion there was a difference between crime and protest. The Niger Delta argued it wanted resources taken from the region applied in improving the area. What resources are taken from the North East? When did Boko Haram state its anger with resources the region gets? What have leaders of the region done with the little resource it gets?

Boko Haram wants promotion of Islamic ideologies. Would more resources to the region meet those ideologies?

Ciroma and Sanusi may know more than they are saying. It is instructive that they can justify the mayhem called Boko Haram.