BOKO HARMA’S latest intrusion into the nation’s narrative– two improvised bombs peremptorily set off in the offices of a media house 150 kilometres apart, within the space of 40 minutes – plumbed new depths.

While in terms of targets, Boko Haram has hitherto not evinced a discernible pattern, encompassing as it has market places, police stations, churches, bus-stops, boarding houses, diplomatic offices and a host of other eclectic targets; the bombing of a media house is a wholly new genre that bespeaks a new methodology…or none at all.

All terrorist attacks are abhorrent and condemnable; an attack that strikes at the perceived symbol of a free society, however, a media house – a key repository of the constitutionally assured of free speech – is understandably viewed as particularly odious and despicable, evidencing that the terrorists are indeed at the gate.

The difficulty of dialogue with a foe who does not countenance debate (fearing as it does the prospect of superior reasoning winning out) but prefers to silence it by silencing perceived adversaries resonates loudly in the attack on a media house. It is as brazen an attempt at silencing an adversary as one could contemplate and says more about the terrorist than it does its adversary.

Like its attacks on churches and the multiple bombing of Kano, the attack on a media house in two of its locations has again galvanized public opinion, prompting levels of outrage that reveal that Boko Haram likely possesses within it the seeds of its own denouement. The propensity for lashing out without reflection on the possible consequences is an Achilles’ Heel that will eventually disable Boko
Haram.

Classical thinking about the efficacy of terrorism presupposes that it will have clearly articulated objectives. What that does is to mitigate the storm of antipathy likely to be engendered by its terror tactics amongst those for whom the ends justify the means. Even the most resilient sympathisers, however, would be hard put to defend the attack on a media house.

How Boko Haram itself justified the attacks reveals a degree of naivety that does not bode well for a negotiated end to hostilities. Their official spokesman decried journalists’ failure “to be professional and objective in their reports”. So the wages of perceived misrepresentation by the press is now death?

While journalism is often regarded as high risk, this twist on its inherent dangers beggars belief.

There are four insights I wish to share on the attack on ThisDay’s offices and the responses to it. The first is on the “special” nature of an attack on the press; the second is in respect of the action of the bomber in Kaduna, the third is on the allure of vigilante justice and the fourth is on how this new phase ought to nuance the response to the terrorists.

The first is a view not greatly beloved of the press but still worthy of reaffirmation, to wit: freedom of expression is a constitutional right given and assured to all citizens, and not given to the press as a special group. As such, the “special nature of an attack on the press” as a reason for righteous rage seems to me a fundamental misdirection, detracting from the primary assault the attack represents on the constitutional principle of free speech simpliciter. In any case, a victim of a terrorist attack at a bank would feel no less a profound sense of indignation and violation because it happened to him at a bank rather than while visiting a friend working at a media house.

The right to freedom of speech is given to each individual, so that each individual has the right to receive and impart views. Whether the person imparting a viewpoint does so under the aegis of a newspaper house or not does not go to the nature of the freedom. The freedom of the press that is so often touted is a lateral and conventional extension of the constitutional right of freedom of speech rather than a stand-alone genre.

The constitutional right is a human right that inures to everybody, equally. This view is reinforced by new media (blogs etc) and the latitude it has afforded individuals to impart their views to audiences, in ways that often are more penetrative than that of some media houses.

Second is the action of the Kaduna bomber. One’s understanding of the state of mind of the suicide bomber is of one so convinced of the rectitude and justice of his or her cause that he or she “willingly” gives his life for it. I would argue that this is the greatest danger that he poses; his recalibration of the value of life, such that the cause becomes the critical quotient rather than the person whom the cause is meant to serve, is impossible to legislate against. Eyewitness accounts of last week’s bombings, however, speak of a bomber anxious to flee the scene for fear of dying in the explosion.

So we may surmise that the cause in this case cannot be described as all-consuming. It is either that the bomber’s fervour did not burn as brightly as the suicide bombers manual prescribed or that Boko Haram’s job of indoctrination of this particular foot soldier was incomplete before he was deployed to death duty. Were the immediate and remote consequences not so sad, the saga would be farcical: surely the image of a suicide bomber trying to avoid the explosion is an oxymoron.

My third observation is in respect of the comments of officialdom that lauded the public’s intervention in the aftermath of the Kaduna incident as evidence of the public’s buy-in to government’s call for active participation in the fight against terrorism. The pent up rage and the surge of atavistic emotion that allowed the alleged terrorist to be given a “serious beating” for his troubles is not surprising given the repeated attacks on “innocent civilians”.

Mr. OLUREMI ISAACS, a commentator on national issues, wrote from Lagos.