For An End Game for Boko Haram, Spend Those Trillions on Education.

By Pat Utomi
 
As Albert Einsten once said “We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them”. The challenge of terrorism and ostensibly faith and cult based intolerance, partly manifested in the Boko Haram insurgency, that we face in Nigeria was created at the level of ignorance. I have heard  truly scholarly discussions and even in the last month at the CVL Faith and tolerance conference, the Chaplain of the University of Lagos House of Assembly spoke passionately about Islam as a religion of peace and one not opposed to Western education. That being the case the only solution is to fight ignorance with knowledge.
 
The top commanders of Boko Haram are not doing anything new. They do not believe that Boko or Book is Haram. If they really did would they be using Western weapons to fight? Would they be using Western media such as YouTube and other social media to communicate with journalists? Of course not. Malam Shekau was almost caught last year when he visited his wife in Kano and he escaped with the aid of a fast car, another fruit of Western Education. Thus it is safe to say that he and his top commanders are not against Western Education. Besides some of the leaders of the group are known to be University graduates. It would seem that they are revolutionaries in Boko Haram, whose goal is to overthrow the current establishment in Northern Nigeria just like their compatriots did in Somalia and their strategy in doing that is to take advantage of the massive illiteracy that is the bane of the Northern population. Add a comment