- ‘Baba Ijebu’ was the name we fondly called the Vice-Principal of my alma mater, African Church Grammar School in Ibadan. Baba Ijebu was a very tough, firm, and uncompromising disciplinarian whom every student feared. In our third year in school, a handful of students started a riot over something I cannot recall now. The riot on the campus went on for days and would not die off. The school authorities strove to quell the bickering, but it got worse and almost got out of hand. And then one fateful morning, Baba Ijebu stepped in on the assembly ground. He bawled out these words in a mix of Ijebu and English.
“If a child keeps throwing stones and the stones won’t run out, you must be sure that there is somebody behind who is supplying the child with the stones,” he noted. Baba Ijebu vowed to track down human oxygen behind the unrelenting riot. He did. And the riot ended.
There is also a biblical parallelism to Baba Ijebu’s words of wisdom, authored in the Book of Esther. There was a tumult against the children of Israel who lived in a nation. The unbearably hard life was the handiwork of one of the king’s powerful and trusted lieutenants, called Haman, who spun out baseless conspiracy theories about the children of Israel. One day, King Xerxes and Haman went to dinner with Esther, a Jew who had just become Queen. While they were drinking wine, the king asked: “Queen Esther, what would you like? Half of my kingdom! Just ask and it’s yours.”
Queen Esther answered that if it pleased the king, “Let my life be returned to me and let the lives of my people be returned to them. We’ve been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, sold to be massacred, eliminated. If we had just been sold off into slavery, I wouldn’t even have brought it up; our troubles wouldn’t have been worth bothering the king over.”
The king asked: “Who? Where is he? This is monstrous!” and Esther answered: “An enemy. An adversary. This evil Haman.” Wickedness behind the travails of the children of Israel was identified. And Haman was buried alive in the grave he had built for others.
My friends, there is no problem without a cause. There are no perilous times in a nation without some wicked hands and voices behind them. Two weeks ago, a timely tweet from America’s President Donald Trump rattled the whole world. It spun the Nigerian government into sleepless nights. “If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities….If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our cherished Christians!” wrote Trump.
Over the last twenty years in Nigeria, countless targeted killing sprees have been meted out against helpless Christians in the Northern part of Nigeria. Muslims caught in the web were only victims because they would not join in the wickedness of killing Christians. These unlucky Muslims believed that Christians and Muslims are all brothers and sisters. The terrorist wouldn’t have that. It is obvious that they and their sponsors are on an agenda to wipe off traces of Christianity from that part of the country.
Christiana Oluwasesin, a mother of two, was a teacher assigned to supervise an Islamic religious knowledge examination in Gombe. When one of the students wanted to enter the examination hall with his books, Christiana collected them and threw them outside. The students claimed that one of the books was a copy of the Qur’an. This caught the attention of the popular thugs (Yan Kalare), who stabbed her to death. And the lifeless body was set on fire! The killers went walking free.
Deborah Yakubu was a 200-level Economics student at the Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto. She had reportedly posted a message in a class WhatsApp study group asking her classmates to stop sharing religious content and focus on academics. This led to accusations of blasphemy. She was lynched in broad daylight, burned with a bonfire as Muslim elites defended her killers.
As recent as October 14, 2025, Armed Fulani militias carried out coordinated attacks on several Christian villages in the Barkin Ladi Local Government Area of Plateau state, leaving at least 25 people dead and several others injured. Their targets were communities predominantly inhabited by Christians. Who are the sponsors of the genocide that has enveloped all the northern part of Nigeria? Who are the brainboxes behind the depravity?
A new militant group, which carries out attacks, targeting local communities in North-Western Nigeria and across the border with Niger, is called the Lakurawa. Lakurawa is affiliated with jihadist factions in Mali and Niger, and has been involved in acts of terrorism, including cattle rustling, kidnapping for ransom, hostage-taking and attacks on top government officials. Although Nigeria has officially declared Lakurawa a terrorist group, who are the brainboxes behind these people?
U.S. 32nd President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made this profound public statement: “In politics, nothing happens by accident.
If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.” Roosevelt meant that when funny things happen in politics, they are never outside of the collaboration, collusion, and coordination of human beings. When terrorism ravages a country like it is doing in Nigeria, when foot soldiers of terror are growing in numbers and their ammunition is swelling in volume, there are human beings behind the protracted pain that Nigerians are facing. In one of the Nigerian army’s moves against terrorists last year, stacks of cash in differing foreign currencies were recovered from the hoodlums’ hideouts. Who are the big-money fellas buying ammunition and giving them cash? What foreign governments are supplying these guys the requisite oxygen to stay alive?
In 2022, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated a network of six individuals connected to a Nigeria-based terrorist group, Boko Haram. All six were found guilty of establishing a Boko Haram cell in the United Arab Emirates to raise funds for and provide material assistance to Boko Haram insurgents in Nigeria. The UAE Federal Court of Appeals in Abu Dhabi convicted Abdurrahman Ado Musa, Salihu Yusuf Adamu, Bashir Ali Yusuf, Muhammed Ibrahim Isa, Ibrahim Ali Alhassan, and Surajo Abubakar Muhammad for transferring $782,000 from Dubai to Boko Haram in Nigeria. Salihu Yusuf Adamu and Surajo Abubakar Muhammad were sentenced to life imprisonment for violations of UAE anti-terrorism laws; Abdurrahman Ado Musa, Bashir Ali Yusuf, Muhammed Ibrahim Isa, and Ibrahim Ali Alhassan were sentenced to 10 years in prison, followed by deportation.
Is this all? If it is, why has terrorism and the killing of Nigerian Christians grown with so much firepower? There is a silent and subtle suspicion that Nigeria’s military is grossly compromised and complicit in the undying and unfading oxygen keeping Islamic terrorism alive. In hushed tones, names of big fish in the purlieu of power in the past and present government at the federal and state levels are also being bandied about as enhancers and brainboxes behind the wicked ploys. We also heard that the names of these brainboxes are known to the state and federal governments. If this is true, Mr President, bust these brainboxes of terror! Name them and shame them so that your administration, Nigerian Christians being slaughtered daily, and Nigerians who have become statistics of collateral damage, can have lasting peace. Mr President, do this before Donald Trump comes in and do it for us.
By fola Ojo
