By Akinola George
IT is no longer news that there is so much insecurity in Nigeria. President Goodluck Jonathan should stop cutting the branches and dig out the root of the weed.
Only about 1 per cent of Nigerians live comfortably. When the militants in the Niger Delta region were agitating for attention, late President Umar Yar’Adua offered them amnesty. Did that put an end to terrorism in Nigeria?
If you take an opinion poll and ask the common man on the street what he would do about corrupt leaders who loot public fund and go scot-free, he would tell you that he would kill some of the people ruining Nigeria.
Can you explain why Jonathan cannot fish out members of the Boko Haram sect, which he admitted are part of his government and the cabals?
Recently, I listened to a legal luminary, Richard Babajide, who said he was against the idea of a sovereign national conference, because it can only take place when there is no government. He went further to say that Nigerians should advise Jonathan on what they would do to stop the Boko Haram threat if they were in his shoes.
There is gross marginalisation in Nigeria. Consider these sectors: justice (rule of law), power (electricity), education and employment. These are not available to the common man. A good number of Nigerians have no will to live, so why wouldn’t they join the Boko Haram or any other terrorist group for that matter?
There is a proverb in Yoruba that says, if your neighbour is eating ant/cockroach and you pretend not to see him or act as if you don’t care; if that neighbour begins to have stomach ache in the night you won’t be able to sleep either.
During the nationwide strike in January, a lot of Nigerians poured out their minds. Some ladies said they wished they had witchcraft or some sort of supernatural power and they would use it to kill some people in government who were treating the masses badly.
We deceive ourselves a lot in this country by neglecting the root cause of a problem and chasing after the effect.
One of my lecturers told me that, at the college of engineering, the first thing you learn about a machine is how to stop it, not how to start it.
Because If you ask the operator to teach you how to start it and forget to ask how to stop it, you might end 
up in trouble if the machine goes out of control. Who designed this machine called Nigeria? We need to ask him some questions about his design calculations.
One good way to tackle the problems of Nigeria is by social networking or social engineering. Social engineering is the art of talking to people in a persuasive and smooth manner in order to win their trust and then being able to make them reveal certain important bits of private information.
In tackling the issue of Boko Haram or terrorism in Nigeria, the government needs a holistic approach and sincerity. If 99 per cent of Nigerians are potential terrorists, then we need to call them to ask them what they want. It is not enough to invite the spokesperson of Boko Haram to state their demand.
The other 99 per cent who are potential terrorists should also be invited for a dialogue to avert future problems. I think that is where the agitation for a sovereign national conference came into view. Among the areas where we deceive ourselves is in the hasty decision of the Senate to criminalise same sex marriage. How does homosexuality contribute to insecurity?
Nigeria consists of people with different religions, ideological and social beliefs. Do you kill a dog for barking? We all cannot think the same way; if you think a homosexual is doing something immoral, what about the Senators who commit adultery, sleeping with undergraduates?
What of politicians who loot public funds?
Nigeria can be free from terrorism if we all are honest. Nigeria has all it takes to become a world power, if we make sure every citizen has a sense of belonging.
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