Here is a digression placed before we have even commenced – it comes in form of a question directed at prominent sectors of the international media, and even the United Nations, whose deliberations I recently watched: what’s in a name? Or, straight to the point – why ‘Boko Haram’? That is not the name the Nigerian pustule of a global religious inflamation chose for themselves. Muhammed Yusuf and his founding cohorts had settled for the grandiloquent name of ‘Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad’ – People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad. Even if Nigerians found themselves ill prepared and ill equipped to cope with this sudden and brutal affliction, they understood and held on to the psychological weapon of – naming! They even declined to concede a shortened version such as – ‘Committed People’, ‘The Prophet’s Jihadists’ or whatever - No, Nigerians , Boko Haram (The Book is Anathema) is what you are, Boko Haram is what your actions read. Language is also an instrument of war. This is a theme that requires addressing in its own right, as a principle of resistance.
