Who does not know Theodore Kaczynski,
that mix of genius, anarchist and sociopath who once terrorised America?
A mathematical prodigy and Harvard graduate who earned a PhD in
mathematics from the University of Michigan and became an Assistant
Professor at the University of Berkeley in 1967, at age 25, he later
became disaffected with America, his country, and with modern
technology.
Suffice it to summarise his subsequent
activities with these quotes from Wikipedia: “In 1971, he moved to a
remote cabin without electricity or running water, in Lincoln, Montana,
where he lived as a recluse while learning survival skills in an attempt
to become self-sufficient.” And: “Between 1978 and 1995, Kaczynski
engaged in a nationwide bombing campaign against people involved with
modern technology, planting or mailing numerous homemade bombs,
ultimately killing a total of three people and injuring 23 others. He is
also known for his wide-ranging social critiques, which opposed
industrialisation and modern technology while advancing a
nature-cantered form of anarchism.”
His bombs were dispatched specifically to
universities and airports across the United States, prompting the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to use the coinage “UNABOM” (which
stands for University and Airline Bomber) to identify his case before
his identity was known. The press later modified the coinage to
Unabomber.
However, what makes Kaczynski’s case most
relevant to what I refer to as an American example in the title of this
piece is how he was eventually identified before his trial and
imprisonment for life, which saved his country from the threat he posed
as a domestic terrorist. It was his brother, David Kaczynski, who
revealed his identity to the FBI with his wife’s encouragement, having
identified his writing style in a 35,000-word essay entitled “Industrial
Society and Its Future,” which the FBI abbreviated to “Unabomber
Manifesto,” whose publication in a major newspaper of journal,
preferably the New York Times, he gave as a condition for him to “desist
from terrorism.”
By that extraordinary gesture, the
brother placed the love of country and the safety of other human beings
above the bond of blood, and saved America from a terrorist threat to
its security, economy and educational system, and to its values as a
country that believes in modern technology, whose embrace and
cultivation partly accounts for its greatness as a nation.
Now, there is a parallel – which I note
here in passing – between the motivation of Kaczynski’s terrorist acts
and that of Nigeria’s Boko Haram. For Kaczynski it is hatred for modern
technology while it is hatred for western education for Boko Haram,
which makes both anti-knowledge and explains why their terrorist acts
partly targeted educational institutions like schools and universities.
Also – and more relevant to this piece –
there is a parallel between the impact of Kaczynski’s terrorist attacks
and the type of attacks being executed by vandals who bomb gas and oil
pipelines in Nigeria. For while Kaczynski’s attacks on airports
undermined America’s aviation business and by implication its economy,
those by the Nigerian vandals achieve the same purpose in Nigeria by
undermining power generation and the production of oil which are
critical to the economy.
However, there is a notable difference in
the attitude of the average American and his Nigerian counterpart to
fighting terror as reflected in the gesture by Kaczynski’s brother and
his wife and the response of some Nigerians to the recent remark by Mr.
Femi Adesina, the Special Adviser (Media and Publicity) to President
Muhammadu Buhari, that Nigerians complaining about poor electricity
should hold the vandals responsible. Some Nigerians criticised him for
the remark, insisting that it is government’s responsibility to fish out
and deal with the vandals and not the citizens’. Indeed, the Unabomber
might have remained elusive like the Nigerian vandals if some American
patriots did not choose to fulfil their moral obligation to protect
their country and his potential victims by revealing his identity to the
authorities.
Mr. Adesina’s remark may have been
tactless, the result of his frustration with the citizens’ apathy in
what should be a joint effort with the government in tackling the
vandals whose activities threaten the entire nation. But it made sense
as a disguised clarion call – which I consider it to be – to Nigerians
to assist the government by revealing the identity of the vandals who
apparently are not unknown to them.
Incidentally, what we have witnessed in
Nigeria in the last decade or so is the unwitting implementation of a
self-destructive credo: “If there is no crisis, create one.” And so the
citizens of the country have during that period created – and generated
crisis through – the O’odua People Congress (OPC), the Arewa Congress,
the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra
(MASSOB), and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta
(MEND); and through their other creations like the Niger Delta
Militants, Boko Haram, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Shiite
Muslims, Fulani Herdsmen, and the Niger Delta Avengers. And due to the
activities of these groups, it has failed to lift the boulder of
stagnation off its shoulders, like a country doomed to engage in
Sisyphean toil.
In the said period, for instance, the
violent activities of the Niger Delta Militants, especially kidnappings
of expatriates for ransom and vandalisation of oil installations, so
severely threatened the country’s oil-dependent economy that the then
President Umaru Yar’Adua established the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs
with an amnesty programme to pacify and rehabilitate the militants.
Later, Boko Haram destroyed large swathes
of the country’s north-eastern states, killing thousands and
precipitating a huge humanitarian crisis in the form of Internally
Displaced Persons (IDPs). Subsequently, a bill for the establishment of a
Northeast Development Commission is being debated at the National
Assembly, as the Buhari government is said to be considering granting
amnesty to the repentant culprits, together with a rehabilitation
programme as in the case of the Niger Delta Militants.
From the south-east, IPOB is threatening
secession, raising tension through encounters with security forces that
have reportedly left scores of their members dead, with President Buhari
vowing in the face of such threat to do “everything possible” to keep
Nigeria united. And as the country battles this crisis, people suspected
to be Fulani herdsmen – who the government has described as foreigners,
even without making an arrest – launched attacks in Benue and Enugu
states, killing hundreds and instigating ethnic tension.
This crisis-generating process seems to
have turned full cycle with the recent bombing of gas pipelines by the
Niger Delta Avengers, threatening the country’s economy and power
supply. And Nigerians should realise from the example of Kaczynski’s
brother – and need I mention the courier who revealed Osama bin Laden’s
hideout to the American authorities? – that governments usually combat
such threats posed by the vandals most effectively with the help of
citizens willing to volunteer information regarding the culprits.
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