Boko Haram: How did 11-year-old Usman Tella become a “potential suicide bomber”?

By Olabisi Yakub

Usman Modu Tella: How do we graduate from arresting and naming child "terrorists" to arresting the situations that drive them there? — Usman Modu Tella: How will Nigeria graduate from arresting and naming child “terrorists” to arresting the situations that drive them into the radical arms of Boko Haram?

In saner climes, 11-year-olds are busy attending school, doing school homework, completing house chores, playing with friends, watching “Tales By Moonlight,” or sleeping.

Usman Modu Tella’s life, and those of several million Nigerian children, is drastically and dreadfully different.

For the past few weeks or thereabout, Tella has been having sleepless nights looking for a way to blow himself alongside kids his age, and their parents, and whoever happens to be around, into bloody shreds.

Tella is believed to have somehow made the journey from Bama to an internally displayed persons (IDP) camp in Borno State capital, Maiduguri, to actualise his deadly nightmare – something he obviously wasn’t born to do.

Nigerians in the northeast flee from the deadliest terrorist group in the world, Boko Haram, but the terrorists have simply refused to leave them be. Tella is one of the ways the terrorists employ to continually hurt their fleeing victims.

There are at least three million IDPs in Nigeria, more than two-thirds of whom were uprooted from their homes by Boko Haram’s terrorism. Over half of these are children.

Saraki told Borno residents: “We have come to feel your pains and hear what you have been going through firsthand. — Nigeria’s Senate President Bukola Saraki told Borno residents: “We have come to feel your pain and hear what you have been going through firsthand.” It is one thing to feel that pain, it’s another to make it go away.

Tella is likely one of them. Or he could have been tossed into the hands of the terrorists by a bigger problem successive Nigerian governments, including northern state governments, have refused to fix.

The prevalence of illiteracy and poverty in Nigeria’s north, where at least 10 million children walk the streets with plates in hands looking for the next free meal, is helping fuel the flames of terrorism.

It remains unclear what the 11-year-old boy was doing when the radical hands of Boko Haram caught him. But it is unlikely he was “captured” in a school where “Western” education, the very type of education Boko Haram detests, was being taught.

Boko Haram terrorists invade these “forbidden” schools to slaughter children in their sleep, or abduct teenage girls who are raped, and forced into slave marriages. They don’t go there looking for recruits.

Boko Haram’s recruits daily throng the streets of Nigeria hungry, aimless, jobless, naked, naïve and innocent. Tella must have fit into one or more of these.

The Nigerian military calls him a “potential suicide bomber” who probably wanted to kill people at the Dalori in Maiduguri Metropolitan Council, Borno State. It seemed they knew Tella before. That was why they included him in a 100-name long terror list they published weeks ago.

Buhari and Ezekwesili's BBOG met in Abuja recently. — President Muhammadu Buhari and Chibok girls advocate Obiageli Ezekwesili’s met in Abuja months ago. When will Buhari rescue the schoolgirls from terrorist captivity? We digressed.

“He is suspect number 82 on the poster containing the photographs of 100 wanted suspected Boko Haram terrorists released by the Nigerian Army,” the Defence Headquarters said in a statement, Thursday.

“Preliminary investigation revealed that the suspect was from Bama town and is among four other children trained for suicide bombing by the Boko Haram terrorists.

“The three others have already carried out their missions at different locations. (Meaning they are dead!)

“His (Tella’s) job was to do same in the camp sometime in the future,” DHQ said.

It appears Tella was fortunate to have, Tuesday (the day he was apprehended), been rescued from killing himself and many others.

He seems to be cooperating with the authorities.

The so called "Western" education Boko Haram rages against is crucial to "killing" the terrorists of the future before they are even born. Chart shows Nigeria's northeast lags behind. — The so called “Western” education Boko Haram rages against is crucial to “killing” the terrorists of the future before they are even born. Chart shows Nigeria’s northeast lags behind.

“The boy pointed out one other Boko Haram senior member, Alhaji Kerewu Abubakar at the camp,” DHQ said.

The Nigerian military did well by not only apprehending Tella but by also promising to stop other “potential suicide bombers.”

“The case of these suspects clearly indicated this point hence the need for proper screening of all IDPs with a view to ascertain their true identity,” DHQ said.

But how did an 11-year-old innocent boy become a terror suspect? And what is the most potent way to stop potential terrorists? Is it by “doing a Tella” on every “child terrorist” or by eradicating the widespread illiteracy and poverty that prime them for Boko Haram’s radicalism?

If the Nigerian government does not unveil a blueprint to effectively end poverty and illiteracy, DHQ will have more Tellas to display, and the media will be on hand to laud the military’s “successful war on terror.”.