That I may Know HIM - A Devotional

Day 36: BEWARE, THE GIBEONITES!

What do you make of this news item in The Nation newspaper of January 22, 2012 (page 2)?  Reporting the Boko Haram bombardment of Kano in which more than 70% of the about 200 official fatalities had been Muslims, it quoted “a top source” that said,

In the last few months, security agencies in collaboration with the people of Kano have tried their best to engage in mass arrest of Boko Haram members who have fled to the city….  Each time the Boko Haram were arrested, their leaders would go to local leaders in Kano to prevail on security agencies to release them.  But security agencies and the people of Kano were tired of the security breaches by the sect, so in the last two months, no one was interceding again for Boko Haram members who were arrested by the police and other security agencies.

For that, Boko Haram “were threatening deadly strike in Kano if nothing was done.”  Was that why they struck?

Every intelligent reader of this “top source” wonders, “So they know themselves!” Vanguard newspaper of January 24, 2012 (page 5) reported that, shortly after the Kano carnage, hundreds of bombs in canisters such as drums, Coca-Cola cans, tins of familiar chocolate beverages, and “ten different types of vehicles… loaded with improvised explosives” were found in several locations in Kano.  Again, one wonders aloud, “So they knew those places all the while, until that wakeup call that killed many policemen and many Muslims?”  It is said that in some of those communities, the Boko boys go about with their guns and are hailed by the locals. 

Is God using the Kano episode to judge the compromised police force, some of whom are suspected to be on the multi-million payroll of those and other criminals?  Is it a sign that God is turning the horde against their lords and against their own household? 

Now a new acting Inspector General of the Nigeria Police has been appointed: Alhaji Mohammed Dikko Abubakar, in replacement of Alhaji Hafiz Ringim who was ‘voluntarily retired’ over the mysterious escape from Police custody of the suspected mastermind of the Christmas day church bombing that killed over 40 Catholic worshippers.  Alhaji Mohammed Dikko Abubakar, the new IG, has been widely criticised for his sectarian Islamic roles during one of the crises in Jos while he was the Commissioner of Police for the Plateau State Command.  The Justice Niki Tobi panel, constituted in September 2001 over those events, had, in a White Paper released in Jos, strongly recommended that the police officer be told to retire honourably or be forcefully dismissed from the Force for his unethical support of the jihadists during those crises.  It is wondered by some if the nation were not empowering Boko Haram by the appointment of one of its indicted patrons? (This Day Live (online newspaper) 26 Jan., 2012, http://www.thisdayonline.com; The Guardian (online) 26 Jan 2012, http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=75071:how-abubakar-emerged-new-igreform-begins&catid=1:national&Itemid=559#comments).

Again, I wonder, is God laying a snare?  Is He opening up the pit for the pit diggers?  Proverbially speaking, is God about to use one thief to catch the rest?  Is He about to use the fisher to catch his kith from their mutual covens (in the fisher’s bid to make a point about his righteousness) and thereafter judge both horses and riders in the sea? There will be a sign.

Boko Haram is a multi-billion dollar conspiracy with diverse foreign and local interests.  It is partly a game plan ahead of the next national elections in 2015, to drive away southerners and Christians from the north, restructure the political and religious topography of the region into a more Islamic north, so as to forestall the unbelievable pattern or geography of voting that knocked out Buhari the Islamic presidential arrowhead and brought in Jonathan, in spite of their perfected strategies.   

I pray again and again (and hope that someone joins me in the prayer) that God will meet some of them, especially their chiefs, on the Road to Damascus; that He will, out of the present bloody persecutions of the Church, raise fiery and irresistible evangelists like Saul from among their very camps (Acts 9:1-9); preachers for whom home is not South.  Meanwhile, others there are that will end like Herod the enemy of the Church, whom the angel of God smote publicly before his own political fans (Acts 12:1-5, 23).