NIGERIA IS NOT A TERRORIST COUNTRY

On what rational basis can America justify the inclusion of Nigeria on America terrorist watch list? The argument that a 23 years old Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to detonate a device on an airline on 2009 Christmas day is insufficient in the circumstance. Why? The culprit’s father, Alhaji Mutallab, a formal chairman of one of Nigeria’s foremost and largest banks, informed the American embassy in Nigeria of his son, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, extremist tendencies, coupled with intelligence already at the tables of American intelligence operatives. What did CIA do? They sat on it, did nothing, failed to share the intelligence reports with her counterparts and at the time with Nigerian security operatives. 289 people, inclusive of properties, potentially would have lost their lives because of that negligence. As a result of those failings, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab transited in Nigeria where he boarded a KLM flight to Amsterdam and onwards to America to commit the heinous crime of terrorism. Thank God he failed to succeed!

Nigerians are not terrorist, and certainly do not deserve to be subjected to a degrading search in the name of counter terrorism measures, because such or any terrorist act is absolutely alien to Nigerians. Send Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to Nigeria today and see what Nigerians would make of him! He will be lynched to death especially by the youths of Nigeria who believe, and rightly so, that by his act, he has brought shame to the nation, Nigeria.

American intelligence operatives - the CIA, failed the American people, equally failed Nigerians and us as a people. Had they acted on intelligence before them, instead of seating on it, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab would have been arrested in Nigeria. Thus, he would not have had the opportunity to almost kill 289 people. It is therefore, unfair, unjust for America to now label Nigeria as a terrorist country, or a transit spot for terrorist. However, it is labelled; it is still a bad name. Nigeria should be removed from that list, Nigerians are good people not terrorist, CIA failed Nigeria and should take the rap for it, not innocent Nigerians.