Azernews.Az

On Christmas day, Nigerians across the world were greeted with a devastating season’s gift.
Detroit bound Northwest Airlines flight 253 emergency-landed twenty minutes ahead of schedule to foil what has now emerged to be a failed terror plot masterminded by a Yemeni based Al-Qaeda cell.
The primary suspect Umar Abdul Mutalib made his first appearance in court on Friday in what legal experts speculate would be the beginning of a due process that should culminate in an ultimate life sentence.
Abdul Mutallab belongs to just a few of privileged Nigerians who do not worry about the economic and social deprivation that afflicts the West African country.
An Engineering graduate from one of the UK’s prestigious schools and son of an influential politician and financial mogul, it is puzzling to tell how a promising student from such an affluent background could throw away a rather promising future.
However, for most Nigerians the shocks and disbelief that greeted the news on Christmas day is giving way to somber reflections and a grim reality that the oil rich west African state has enough to do to change its negative image abroad and to assure the international community, particularly the U.S. and its allies, that it is committed to eradicating the roots of extremism and terror sentiments the country is gaining notoriety for.
But Nigeria’s Information Minister Dora Akunyili insists this is an isolated case of a good fruit gone bad, and shouldn’t be used to brand a country that also boasts of excellence in several disciplines.
Mr. Kazeem Greg, a Nigerian student resident in Baku, seems to agree with her: "I’m completely scandalized by such publicity of my country," he remarked. "He certainly cannot be used to generalize all of us. This is just a case of some of the few bad guys tarnishing our image abroad. I believe in my country and our ethics. "
Several other state officials including religious clerics have condemned the incident and insisted the country is not a hub for terrorists.
Yet, if Nigeria can avert further future tarnishing of its image by religious fanatics and renegade youths like Mutalib, [and the likely more dozens being recruited each day by Al-Qaeda sleeper cells in Yemen, Afghanistan and Syria], the authorities would have to do more than publicity damage controls and image redemption.

Domestic failure
On the local front, the law enforcements agencies have yet to eradicate extremist sentiments and inter-religious tensions that remain a potent threat to national security.
Last month, the southern state of Bauchi witnessed bloody clashes between opposing sects of an Islamic cleric, resulting in the deaths and maiming of dozens of innocent children and women.
This development followed a nationwide mayhem that engulfed the country last July, when adherents of a local group Boko Haram revolted against state order in an apparent expression of anti-Western sentiments; torching key government facilities and local police posts.
The leader of that group and instigator of the uprising -incidentally also a product of Western education -was later executed extra judiciously in what human rights campaigners criticized as a breach of due process and the right to fair trial.
Many parts of Nigeria’s northern belt have tilted on the brink of ethnic explosion and the state authorities are only just handling a (quite rudely) volatile dilemma.
In truth, the problems that test Nigeria’s integrity are far more complex and entrenched than ideological extremism.
The decades-old feud between state authorities and rebel factions in the oil-rich Niger Delta continues to plague the country, depriving the region of long-overdue developments.
Juxtapose this with the indicting fact that the economy of the world’s eighth producer of oil loses nearly a fifth of revenue to corruption and graft at the top echelons of government, and you can conclude that the terror challenge couldn’t have come at a more ill time for Nigeria.
Nevertheless, on their part, the U.S. and allied countries cannot afford to wait as Nigeria wallows in internal despair.
On Thursday, Washington included it in a list of blacklisted nations (comprising among others, Algeria, Syria, Iran and Yemen) from where passengers arriving in the U.S. must undergo additional security checks and screening.
Expectedly, Lagos and Algiers have issued separate statements condemning these measures.
In fairness to the Federal Government, this is just asking too much from a system which is already panting so hard for breath; still waiting at the supreme courts are three separate applications from legal aides of an opposition confederacy that is piling daily pressure on the judiciary to declare as incapacitated –and therefore unfit to rule-, President Umaru Yar'Adua who has been spending the better part of the past seven weeks, bed-ridden in a ‘Riyadh’ hospital.
How Nigeria can overcome these domestic and external pressures and assure the international community that it still remains a credible important player in the region remains to be seen.
But one fact is certain though: for Nigeria to recover from the dents that the involvement of one of its own has brought to its national image would take measures far more drastic than diplomatic punches and press briefings from Lagos.
Indeed, if Nigeria doesn’t work to eradicate the growing extremist sentiments that is creeping into a misguided section of the youth, distancing itself from terror could prove as difficult as finding where Bin Laden himself lives.*