When I arrived in the city of Maiduguri nearly thirty years ago, everyone was away at the public executions. It was a ghost town until the spectators returned as from a football match in which the home team had won a decisive victory, as it were. It is true that one of the three men executed told the television reporter, as he was being tied to the stake before he was shot, that he was innocent of the crime (armed robbery) with which he had been charged; but I suppose the utilitarians among us would argue that it was better … Continue reading Boko Haram and the Indelible West