(September 11 Commemoration)

By Chukwudi George Ozalla

I was in Enugu, in southeastern Nigeria, when the news of the September 11, 2001 attacks reached us. I remember the shock vividly. I literally froze. My heart skipped as I tried to understand what I was hearing and seeing. The images coming from the United States looked unreal, yet they were happening before the eyes of the world.

My mind went immediately to the innocent people inside those hijacked aircrafts and World Trade Center. I thought about those who were trapped in the towers, those who suddenly realised that something terrible had happened and those who were desperately looking for a way out. I imagined the confusion, the fear, the calls made to loved ones and the helplessness of people who knew they were in grave danger but could not escape. For several days afterwards, I was not myself. The enormity of what had happened was difficult to process.

Twenty-five years later, September 11 still carries that same painful weight.

On September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger aircraft in the United States. At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York. Seventeen minutes later, at 9:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower. At 9:37 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. At 10:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers and crew members attempted to take control of the aircraft.

The attacks killed 2,977 people, excluding the 19 hijackers. They included office workers, passengers, airline crew, firefighters, police officers, emergency workers and people who happened to be in or around the targeted locations. Among those who died were 343 firefighters and 60 police officers who responded to the attacks.

But the number, enormous as it is, cannot fully explain the human tragedy. Every number represented a person with a family, a history, a voice, plans for the future and people waiting for that person to return home.

That is perhaps one of the reasons the September 11 Memorial in New York is so powerful. At the site where the Twin Towers once stood are two enormous reflecting pools, built in the footprints of the destroyed towers. The names of the victims are inscribed in bronze around the pools. The Memorial honours the 2,977 people killed in the 2001 attacks, while also remembering the six people killed in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

There is something deeply human about the decision to preserve the names. Terrorists sought to create destruction on a scale that would overwhelm memory, but the memorial answers destruction with remembrance. It tells families that their loved ones were not just casualties of a historic event. They were individuals whose lives mattered.

The museum and memorial also preserve the stories of the people who died, the first responders who ran towards danger and the survivors who carried the physical and emotional consequences long after the buildings had fallen.

The attacks were planned by al-Qaeda under Osama bin Laden, with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed identified by the 9/11 Commission as the mastermind of the plot. The attackers were driven by an extremist ideology that turned hatred into a justification for mass murder.

That distinction is important because terrorism does not begin with the explosion, the hijacking or the shooting. Before the violence comes an environment in which human beings are taught to hate other human beings, to reject peaceful coexistence and to believe that killing innocent people can somehow be justified.

That is why the fight against terrorism cannot be reduced to military action alone.

Security agencies must detect threats early, intelligence must be properly shared, borders must be protected and terrorist financing must be disrupted. Law enforcement agencies must have the capacity to identify networks before they mature into operational threats. Governments must also understand that intelligence becomes useless when critical information remains in separate compartments and no one connects the pieces.

The 9/11 Commission found that there had been warning signs and pieces of intelligence that were not adequately connected before the attacks. The failure was not simply the absence of information, but the failure to see the larger picture in time.

America responded by fundamentally changing its approach to national security. The Transportation Security Administration was created, aviation security was tightened and the Department of Homeland Security was established in 2002 and became operational in 2003, bringing together 22 federal agencies and offices. Intelligence coordination and preparedness also received greater attention.

The attacks also changed America’s perception of distance. Terrorism was no longer something that could be regarded as a problem happening somewhere else. The lesson was that a threat developing in one part of the world could eventually reach the streets, airports, offices and homes of another country.

That lesson has relevance far beyond America.

For Nigeria, a country that has experienced Boko Haram and other forms of violent extremism, the message of September 11 should be taken seriously. Terrorist organisations do not appear suddenly. They recruit, indoctrinate, exploit grievances, manipulate vulnerable minds, raise money, establish networks and gradually normalise violence before launching attacks.

This makes prevention as important as response.

Families, schools, religious leaders, traditional institutions, community organisations and governments all have roles to play in preventing young people from being captured by extremist propaganda. Young people need the ability to question what they see online, distinguish genuine religious teaching from manipulation and understand that disagreement with another person does not make violence acceptable.

Governments also need to pay attention to conditions that extremists exploit, including alienation, poor education, unemployment, injustice and social exclusion. Addressing such problems does not excuse terrorism, nor does poverty automatically produce terrorists. But a society that leaves vulnerable people without hope creates openings that extremists can exploit.

Technology has made that challenge more complicated. Extremist groups can spread propaganda, recruit followers and glorify violence through digital platforms without necessarily establishing a physical presence in the communities they target. Countering that threat requires cooperation among governments, technology companies, educators, parents and communities.

There is also an important lesson in what happened after September 11. The pursuit of security can carry its own consequences when fear becomes the sole basis for policy. The wars and military campaigns that followed, the loss of civilian lives, displacement, enormous financial costs and debates over surveillance and civil liberties showed that fighting terrorism requires difficult choices and careful judgment.

The United States also made clear that terrorism could not be separated from the international environment in which terrorist organisations operated. Afghanistan became central to the immediate response because the Taliban had provided sanctuary to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The resulting war lasted nearly two decades and demonstrated how difficult it can be to defeat an extremist threat through military force alone.

It is equally important to remember that September 11 was not an attack by Muslims against America. It was an attack by extremists who claimed religious justification for murder. Muslim communities around the world, including in the United States, also suffered from the consequences of terrorism and the suspicion that followed it. Extremism should never be allowed to define an entire religion or people.

Twenty-five years on, the images of the towers falling have become part of history, but the meaning of September 11 has not disappeared. It changed aviation, national security, intelligence, immigration, foreign policy and the way governments think about terrorism. More importantly, it left families with memories that no anniversary can erase.

The September 11 Memorial therefore matters. Its quiet pools, flowing water and thousands of names stand in sharp contrast to the violence that created the site. There is no celebration of the attackers there. There is remembrance of the people who were taken from their families and honour for those who tried to save others.

That may be the strongest answer to terrorism: to remember the victims, learn from the failures that allowed the violence to happen, protect the living and refuse to allow hatred to become an inheritance for another generation.

I still remember where I was when the news came from New York in 2001. I remember the shock and the terrible thoughts about the people trapped inside those buildings. Twenty-five years later, that memory is still a reminder that behind every terrorist attack are human beings whose lives are suddenly changed forever. September 11 should therefore not be remembered only as the day America was attacked, but as a warning to the world about what happens when extremism, hatred, indoctrination and violence are allowed to grow unchecked. The responsibility now is to confront hatred before it turns into violence, protect the innocent, learn from the failures of the past and ensure that the horror witnessed on September 11, 2001, is never repeated.