… At the burial of Borno slain farmers
By Mike Kebonkwu
In Nigeria, it is almost customary with us that no one takes responsibility for anything. This is the reason why a driver’s mate (conductor), will be blamed and held responsible for an accident. After 60 years of independence, the political class and the ruling elite still blame successive regimes for Nigeria’s underdevelopment including the current state of insecurity across the country. We blame every other person and tribe but ourselves. We prime our mindset to the flaws of our ethnic nationalities that Nigeria is not growing because of the idiosyncrasies of the other tribe. The stereotype leads to resentment and unnecessary targeting of people of other religions and tribe making Nigeria a country perpetually in conflict with itself.
Nigeria is slipping into a state of anarchy and the worst form of barbarism. There is orgy of violence everywhere you go. In the face of the dire security situation, government officials are fixated on regime and self-preservation rather than take the bull by the horn and confront the challenges. From the president to the least person in his executive, they are always seeing “those who do not mean well” for the country as responsible for every problem thereby making every genuine voice of dissent to be enemy.
At the beginning of the month of November, Benin City, the Edo State capital was taken over by criminals identified as rival cult groups who unleashed mayhem on the entire city. About 28 lives were lost including one Assistant Commissioner of Police. As the month of November winds up, scores of poor farmers in Zambarmari village in Borno State trying to eke out a living were gruesomely butchered by Boko Haram terrorists. The government response through its spokesman was that the hapless farmers did not get clearance from the military before going to their rice farms. This is as insensitive as it is irresponsible after all we have been told time and again that the insurgents do not have the capacity to bite any longer.
Rather than address the issues of securing the ordinary citizens, the government is whining and bickering over the figure and statistics whether it was 43 people killed or over 100 as reported by the UN agency operating in the northeast. Just as if the life of only one person is not enough for the government to rise up to its responsibility to its primary constitutional duty to securing lives and property of the citizens. It was only in South Sudan before her independence that this level of barbaric butchery was seen in the recent past because of vacuum of government.
Today, bandits, kidnappers and armed robbers have laid siege to travellers on our roads; north, south, east and west. Ransoms are paid while some of the victims die in captivity including uniform men. There appear to be another excuse that after the EndSARS protests, the Nigeria Police Force is not able to get itself back to duty. This is a shame on not just the police leadership but to us as a nation irrespective of whatever anyone feels about that patriotic struggle by the Nigerian youths for the first time in our history where the government became very jittery.
An elected government and representatives of the people prefer to see a call for good governance as criminal act and terrorism and allowed live bullets to be used on innocent protesters during the EndSARS protest. In the aftermath of the protest which the government in one breath said was peaceful but was hijacked by hoodlums, they are now trying organisers as terrorists, targeting their bank accounts and investment. Yet the hoodlums and bandits and their sponsors have vapourized.
Today, as evident, people can’t go to their farms in the north and Middle Belt; people cannot travel on the roads in the south and west. People are being kidnapped and abducted from their homes including residents of the Federal Capital Territory. If we are waiting for one international agency to tell us that Nigeria is now in the group of failed state, then we may need to visit psychiatrists.
Our problems will not go away if we continue on the path of ethno-religious perceptions to politicize the challenge of insecurity in the country. The Nigerian people have to vigorously engage the government if we want to continue to live as a corporate entity in one piece. It is a tragedy that we keep blaming foreign agencies and government for incitement while we not doing anything tangible to build a country of our dream. After this latest killing of these indigent Zambarmari farms in Borno State in their farms, one expected every segment of the society from every part of the country to engage the government through patriotic peaceful protest on the streets of Nigeria. Yesterday, it was poor farmers in Agatu and other villages in Benue State, today it is Zambarmari in Borno; tomorrow it could be you. We should rise up to secure Nigeria.
It still beats every logic and imaginations why the government cannot heed the call to change the service chiefs for whatever good they may be doing. The truth is that the service chiefs are fatigued and have exhausted themselves and have no new ideas. Leaving them in office for over five years is inordinately too long for the good of the military. There is a limit to which propaganda can carry a government and when it becomes obvious that the government is lying even to itself, then it is a matter of time before the bubble will burst just as we witnessed during the spontaneous demonstrations by the EndSARS group.
We have been told that the Boko Haram terrorists have been degraded and technically defeated. Shekarau had been killed over and over again but the attack on communities and villages in the northeast has remained unabated. The same government would tell us that they have provided the military with the equipment it needs. Now they are saying that they do not have equipment as countries refused to sell to them because of alleged human rights abuses by the security forces.
For the service chiefs, they are behaving like political figures without caring a hoot about military professionalism and integrity; that on their own ought to have thrown in the towel. Rather than procure arms or research into production of armament and weaponry, they are busy, competing to build universities in their villages at the expense of equipping and motivating their troops. How could building Army, Airforce, and Navy universities become priority in times of war and relentless insecurity across the country?
The over sighting lawmakers are hugely compromised while Nigerians see the elected representatives as feudal overlords not to be challenged. There is a conspiracy of silence and nobody wants to talk because the government has become increasingly repressive and fixated on self and regime preservations. Summoning the dithering president who has become a taciturn to the National Assembly is not going to suddenly bring the problem of insecurity to an end. Calling for a state of emergency in security is begging the question as we have been plunged into a state of war without end in insecurity. We are done as a people for our choice of leaders. For the service chiefs, it is just beyond calling for their removal, it is an imperative. Let us end the conspiracy of silence and speak truth to power.
- Kebonkwu Esq writes from Abuja.
The Nation
