… Continues from June 25, 2019
I made no move to leave the spot where I quietly lay. Apart from being exhausted, I feared that being an unfamiliar face, I could, if I came out, easily be mistaken for and treated as one of the hoodlums by members of the rescue party who, in this war mood, might not bother or wait to ask questions about my identity.
But after assessing that the situation had calmed a bit and I could hear some of the vehicles departing with the robbery victims being put in a special bus to convey them to town, I staggered back on to the road with a loud plea not to be left behind.
It was a pathetic human wreck that showed up at the door of an utterly mortified Gbemisola family later that night!
This event happened 22 years ago, precisely as harmattan was just creping over Oke Ogun in October of 1997. I learnt later from the Gbemisolas and other sources in town that such cases were rampant in the whole Oyo north axis at that time!
I remember the state police command relentlessly fought the menace with some measure of success to dislodge the ubiquitous bandits who turned the routes in the area, down to the Moniya-Ijaye-Iseyin Road close to Ibadan, into travellers’ nightmare. Besides intensified mobile patrol and roadblock/checkpoints which fetched rich harvests of the felons paraded weekly at the police headquarters at Eleyele, the police and security agents were able to rid the area of the miscreants who seasonally invaded the communities, based on cooperation and intelligence provided by the indigenes and non- indigenes including Fulani who had long settled and integrated with their Yoruba hosts.
Sadly, two decades down the line, the wave of insecurity effectively beaten down then by a synergy of community vigilance and responsive security apparatchik, has not only resurged, but burgeoned, almost swamping the entire South West region of Nigeria.
Yoruba people who inhabit this geo-political zone, live in fear of strange armed criminal gangs reportedly occupying the forests and prowling the highways. Their alleged brazen kidnapping, killing, robbing and maiming of travelers have made routes unsafe and consequently curtailed free movements in the region!
Vis –a- vis this glaring security threat, however, has been a perceived public apathy and attempts to mute, trivialise, politicise or sectionalise an actual national emergency which, in fact, is merely a manifestation of the retribution of our individual and collective guilt arising from our various acts of omission and commission in the first place and that has brought us to this sorry pass! And judging from current trends, we seem bent on perishing in the entanglements rather than break the pernicious cycle!
For instance, some people have conveniently hung the tag of criminality on the disturbing situation. In their view, it is Nigeria’s army of social deviants, dregs, misfits and the rejected merely having their own back on the privileged class in exercise of a warped sense of entitlement.
But against this is a counter narrative that sees ethnic ambition, conquest, domination and land grabbing agenda as being behind the dangerous phenomenon. The latter view has gained more tranche especially since former President Olusegun Obasanjo, a retired military General and Yoruba man raised the alarm of a purported “Fulanisation and Islamisation” of Nigeria by a power cabal in the country.
Before that, his friend and ex- Chief of Army Staff General Theophilus Danjuma, had sounded similar warning and called on the people to self-arm and defend themselves, in the wake of incessant raids and massacres of the people of Taraba (his home state) and other states in the Middle Belt notably Zamfara, Benue, and Plateau allegedly by armed militia variously called “herdsmen”, “unknown gunmen”, “terrorists” and lately “bandits”.
But given both men’s perceived sour relationship with the present leadership of the nation, one may be justified to read bias into their position and be tempted to dismiss it as red herring to politically blackmail or arm-twist the government, said to be hurting even their economic interests, as some observers have done.
But granting their likely bias, could the two former Army Generals be accused of flippancy on such grave national issue. If we are inclined to dismiss the duo as indulged, vengeful and grumpy old soldiers, can we discount with the fact that they may possess credible intelligence on national security intelligence by virtue of their past strategic positions and roles in government and the military, which places them at an advantage to have access to vast networks of national and international sources?
However, the theory of a plot to destabilize the rest of the country, especially the South, suffers a fatal error: The claim or assumption that the suspected mastermind (north) is insulated from the ongoing siege by the rampaging agents of Lucifer. If truth be told, the region is probably the worst victim of the orgy of violent strife and criminality.
Besides the protracted Boko Haram terrorists’ large-scale devastation of communities which has ruptured social life and order and thereby displaced millions of citizens most of them men and children, robbers, kidnappers, drug peddlers, rapists and other hues of hoodlums have literally declared a republic.
Many inter-state roads including the busy Abuja-Kaduna have become unsafe as a result of daring raids by robbers and kidnappers. In what amounted to disdain for the government and its security agencies the criminals did not spare even Katsina, the home state of the President where they abducted a traditional ruler in his locality! From Borno to Zamfara, Yobe to Katsina, the northern governors are wringing their hands in helplessness over how to contain the conflagration.
For long now, the Middle Belt states notably Benue, Plateau, Kogi and Nassarawa have been engulfed in perennial farmers-herders clashes, which later snowballed into mass killing, direct attack, sacking and occupation of indigenous communities by armed groups.
To be continued
