A few there were who foresaw what we are going through today in Nigeria with regards to the indescribable insecurity that has engulfed our land, no matter which part you turn, but incredibly more so in the North of the country. One such person was Chief Obafemi Awolowo who severally warned that by denying western education to a huge proportion of their youth , the North was sowing the wind and was certain to reap the whirlwind. Pity is, the North is not reaping it alone.
Let us capture that ‘patriot, philosopher and prophet’, as described by Adebayo Williams in ‘The Titan and The Titanic: Awolowo in and through History’, his essay in AWO – ON THE TRAIL OF A TITAN , being a compilation of Essays in honour of the redoubtable politician and humanist, with Professors Sam Aluko, Akin Mabogunje, Wole Soyinka, Banji Akintoye, David Oke, Obaro Ikime, Anya O. Anya, Akinjide Osuntokun, Francis Ogunmodsde, Itse Sagay, Richard Joseph, Olatunji Dare, Segun Gbadegesin, Niyi Osundare, Ropo Sekoni,
Wale Adebanwi and Mvendaga Jibo, contributing.
“This is a man we thought we bade a final goodbye 17 years ago. If it is so, it must be the longest goodbye in history. For at every tragic turn, at every miscue, be it at the level of the structural deformities of this unfortunate nation, its suffocating and stifling unitarism, its economic malaise, its educational collapse, its spiritual bankruptcy, its corrupt and thieving political class, and its gradual descent into the anomie of ungovernability, we are confronted by the figure of the man with the horn-rimmed glasses. And until we come to terms with many of his ideas, either by transcending them through superior political engineering, or working through them through a more rigorous intellectual engagement, the piercing eyes behind the lens will continue to haunt us, reminding us of our inadequacies as intellectuals, as philosophers, as politicians and as a nation”. That exactly is what brings Awo into this essay.
But he was not alone. There were others, even if not in such a ramifying manner.
In the specific case of the present 24-hour, round the clock insecurity that has engulfed the Northwest, there can be no ignoring Dr Abubakar Siddique Mohammed, of the Centre for Democratic Development Research and Training, Zaria, whose work I have quoted severally on these pages ( see: Why Do Governments Fritter Away The Pointers In Security Related Studies And Write-Ups?) – The Nation, 1 March, 2020.
Let us paraphrase him in an interview he granted on his research on banditry in the Northwest:
When we first did our studies, the conflict was in Kaduna, Katsina, Sokoto and Zamfara, the epicentre of insecurity in the North. It was between farmers and herders but it soon degenerated into an ethnic conflict between Hausas and Fulanis.There were armed robberies which some Fulani boys were accused of. There were so many ungoverned spaces – No electricity, telecommunication etc and local governments existed only in name. Government was completely absent and for a long time, only traditional leaders and some Islamic teachers were the ones dealing with the crisis. The roads were extremely bad and the people left to their fate. So when the armed robberies persisted, people formed vigilantes to bring about some modicum of law and order. They went beyond their limits whenever they went on operations. In the Dansadau area of Zamfara, they identified some Fulani boys, some of who they attacked and killed. They were very brutal. They did not stop in the towns and semi-urban centres but pursued the Fulani deep into the forest, in the process killing many innocent people. When the attacks on the Fulani became generalised, some of the Fulanis withdrew, went and reorganised and came back; identified their attackers and began to revenge. Those whose kids were of fighting age were forced to donate their kids or provide money.
The bandits would break into houses, insist they are given money or they rape wives and daughters. The government in Zamfara felt completely unconcerned.
The challenge soon morphed into generalised rural banditry. At this stage, the farmers and pastoralists became victims of a superior force. The pastoralists lost their herds because some other forces had come in and subjugated both the pastoralists and farmers. A third force then emerged which dispossessed the pastoralists of their cows, dispossessed the farmers of their savings which they kept at home and drove them away. From rustling cattles , they moved to kidnapping. Everything so degenerated that in one town in Zamfara, the vigilante group there was meeting when bandits attacked them, killing about 200 people. When these youths lost their cattle, they had nothing to do anymore. But, surprisingly, they started seeing some of their rustled cows with some of the rich people and that was what triggered the kidnappings. They could not get to some of the rich people because they had security guards armed with AK 47 rifles. So the criminals also acquired AK 47 rifles as a balance of terror.
Some time later, the Zamfara government, under Sani Yerima, drove the Fulanis out of their ancestral land to pave way for big farmers. That was when Fulanis relocated to other parts of Nigeria and other parts of Zamfara, fully armed.
We made it known to government some four years ago that this thing will get out of control. We recommended that concerted efforts be made to stop the crisis. You cannot solve the problems in Kaduna, Katsina and Sokoto without dealing with the situation in Zamfara which had gotten so completely out of control that the country’s security architecture can no longer deal with it. The country is under-policed just like the army is overstretched. There is a huge need to expand the armed forces and the police.
Now as we have seen, those whose duty it is to substantially increase the number of our police men have chosen to play ethnic games.
This is the state of affairs the North imported to all parts of Nigeria because, rather than govern, their governors prefer to spend billions of naira on marriages, theirs, or their children’s, or buy thousands of okada which they ferry down to Southern cities, with thousands of Northern youth – mostly illiterate children of the poor, many of who, unknown to these governors, come down complete with sophisticated guns with which they come to rob, kill or kidnap, for huge sums of money.
This is how the North incubated, and socialised insecurity, and turned Nigeria into something of a no man’s land. Add to that their Boko Haram cousins in the Northeast and you get the complete picture.
Nor is insecurity new to the North. As Bola Bolawole recently put it in his column in The Tribune: “The North has a chequered history of religious intolerance. Its religious fanatics and fundamentalists unleash orgies of wanton destruction of life and property at the flimsiest of excuses. They kill for what otherwise reasonable persons will consider as insane and unreasonable. There is hardly any town in the North that does not have a religious riot to its name with the targets always being Christians and non-indigenes.
They kill, maim, rape, and destroy with relish. Not only do they get away, scot-free, they also mock the law and rape the Constitution. They dare anyone to do anything about their lawlessness and, rather than dissuade them, the Northern establishment justify, support, encourage, finance, and defend them with the result that they are never brought to book”.
It is, however, Professor Yusuf Dankofa, of the Department of Public Law, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, we must thank for his seminal explanation of this sad phenomenon when he wrote as follows in his piece:’The North Is Only Interested In Power, Nothing More’:
“I think the north is only interested in power and nothing more. The sweetness of power and the allure it brings is what appeals to them and not work. “If not, how can a region be so decimated by its own internal contradictions and trudge on as if the region is not regressing. “In the face of calamity, what you see is eerie silence, since power is with their elites who are thoroughly dependent on public treasury to survive. The poor too draws happiness from the fact that power is in the hands of their elites even if they will die of poverty and insurgency. “We are happy that power is with us even though we don’t know what to do with it. This mindset will definitely lead others to seek to move out of the union. “You can’t slow down your own progress and those of others and expect them to clap for you”.
If any further question remains, it must be what government is doing to make life liveable in a country which today, must be comparatively worse off than Yemen, Afghanistan or Somalia, even Libya, where there is currently no discernible government . Being farmers on their rice farms, children in their schools or travellers on Abuja – Kaduna, Birnin-Gwari or Akure-Owo-Akoko, Ondo-Owena, Lokoja or Yenagoa-Port Harcourt roads, no longer guarantees life in our country.
Sad.
Credit: Femi Orebe, TN