The initial lull in the activities of terrorists, bandits and militants visiting pain and death on Nigerians was probably to test if President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s approach would be different from those of his predecessors. Sadly, the nightmare of haunted Nigerians has returned and now in full swing. Over 280 schoolchildren and some teachers abducted from Kuriga, Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State, by bandits on Thursday, March 7, are currently marooned in the forest with their captors. A fresh attack on the same Dogon-Noma community, Kajuru Local Government Area in the early hours of Saturday, barely three days after left one dead and eight women kidnapped. A renewed attack on Sunday resulted in the harvesting of an additional 87 captives.
The nation’s nightmare continued with Sunday’s mindless killing of 17 gallant soldiers of the 181 Amphibious Battalion, Bomadi Local Government Area of Delta State by irate youths while on a peace mission to Okuoma community over land dispute.
Once again, as tragic as the above incidents are, the two different events are mere symptoms of our unresolved national question. We cannot continue to do the same thing over and over and expect different result. A people that refuse to learn from history will be punished by history. Our leaders enjoy playing the ostrich instead of helping us to confront our own demons.
For instance, where will bandits get ungoverned forest to hide 285 children in a strong northwest region, with state police, community police and forest guards heavily armed to secure communities and their forests? And what will be the business of highly trained military personnel with local land dispute in a Bomadi LGA, not created and funded from Abuja but created, funded and run by the natives?
President Tinubu however must take full responsibility for the continued nightmare of Nigerians. The buck stops at his table. He asked for the job and had 20 years to prepare for it. Kuriga was preventable because the president was familiar with the April 14, 2014 abduction of 214 Chibok schoolgirls and fruitless search by Babagana Monguno’s (the National Security Adviser (NSA) 100 jet fighters. President Tinubu could not have suddenly forgotten that the February 19, 2018 carting away of 110 students of Government Girls’ Science Technical College (GGSTC), Dapchi, in 11 trucks by suspected Boko Haram terrorists in military fatigues was blamed by the international community on absence of governance.
President Tinubu understands the nature of our crisis of nation-building and the solutions canvassed by Nigerian stakeholders since 1970. Some two months back, Wole Soyinka, regarded as the conscience of the nation, was with him in Abuja to remind him of the imperative of restructuring. Just last week, Akinwunmi Adesina, an internationally acknowledged Nigerian star during his presentation of the Awo Foundation lecture, spoke of the possibility of “a united states of Nigeria”. And just this last Monday, Emeka Anyaoku, another recognized Nigerian star who spoke at the gathering of ‘The Patriot’, a group initiated by late Professor Ben Nwabueze and Rotimi Williams both of whom regretted foisting a unitary constitution on the country in 1979, where he reminded us that like most multi-ethnic societies, the federal option is the only way of liberating individual and groups from the tyranny of the state.
The implication of this is that if the police as a vital state institution is defined by society, we don’t in the real sense of it have federal police but police that wear the colours of ethnic nationalities. And this is why the police is not answerable to the state but to ethnic groups, powerful individuals and the highest bidder including criminals. We could not have suddenly forgotten how President Buhari’s IGP Ibrahim Idris told Nigerians that terrorists who killed, maimed and confiscated the community land of victim condemned to IDP camps were ghosts.
A structure that sustains an IGP’s arrogance in selectively determining which states laws to implement cannot effectively address states’ security challenges. This is why it has been tales after tales from one IGP to the other even as killings by terrorists and kidnapping by bandits continue in many of the states.
President Tinubu understands where the rain started to beat us and has not got the luxury of playing the ostrich.
Our founding fathers bequeathed onto us a working federal constitution. Military adventurers in search of a vision of better society they were ill-equipped to understand starting with Aguiyi Ironsi came up with the 1966 Unification Decree 34.
Eleven of Gowon military messiahs were found to be men with feet of clay. Murtala Muhammed destroyed academia and bureaucracy, the two institutions without which society decays.
Fast forward to the Babangida regime in 1985. While he was busy turning the nation to net importer of labour of other societies by ceding the commanding heights of the economy to mostly dubious and ill-equipped members of the governing elite interested only in asset stripping, he was christened “Prince of the Lower Niger’’ by grovelling intellectuals and received the National Economic Society of Nigeria’s (NES) highest honour for his handling of the economy.
Obasanjo started massive centralization of states institutions. As an elected president, he sold our patrimony in the name of privatization. And without understanding that no modern state has ever developed since the 18th century without the central role of political parties, he destroyed PDP, AD and ANPP in the name of “mainstreaming”. Out of office, perhaps as an admission of failure, he in 2018 inaugurated a short-lived movement he claimed “will mobilise our population for unity, cooperation, development, rule of law, employment, law and order, justice, integration, peace, security, stability, welfare and well-being”.
If only on account of the humongous amount stolen under President Goodluck Jonathan’s watch, those who claimed he was the answer to the national question served none but themselves.
We have seen how Muhammadu Buhari frittered away goodwill of Nigerians for eight years while being held hostage by terrorists visiting death on Nigerians.
Well prepared Tinubu, unlike his ill-prepared predecessors who instead of learning how other multi-ethnic societies face their own demons played the ostrich while self-serving members of the governing elite demonstrated their lack of faith in the country by stealing the country blind, has an edge. From his experience from the trenches and strategic studies, he understands very clearly that lack of faith in one’s country arises from social discontent, marginalisation, injustice and denial of quest for self-actualisation, all of which find expression in social strife, sabotage of economic activities, rebellion, militancy and sometimes civil war.
Our nation has experienced these manifestations since the military misadventure into politics in 1966. If his predecessors did everything except addressing the causes of these malcontents, President Tinubu has his work cut out for him.