I recently received information from rural Kwara State about villages being deserted by their inhabitants because of threats by kidnappers. The allegation is that the kidnappers first showed up on the people’s farms and when they fled the farms, they were followed to their little towns and villages by the same marauders following which the people abandoned their homes apparently to go and live in the urban centres where there is security in numbers.
It is not only in Kwara that this phenomenon is happening. There have been reports like this from Kogi, Ekiti, Plateau, Benue and Nassarawa states. The question to ask is who are these marauders disturbing the peace of rural Nigeria and also to ask if what is happening to the rural villages foreshadows what will happen to the urban conurbations of Nigeria. If we don’t nip in the bud this rampaging violence, we will all be consumed by it. The immediate consequence of these phenomena is that the farming population is being driven away from the farms thus creating food insecurity and swelling the urban unemployed plebeians and unemployable peasants because these are mostly farmers with no skill outside their farms. These people will be hands for hire for disturbers of peace and thugs and gangs in the urban areas of our country some of who sleep rough under bridges.
To be sincere, no one can categorically affirm that he or she knows what is going on in our country. When we had this kind of country wide violence after the civil war in the 1970s, it was easily ascribed to guns in too many hands after the demobilisation that followed the end of the civil war and the general indiscipline that followed after. The then government applied draconian measures such as public executions which the wider world condemned but our government stuck to their guns and was able to curtail the violence if not totally extirpating it. Of course, since 50 years ago, the Nigerian population has grown and so has our problems of social dissonance and disequilibrium.
Our country is one of those third world countries where the gap between the rich and the poor is ever expanding. The yawning gap has led to corrosive effect of the poor and everybody wanting to get rich by all means possible including murder and human sacrifice. Things have gotten to such an insane level of placing little or no value on human life to such an extent that Nigeria is said to have the lowest life expectancy in the world. I hope this is not true but this is what Google says!
If we generally do not value life, then the criminally minded among us are not likely to value life at all. Things are now so bad that those of us from small towns and villages are afraid to go home. We are so scared that we are afraid to go and take care of the graves of our parents and ancestors. This is the worst thing that can happen to us Africans. Our relations at home even tell us not to try to come home explaining that our cohorts have sold their souls to the devil to the point of telling kidnappers about our movements so that they can share with criminals the proceeds of the ransom extracted from our children for our release by criminals kidnapping gangs. Only intrepid urbanites go home to see their people unless they can hire gun totting security to follow them to their homes in the small towns and villages. Some of these problems have been compounded by powerful politicians who go to poor neighbouring countries to recruit political thugs for electioneering campaigns. These thugs are simply dismissed or paid off after the elections and those of losing politicians are left to fend for themselves. These swell the ranks of “gun for hire”. To make matters worse, herders who have been laid off by those who hired them to accompany cows from the Sahel and Savanna down to the coast for peanuts soon find out they can make thousands, if not millions, in local currency from kidnapping and ransom which has become big business. Nomads driven southwards by the desiccation of the savanna have decided to find new habitat in the Guinea forest by killing or driving off the indigenous people and taking their lands. There is a messianic element in some ethnic groups like the Bororo and Fulani feeling they have a God-given right to drive the autochthonous people off their land. Superimposed on this is the religious element of invaders thinking they are fighting holy war against infidel population whether Christian or even fellow Muslims like themselves.
There is even a new odious development where foreign miners hire killers to drive people away from their towns and villages following which bulldozers arrive to exploit for rare minerals which are then spirited outside the country. This alleged international collusion with criminals to drive away people from their farms and villages for the purpose of mining rare minerals should be investigated and if proven, those involved must be subjected to capital punishment. As for the involvement of international criminal organizations, we of course know that ISWAP (Islamic State in West African Province) is an affiliate of ISIS and that Boko Haram probably has outside support at least judging from the sophisticated weapons they carry. The collapse of the Libyan regime engineered by NATO has led to a flood of weapons across the Sahel into West Africa. It is significant that the entry point for the Libyan arms is the Fezzan which shares borders with Chad and Niger Republic, adjacent to Borno State, the seedbed of Boko haram and its various offshoots.
The Fulani ethnic group (also known as Peul, Fula, Fulbe, Toucoleur or Tukolor) has also been fingered as being responsible for the mayhem in Nigeria and other parts of West Africa. The Fulani are a West African group spreading from Senegal and Mali and across West African countries of Sierra Leone, Guinea, Niger, Nigeria and the Cameroons and generally being borderless people moving across frontiers and paying little or no attention to borders. They are not the only pastoral people involved in herding of animals who may also be involved in the struggle with farming communities for pasture for their animals. The Bororo also comes to mind in this respect. This collection of people involved in the maelstrom deserves to be thoroughly interrogated before proffering possible solutions to a hydra headed problem.
This is a problem that had gotten the attention of the federal government since the Babangida years or perhaps earlier and may have dated back to the Maitasine riots in Kano in 1980 in which over 5000 people including soldiers and policemen were killed when Shehu Shagari was president, and the “Musa Mekaniki” riots in Bulunkutu, Maiduguri and Yola in 1984. I was living and working at the University of Maiduguri then and witness to the history. This problem of rural and urban poverty caused protests manifesting in crude religious fanaticism have therefore always been with us but has now metastasized into this widespread violence centrally located in Northern Nigeria and spreading from there to the Middle Belt and gradually coming to the southern states where it has metamorphosed into kidnapping business.
What is to be done? The military is mobilised to put down all these various religious and political challenges to constituted authority.
But the efforts have not borne positive results and the violence seems to be festering. There was attempt during the Jonathan presidency to hire mercenaries to help put down the jacquerie. The successor government of Muhammadu Buhari appeared not to be in favour of soldiers of fortune. More investment were put in acquiring armaments and aerial equipment including aeroplanes, helicopters, drones and missiles but we are yet to see appreciable degradation of the rebellious forces. The government is doing its best to allocate resources to the military to ensure continued and consistent pressure on the forces of chaos in Nigeria. The present government has also decided to decentralise political and economic power from the centre to the regional periphery. It seems it is pursuing the strategy of state policing while at the same time strengthening the LGAS (local government administrations) and increasing financial allocation to the local and state governments.
The state and local governments as well as the federal government must commit themselves to absolute honesty, transparency and accountability in the use of state funds and absolute commitment to eradication of bribery and corruption all over Nigeria. I once listened to a presentation by the Director General of DSS who said he was in favour of local vigilantes protecting their homes and people. This presupposes the easing of gun licenses to responsible people in the community for hunting and presumably for self-defence.
State governments must be encouraged and empowered to declare state of emergency in areas that are prone to attacks by violent people and brigands. The idea and practice of forest ranging must be pursued to logical conclusion of appropriately arming and properly kitting them.
The creation of state police and recruitment into them ought to receive accelerated attention. The federal government should declare a state of siege and the strength of the military numerically increased. All I have written suggests that the country is going through a period of serious emergency and we need to reverse the tide when we still have the time and chance.
BBC
