The whole world took notice when the Chibok abduction happened. It was so daring that it was almost unbelievable. How could such a raid be planned and executed without intel being aware? How could so many young girls disappear in plain sight? How could security be bridged so easily, so blatantly? Especially in an area where security antenna should have been at its most alert? These were some of the questions the world sought to know. Many people smelled more than the clichéd rat. They smelled connivance. They smelled complicity. The body language of the northern elite at the time showed that there could be more to it. So the world quietly retreated despite its outrage. You can’t cry more than the bereaved after all.
In journalism, news is when something happens out of the norm. Like a man biting a dog. Like students being abducted in numbers from schools. Like people being killed in their places of sanctuary. So, when the abnormal becomes the norm, it ceases to be news. Which is why the abductions, the violent killings happening in almost all parts of the north don’t make headline news anymore around the world. They don’t evoke the same sense of outrage as a decade and a half ago. It is either we know what we are doing, which makes the whole thing intentional. Or we don’t know what we are doing which makes us incompetent and an object of pity. Either way, the world had left us largely alone to our savagery. Until the recent outcry of Christian genocide which got the US involved for reasons only the US can decipher.
Large scale insecurity, which used to be predominant in the deep north, has now made its abode in the central region which has an eclectic mix of religions. Is it also mere coincidence that Oyo State, which made a push towards Sharia just recently, has now become the first Southwestern State to have a large abduction of students? Our elders state that a witch that cries the night before, might be responsible for the death of an infant the following day. Oyo State also has an eclectic mix of religions. Although there are indeed many layers to the insecurity in the country, this religious layer cannot be ignored. The economic layer, especially through legal and illegal mining, cannot be ignored. The population explosion, leading to an unprecedented level of idle youths cannot be ignored. We have about 20 million out of school children in the country for crying out loud. It is the largest in the world. About 18 million of them are in the north alone. So we have youths who can’t go to school for various reasons and who can’t go to farms for various reasons too. Their fertile minds are being indoctrinated and manipulated. Their idle hands are being utilized in the devil’s workshop. This leads us to the political layer which can only be ignored at our peril. It is curious that terrorism heightens just before major elections. Lastly – and this is the sad and unfortunate part- the weaponisation of these fault-lines can’t be ignored. To ignore the causes of insecurity is to treat symptoms. This, to a large extent, is what we have been doing in the last decade and a half. Nobody is curbing the fiery, political and sometimes incendiary rhetoric of some religious leaders. No one is defusing the time-bomb of untrained and abandoned youths. No one is seriously addressing the dwindling farmland in the north due to desert encroachment, mining, insecurity and population. No one is facing the thriving industry that has sprung up around insecurity. An industry that thrives through negotiations, arms procurement, gun and uniform ‘leasing’ to bandits, ransom negotiations with criminals over kidnapped victims and officials who encourage relatives of kidnapped victims to ‘go and pay first.’
About the only things the so called leaders are concerned with are politics, trading blames and more politics. Even those whose backyards have been engulfed in banditry this past decade are pointing at Abuja. They should look in the mirror. One would also expect any serious minded person to hesitate before throwing their political hats into the ring given the enormity of the problems facing the country. They pay lip service to the problems of corruption in high places, our dysfunctional system and of course, terrorism. Yet not one of them has faced the nation to proffer bullet-point solutions. Instead, they engage in finger pointing. My conclusion is inescapable. It is either they don’t know the solutions or enumerating them would make them unelectable. The nation has witnessed political jamborees called primaries in the last few weeks. The recent circus shows there is a lot wrong with our system across board and that the rot is no respecter of political affiliations. Many of those who participated in this circus should not show their faces in a serious election for a serious country facing serious problems. One would think, judging from their utterances and movements, that governance is only about power, graft and fun. It is therefore not surprising that while politicians come and go, the situation in the country gets more and more dire. What, for example, did Makinde do in his eight years as Governor to make sure the embarrassing kidnap of students and teachers could never take place? His reward for the way he ran Oyo State is that he wants to go for the Presidency. That is our system for you.
Most have turned politics into a lucrative career. Many have been in one public office or the other since the birth of the 2nd Republic some twenty-seven years ago. Rare is that Governor who goes home quietly after his tenure. Rare is that National assembly member who voluntarily goes back to his business after a term or two. They keep seeking relevance at the expense of country and true governance.
And for a smaller clique, governance is becoming a family business. Just look at the growing number of politicians who are putting their children forward for 2027. The list is embarrassing but not surprising. Public office is the surest way to be rich. It is not about service to the country. Or to humanity. It never was. Like Oprah Winfrey said -and proved – you don’t have to hold a public office to serve humanity. So it is about power and personal enrichment for them. Nigeria’s leaders are fiddling while our ‘Rome’ is burning. Literally. They are jostling for positions in a country that is becoming more and more unlivable every single day and could easily become a failed State. I find nothing edifying or reassuring in the primaries that just took place across parties and across States. Or any hope in the response of the political class to the banditry and insecurity ravaging the country.
