A manufacturing company did the unusual when it sent emails to its staff to tell them that the enemy of the company had been captured. Those who were interested in its identity should proceed to the conference room. Those who went found a life sized coffin. Inside it was a big mirror. The message was not lost on the staff. They were, as they looked at themselves in the mirror, individually, and collectively, the enemies of the company.
We have all lived with the scourge of Boko Haram for the past eight years or more. But we know, if we are going to be honest, that we could have nipped things in the bud. Instead, we chose first to play the religious card, then the ethnic card. The Northern leaders found it politically convenient to treat it as a localised issue, a kind of ‘tiwa ni tiwa’ problem. When we could have treated them as bandits we did not. When they became emboldened and started bombing churches, some Northern leaders, including some of those in government today, romanticised them and wanted a kind of amnesty for them like the Niger-Delta militants—only they couldn’t manufacture a cause for these rebels.
Even when Shekau took to the air and started insulting the sovereignty of Nigeria, some of our Northern brothers who hoped to gain some kind of political leverage, still defended them. And because we had a President who happened to come from the South, who happened to be a Christian, who happened to want a second term badly and who happened to be weak, he allowed some Northern elites to play the usual politics of religion and ethnicity and let things fester.
When they could have been listed as terrorists by the rest of the world, some of our ‘Northern leaders’ fought back and insisted they were not terrorists. The rank and file also shielded them thinking they were the better of two evils. Exasperated, Jonathan’s Southern advisers allowed the North have its way and ‘kill themselves’ if that was what they wanted. By the time Chibok came, we had lost it as a people united towards a common cause. We are all losers in the Boko Haram saga. We lost our pride; we lost our humanity; we lost our communality; we even lost our spirituality. We treated the North-East as some remote parcel of land in the desert instead of as a part of ourselves, of our being as a nation.
This is in spite of our colossal loss in men and materials. But the biggest loser is the North itself, including the people of the North-East. Families have been destroyed; homes have been annihilated. Children have lost their innocence while adults have lost their livelihood.
Economically and educationally, the whole region would have to play catch-up to the rest of Nigeria for quite a while. All of these could have been avoided if we had acted decisively to deal with criminality without looking at tribe and religion. We can blame the Jonathan administration because the buck has to stop somewhere and because he was not assertive enough. But the real enemies are those who felt they could leverage on the situation and those who see nepotism in everything. They are the enemies within. We are doing the same with the Fulani herdsmen. Instead of treating them as bandits and murderers, we are ethnicising the issue. These people might be Fulani or they might not be. They might be cattle rearers and again, they might not be. But nobody, no matter the tribe, no matter the trade, no matter the religion, has the right to take a life. Nobody has the right to loot and maim. Those governors who gather together to defend Fulani herdsmen should cover their heads in shame.
It is not about Fulani herdsmen. It is about banditry and murder. The law enforcement agencies who look the other way or seek political solutions for criminal acts have not learnt any lesson. They should be held responsible if things escalate and individuals and groups are forced to defend themselves. They are—governors and law enforcers—the enemies within.
Of course the buck stops at the center. At the end of the day, if this continues for too long, we shall all end up as losers but the greatest losers are the Fulani herdsmen who will be treated with distrust by various host communities and denied access and integration. We all woke up on Monday to see the re-appearance of fuel queues which had largely disappeared by the weekend.
The reason we are told, was because some strategic pipes had been blown up by the weekend. A group, called the Niger-Delta Avengers has claimed responsibility. Predictably, some South-South leaders are going to defend its actions. Many of the leaders will be deaf, blind and dumb, hearing and seeing no evil.
The people who live with its members will try and shield these crooks from the law. Let us not again romanticise things. These people are economic terrorists and the earlier we dealt with them like the criminals they are, the better for the country. They are not after the emancipation of the Niger-Delta. They are selfish crooks who are after the emancipation of their pockets and don’t care who or what goes down with it. The last six years have unmasked many a war lord who became as rich and as corrupt as the rest of the Nigerian elite.
How many of them looked back to develop their communities? How many found vocations and means of sustenance for the youths who were in the trenches with them? By blowing the oil and gas pipes, they might increase the hardship of the ordinary Nigerians. But their own people will suffer just as well.
They might plunge the nation into another round of darkness but their people will not be exempt. Yes, the country will suffer, but their people will suffer more. And for what? The blown pipes will increase the negative environmental impact on their communities while the violence and lawlessness will decrease the possibility of future investments and developments.
The whole world is moving away from the curse of oil. The ‘Avengers’ are still stuck in it. By the time the sludge is cleared, if it ever gets cleared, the people will realise how much damage the militants and activists have done to their community and how far backwards they have dragged them. The Yorubas have a proverb for it. A flea is killing itself thinking it is killing the dog. They are enemies within. My plea is that anybody who takes a life; anybody who destroys national assets; anybody who loots the treasury should be severely dealt with. Nobody kills or loots for their religion or tribe. They must be recognised for what they are, criminals and those who shield them, enemies of state
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