The title of this piece is not original to me. If my memory serves me right, it was late journalism icon, Dele Giwa, who popularized it in the country through one of his many essays. The good thing is, it seems most appropriate for use this time. When Giwa used it to attract our attention to very serious matters of human debasement, our society was very far from the Hobbesian state ours have become lately. At the time he used it the deviants in our midst were still petty thieves, who will watch and monitor the owner of a house to be sure he was away and indeed no one else was at home before he tried a break in. Even when a thief miscalculated and heard a whisper, he took to his heels.
Things have since changed, going from bad to worse and then to worst. It is threatening to even boil over into a total reenactment of the medieval times, when reason was undeveloped and humans like animals acted on impulse, an era when might was right, the stronger killed the weaker to possess. In our latter day experiences, fellow humans just wake up, pick up assault rifles and rush into any community of choice, sack the place, destroy property and terminate human lives in the most horrendous manner. They stoke a setting for hours, and still escape without trace despite coming with motorcycles, in some instances with vehicles and in very large numbers.
Yet, given the bad times that has enveloped us, security checkpoints are virtually in every corner, still the barbarians make good their escape, many times taking along captives whose number is equally high. We get this news and all that the rest of us do is to shrug our shoulders and life goes on. None is traumatized enough to call up a civil protest, everyone stays and operates from safe corridors.
What about our leaders? As someone observed, they stay in public offices dumb and appearing helpless. Someone, he said, comes from Burkina Faso, Chad and Niger Republic just to mention but a few, occupies your forests and from there attacks your people, kidnaps and more often kills them after demanding and receiving ransom from victims families, our leaders continue to be confused about how to respond to such grave situations. Isn’t this terrible? Shouldn’t such developments attract the best of serious responses from the governments in place?
In other countries were citizens lives mean so much, roads will be closed and security agents pour into such areas, working until the hoodlums are traced and brought to justice. In our case all we hear from them is, “we condemn the attack, our hearts go to victims and their families, we assure the perpetrators of the crime will be fished out and made to face the wrath of the law”. Several days after no one is on the chase, no news of any arrests, give few more days and the matter is forgotten and things go on as if nothing of significance happened.
This scenario has become a reccurring decimal because the citizens have become unshockable, the sight of blood, decapitation of humans, pains and sadness have become common place these days to the point that people have become used to it. Unshockability! We don’t care, this poor attitude has gotten to the point citizens and they have abandoned cardinal responsibilies they owe themselves, which if undertaken would perhaps have enhanced living conditions around them. It is the right of citizens to hold their governments accountable, it is a principal civic responsibility.
It is their task to dissect government pronouncements, programmes and policies and to ascertain when they are inimical to good living, if they are working well and know when policies begin turn in negative indices. If we felt bad enough over steady deterioration in security situation, there are many options within the reach of citizens they can deploy, one of such is getting up to ask their governments questions. One pertinent question to ask would be if barbarism happening across the country is contrived or happenstance? Why is government unable to tackle the challenge?
Other questions could be why are supposed citizens taking up arms against the state? What do they actually want or what is the objective? Our security agents have captured some insurgents and bandits. This is a fact. What have the captured conspirators said they want? Are they just on killing spree for the fun of it? Why don’t we see them interviewed to know exactly what the trouble is? What disclosures have they made regarding their sponsors?
Are they locals or foreign interests pushing for self agenda? Definitely, someone buys them guns, vehicles and responsible for paying their bills. The Federal government is eager to retrain felons and release them back into society when the groups have not ceased from attacks. When deterrence is low, crime must blossom. Why are our state governments unable to mobilize their people to go into bushes and forest to fish out hoodlums? Don’t run on the excuse they are unarmed. What is the politics?
The other day an innocent girl was stoned and killed in Sokoto. Few days ago a similar development took place in Abuja. The most terrible in happened in Owo, Ondo, where barbarians stormed a church and killed over thirty persons for no reason. In places where reason prevails, only one such act is enough to make a government collapse. In our case, tribe and religion becloud reason and good conscience.
I will proffer some remedies and will leave the matter off this space till a new administration comes next year. There is need to nationalize the issue of insecurity, very important, approach it in a manner every citizen realizes he or she has a stake in stemming the tide. This will work where it is not contrived by those in power. Don’t ask me if people who wield power can author evil. Above should go with public enlightenment by all tiers of government and strata of society.
Next should be accountability: public officials who abdicate or fail in the discharge of their functions should not stay a day longer on their seats. Persons including governors and pdgresident should lose office when the bizarre happens like we just saw in Owo in Ondo State.
The bigger solution that would bring sustained peace would be to decentralize or better put democratize security. No society of our size and complexity relies on central policing. There should be federal, state, community policing and even corporate entities should be licensed to establish their security system, run within approved guidelines. It is not as if this is a very new proposition, no, it was the practice from independence. Those who fought the civil war altered under guise of doing all to keep the country united.
Making the economy productive and right attitudinal disposition are important. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop while sense of entitlement is sure to breed disorder. When the northern section of the ruling All Progressives Congress came up with the idea to encourage power to rotate to the South after eight years of its domicilation in the North that was a masterstroke in efforts to build a nation out of a country. Dominion has a way of provoking instability on a huge scale. It is wrong to talk unity and desire peace without taking practical steps in planting pillars of justice.
It is time our leaders learn to use political means to solve differences and agitations. There is a place for force but it is the last option. Political restructuring is inevitable. It was the foundation on which the founding fathers built the country. It was destroyed by the military in power. Allowing it to remain the way the military left it, is costly, we see that already. The more it stays this way, the deeper our walk in the Hobbesian state.