Follow Us on Google
The dictionary defines a militant as someone that is vigorously active and aggressive, especially in support of a cause. He is someone that is engaged in warfare; fighting. A bandit is defined as an armed thief, who is usually a member of a band. The difference between these two persons is obvious. The militant, in most cases, is fighting for a cause, while the bandit is driven by sheer criminality.
The militant is fighting for a generation, the bandit is fighting for self. Militancy commences in form of protests which snowballs into rioting and matures into armed conflict, creating insurgents, when the underlining reasons for the protests are not treated, because those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent change inevitable. One can safely submit, in this context, that militancy is an untreated agitation turned violent. Banditry commences with petty stealing and graduates into murder, kidnapping, armed robbery, terrorism, rape etc.
In a democracy, both approaches are illegal (not allowed) and should be discouraged because they involve some kind of violence. The beauty of democracy is in its ability to transmit power peacefully from one leader to another and the ability of the citizens to settle all disputes through dialogue. The idea of the legislature in a democracy is to provide a legal forum which represents every sector of society through which every problem in the society will be resolved by healthy debate and understanding through making the necessary compromise by all the federating units in the spirit of give and take. This is why the legislature as an arm of government is lacking in a military regime because it is the government of militants. Problems are settled by force through the barrel of the gun. When the problems become intractable, it leads to anarchy and wars with its destructive tendencies. Consequently, violence as a means of settling disputes in a democracy is an anathema.
Nigeria is blessed with human and material resources uncountable. We have no basis of lacking anything or quarrelling among ourselves on how our commonwealth should be shared. We did not obtain our independence from foreign powers through militancy or banditry. We obtained it through painstaking dialogue, patience and compromise, which produced the fairest Constitution so far in our history. The reason why we have militants today is because we jettisoned the fundamentals of the original independence constitution given to us by statesmen from all over Nigeria and accepted the unitary constitution given to us by the military who purported to give us democracy. Statesmen are the harbingers of true democracy not the military. As a result of the destruction of the independence constitution, revenue sharing was no longer based on derivation. All revenues from mineral resources are centrally collected and distributed according to the numerical strength of your population, land, states and local governments, while the producing communities are grievously neglected, especially, if they are thinly populated with little land boundaries. This meant that consumption is rewarded and productivity discouraged. The owners of these minerals would rather steal the minerals in connivance with foreign powers or try to forcefully reclaim their land from the government in centre through militancy. As the militancy intensifies, the revenue of the central government dwindles, poverty becomes rampart leading to some parents not being able to send their children to school thereby intensifying illiteracy. With poverty and illiteracy common in the society, banditry sets in to further weaken the fabrics of the country.
Of particular pity was the situation in the Niger Delta that produce the oil which is the economic mainstay of the country, accounting for about 95 percent of our national revenue during the twilight of the last militant regime in Nigeria before the handover to democratic rule in 1999. Though they are the producers of the oil, little to nothing was given them in terms of revenue. Their land and waters were polluted resulting in the destruction of their agricultural and fishing potentials. Their children were popular as cooks and housemaids in the houses of wealthy people nationwide. There was so much suffering in the midst of plenty among them. During the days of the military regimes in Nigeria, some of their agitators were jailed and some were judicially murdered.
They started their protests peacefully but seeing they were not making any headway, they gradually started getting militarised until their militancy became a source of national security threat. A lot of leaders had sympathy for them but their hands were tied by the unitary provisions in our Constitution which do not reward productivity. The militancy in the Niger Delta came to a head during the regime of President Umaru Yar Adua. However, Yar Adua, a very empathetic leader, when he was faced with the option of wiping out the militants or negotiating amnesty with them, he chose the later because according to him, if he were from the Niger Delta, he would probably have been a militant himself. He recognised the injustice and assured the Niger Deltans that if they embraced peace, he would demarginalize them from economic injustice. He granted them amnesty and bypassed the unitary provisions in our Constitution to create the Ministry of Niger Delta to ameliorate the conditions of the citizens of the Niger Delta. It worked and the militants embraced peace. Niger Delta is more prosperous today than during the military regimes in Nigeria. It is obvious that they fought for a just cause and through dialogue by elder statesmen, peace was restored.
Banditry, on the other hand, is perpetrated by people who have lost the fear of God, if they ever had it. Fear of God is simply the traditional and general way of defining integrity. It is that force in you to behave well when nobody is watching. Bandits’ conscience have been seared with hot iron. They are mundane and materialistic. They are driven to stealing, armed robbery, kidnapping, murders, terrorism, rape by laziness, insatiability, envy of people around them, greed, wickedness, Godlessness etc. There’s no doubt that poverty and illiteracy provide a cover for some bandits, they are not the true causes of banditry. Petty stealing, which is the preliminary stage of banditry, may actually be caused by starvation not poverty. The unguided aim of the person in this petty stealing is survival. He is usually unarmed and runs away at the slightest rebuke of the owner. There was this man with children during the lockdown. His children were famished almost nearing fainting. He entered his rich neighbour’s kitchen and took (stole) enough food for his children. Unknown to him, he was being watched on camera because the rich owner was alone then. When he came the second time, the owner simply strolled down to the kitchen to meet him. When he saw the owner, he broke down in tears and explained how the children couldn’t sleep in the night because of hunger. The rich neighbour advised him against stealing no matter the pressure. He gave him much more food for himself and children that lasted them a while and confessed to him that he heard the cries of his children in the night. A bandit would have subdued the owner or killed him while carting away his belongings. People who defend and justify banditry on the logic of poverty should explain to me why bandits rape innocent women during their operations. What has this to do with poverty? They are simply depraved and disturbed human beings that should not be allowed to mix up with sane human beings. Bandits are not sectional, nepotic, religious or tribal. Everyone is their target and everyone can be their victim. They are enemies of the state and the people.
To compare militants with bandits, therefore, smacks of ignorance or sheer mischief. President Yar Adua, a Fulani, said he would have been a militant if he were a Niger Deltan. He was simply upholding the sense of justice that characterise the average Fulani. How many Fulani leaders would come out to proudly say they would have been bandits if they were Non-Fulani. Every tribe must learn to do or say things that will not put their tribe to shame. The people perpetrating these vices are a minority of all ethnic groups but the manner of approach against the vices by some persons from any tribe places their own people in bad light. How can a Governor advise herdsmen to carry AK 47 in self defence? The Governor, who is constitutionally expected to defend his people, but is constitutionally disallowed to bear AK 47 in defence of his own people, is advising men who are not lettered and not trained in weapon handling to bear AK 47! Maybe such a Governor is surreptitiously training some of them to assault other people. With due respect to such a Governor, he is not fit to occupy such office of a Governor. Whereas his people, including the Sultan, the head of the Fulani ethnic and religious society, are decrying the numerous AK 47s in the hands of unauthorised persons in his community, a Governor is campaigning for more AK 47s for bandits. It’s a shame. He failed to understand that the AK 47s will most likely be used against his own people because banditry has no mercy on anyone. Banditry, like charity, begins at home.
There’s nothing wrong in employing dialogue as a means to end any vice in a democracy, whether militancy or banditry. No government derives pleasure in inflicting injuries on its own citizens. The idea of punishment in criminal proceedings is for deterrence. Any peaceful means of resolving conflict is welcome. Preaching Godliness to bandits to ensure their conversion is the best dialogue and treating the root cause of militancy is key to national harmony. Banditry should not be rewarded with monetary compensation as this will simply elevate the bandits to sponsors if they are unrepentant. The government should be careful in negotiating and releasing captured terrorists and bandits in the name of amnesty because history has shown that more than 80% of released terrorists and bandits go back to crime. ISIS leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, was a former member of Al-Queda, once arrested in Iraq, by the US army and released after going through “reformation”. He later formed and carried out a more deadly terrorist group called ISIS, which is now destabilising the whole world including Nigeria.
