Oyo: Time is ticking away

We have entered the sixth week since the first mass abduction by terrorists took place in southern Nigeria. Oyo, the South-West state that shares boundaries with two or three northern states, was the unfortunate victim. Oriire Local Government Area of the state was invaded by terrorists on 15th May, 2026. Teachers and schoolchildren, including toddlers, all numbering about 37, were whisked away from their schools.

Before now, mass abduction from schools or churches has been a northern phenomenon. The most notorious of such incidents remain those of Chibok, Borno State, in April 2014 and Dapchi, Yobe State, in February 2018. Oyo now wears the unfortunate tag of going the way of Borno and Yobe.

I make this recollection with trepidation. We are yet to have a closure to the northern incidents 12 years after the first one took place. Some of the abducted souls are yet to be returned by the terrorists. The fact is that Nigeria has given up on that matter. Those victims are gone forever. We do not even know who, among them, is alive or dead. I fear that Oyo may follow on the heels of Borno and Yobe, if radical measures are not taken in the shortest possible time to secure the release of the victims. Time is ticking away. Days have rolled into weeks. And we are still counting. Are we forgetting the victims?

Like most things Nigerian, we do not stay on any issue for long. We attack matters with ferocity once they happen. But we do not sustain our initial drive. Instead, we drop out too easily and move into fresh matters without finding a closure to the ones before them. That is what is beginning to happen in the Oyo incident. We are already forgetting. Echoes of disapproval and frustration are fading away. We are not sure whether any serious attention is being paid to the incident by government. The abduction hardly features in government’s routines. There is complete absence of any sense of urgency on the matter. Nigerians, like their government, are equally not there. There is no one to remind the government that we have an unfinished business in our hands.

The lethargy around the Oriire incident easily reminds us of a familiar pattern. Government is usually unperturbed, apparently because it knows far more than its citizens. The only time our government viewed insecurity seriously was under the Goodluck Jonathan regime. Jonathan, as innocent as he was, did not understand the undercurrents of the bombings and shootings that claimed several lives. Even Chibok came to him as a rude shock. Kashim Shettima, today’s Vice President, was the Governor of Borno State then. He shouted to no end over what took place in his state. He stopped at nothing to discredit the Jonathan administration. He and his cohorts succeeded. They injected a sense of fear and inadequacy into Jonathan. He felt overwhelmed. He could not weather the storm. That was why he looked morosely as the chairman of the electoral commission that he appointed brazenly saw to his defeat in the presidential election that was to return him to power.

All of that changed when Muhammadu Buhari, the much touted messiah, stepped in. Dapchi took place under his nose. He did not sneeze, let alone catch cold. He shrugged it off. The army of traducers who bullied Jonathan out of office were on his side. So, who would tell the President that he had an emergency on his hands? Nobody. Thus, what was interpreted as weakness under Jonathan became a measure of strength under Buhari. Unlike Jonathan who was decidedly perturbed by the disturbing incidents, Buhari chose the path of reticence. His dumbness was equated with strategy. In the end, he failed woefully in the fight against insurgency. Yet, Nigerians did not make a big issue out of his failure as much as they did with Jonathan’s.

Today, we are still treading that path of hypocrisy and double standard. Bola Tinubu, the new kid on the block, was a prominent member of the Buhari squad that hounded Jonathan out of office. Now, he is playing the Buhari game. He is not shocked or perturbed by our worries. What is uppermost on his mind is retention of power. He is not promising anybody anything. He is not giving assurances that he would stem the tide of insecurity. He is just watching indifferently as the blood of victims of insecurity flows freely. This sardonic disposition may explain the complacency surrounding the Oyo abduction. The government does not feel what the people are feeling. The leadership and the led are poles apart. The studied silence on the part of government has a meaning. It tells us that government understands. It knows what the issues are. And the issues, whatever they may be, are not for the consumption of the uninitiated. The ordinary Nigerian is too naked to be clothed with the garment of truth surrounding insecurity.

But government is not content with its inaction. It is working hard to divert the people’s attention from the facts of the matter. Rather than tackle insecurity frontally as it ought to, government is pointing fingers here and there. It is accusing those on the other side of the political divide of being responsible for the bloodbath that has polluted the land. But the same government has not been able to point to one individual as a sponsor of terrorism. The accusations are, therefore, flying in the face of truth. Government is merely deploying this subterfuge to keep us guessing. It is a clever way of shying away from its constitutional responsibility of protecting life and property.

But the real problem here is that Nigerians treat their government as an abstract entity. They seem not to know that government is peopled by human beings. Because the people do not see the flesh and blood in government, they toe the path of withdrawal in matters that they should get involved in. Simply put, Nigerians do not hold their governments to account. They allow them to get away with anything. Otherwise, why are Nigerians not asking the right questions? A fortnight ago, I posed this question in this Column: “Are Nigerian forests impenetrable?” This question bears repeating today. Why are Nigerians not insisting on a dispassionate answer to this question? When we groan and moan over acts of abduction and mass murder, we hardly ask why the dens of these terrorists cannot be penetrated. Why do we stand on the road pointing at bushes that we can tame? This is practically what we are doing. Government is enjoying that despicable pastime.

And there is no active citizenry to call the government out. That is why we have continued to remain victims of our passivity. If we do not step up, Oyo may end up going the way of Borno and Yobe states.