Follow Us on Google
As 2022 begins, the year that will say a lot about how the knotty issues around 2023 will be resolved, it is imperative that we step forward boldly to confront those oddities that have continued to widen the unity gaps that exist in the land. One of such incongruences is the willful and vexatious occupation of south-east Nigeria by the braggart soldier.
The zone, for reasons that are hardly justifiable, is being perceived and treated as an occupied territory. The freedom of the people is highly curtailed. Their land is held hostage by security agents whose mode of operation is clearly intended to provoke the people. Long before now, the people had had to battle with ubiquitous police checkpoints, where the uncouth policeman frisks and extorts the people at will. Now, the gun-toting, horsewhip-wielding soldier has joined the humiliation binge. All of this have affected the psyche of the people of the zone very negatively. Most often, they feel claustrophobic in a country that they are supposed to call their own. The result is that some of them yearn for release. They seek escape in whatever way it comes.
It is situations such as this that have bred a crop of angry young men who have chosen to rise against the system that subjugates and suffocates them, ostensibly, in defence of the land of their birth. Their anger, like all latent evils, had a very small beginning. They had organized themselves into a group of agitators whose only instrument of operation was a flag with the emblem of the rising sun. They romantised the subject matter of their agitation and made a sing-song of their dream republic. This non-violent posturing of the angry young men was a tolerable menace. It posed no danger to any person or group. That was why successive administrations in the country since the return of civil rule in 1999 tolerated them.
Curiously, however, the Muhammadu Buhari regime saw things differently. Rather than see them as one of the incongruous manifestations of a distorted order that the country should address, the Buhari regime went on a negative profiling spree. It began to demonise and stigmatize them. They were branded an enemy of the state, and security agents were under instructions to deal ruthlessly with them. With the proverbial sledge hammer deployed in the pursuit of the ant, the ant, as it were, retreated into its molehill. By the time it resurfaced, it had mutated into a different breed, daring and venomous. A supremacy contest ensued. A war of wills began.
It was in the midst of this negative perception of the angry young men that the killer herdsman stepped in. He began to operate with reckless abandon. He invaded homes, destroyed farms and freely mowed down anyone who dared raise a finger in protest. His effrontery was unspeakable. He wielded the most sophisticated of weapons and nobody, not even security agents, raised an eyebrow. Yet, government stopped at nothing in its pursuit of people who possessed unlicensed weapons. The herdsman was not covered by the law on illegal possession of arms. He operated outside of it.
This situation led to the rise of local militias across the country. The South West created what it called Western Nigeria Security Network. It was its own way of warding off the killer herdsman and keeping him in check. It was thought that South East states would follow suit. But they dillydallied and prevaricated. The absence of a road map in this regard in the East gave rise to a child of circumstance, namely, the Eastern Security Network (ESN). The group said it was out to protect the East, the land that is being ravaged by the killer herdsman. It made good its declaration. It penetrated the eastern forests and flushed out the Fulani occupiers. This, for curious reasons, made the Buhari regime uncomfortable. To get back at the angry young men, the authorities packaged and sold them as separatist agitators who were out to dismember the Nigerian state. For this reason, the angry young man was declared an enemy of the country. Government and its security agencies must, therefore, stop at nothing to rein him in.
This war of annihilation has since been universalized in south-east Nigeria. In this region, every young man is believed to be an ESN operative. He must be watched closely. He should, when necessary, be branded to give him the ultimate bad image. This is the situation that has, regrettably, led to the militarization of the South East. An army of occupation is now stationed in the region and they are operating recklessly without recourse to the rules of engagement. The braggart soldier is having a field day in the zone. He operates with arrogant gusto. He struts and prances about the streets of the occupied territory in a show of force. He takes sardonic delight in humiliating the people. As a matter of fact, the security forces operate as if they are in an occupied territory where the people have lost their basic rights and freedoms.
The situation in the South East looks like a war is being fought between the people of the zone on one hand and the armed forces of Nigeria, which represents not exactly the interest of the federation but that of a section of the country, on the other. It is curious, for instance, that soldiers leave their barracks and take over security in areas where northerners living in the East live or carry out their businesses. What we get from scenarios such as this is that the Nigerian Army is a sectional army.
This sectional inclination is what is fuelling the cruel operation of the army in the South East. The disposition of the soldier deployed to the South East is that of someone on a mission of conquest. He operates with the mindset that he is in the territory to humiliate the people. He sees the zone as a conquered territory whose people have no choice but to swallow their degradation, willingly or unwillingly. How else do you see or interpret a situation where motorists on South East roads are forced out of their vehicles and compelled to trek across army and, sometimes, police checkpoints? If this is not targeted at humiliating the people, I wonder what else it could be. I am astonished that the governor of Anambra State, in whose domain this humiliation of a people has been taking place ceaselessly, has not had cause to complain. Is this a normal situation? What manner of military operation can this be?
Governor Willie Obiano and other South East governors whose territories are being pillaged and their people humiliated by Nigerian security agents in the name of military operation should rise to the occasion. Let the new year begin on this note.
