Death stalks Nigeria at the moment, with unmistakable intent. No one therein is safe. Interestingly, some, especially those responsible for the plight of the country, delude themselves, that they are. Maybe they are.
As the sweeping threat of death hovers over Nigeria presently, anyone who escapes being killed by terrorists, kidnappers will kill. If kidnappers fail to get you, Fulani herdsmen will catch up with you, even at your backyard. If the herdsmen fail to kill you, a vigilante group will kill you. If the vigilantes miss you, petrol or gas tanker explosion will obliterate you at the middle of the road, in broad day light. If you escape such a horrible end, road accident will claim you. If vehicle mishap does not kill you, collapsed building will trap and kill you, while asleep.
If the calamity of building collapse does not get you, fire outbreak in the market will trap you while shopping. If death misses you at the market inferno, hospitals offer the final solution. Many have driven themselves to hospitals and never return home alive. Those who did not die in hospitals, fake drugs will dispatch them at home. If, by luck, fake medication does not kill you, stray bullet from military shooting range will catch you in the supposed safety of your home. Check out the experience of some folks in Ibadan recently. If stray bullet does not dispatch of you violently, cardiac arrest offers a quick way out. If that fails to do it, hunger awaits at home, to finish it up. If hunger does not do it, frustration will surely kill you. As they succinctly say it in Nigeria, something must kill a man. Indeed, something has being killing Nigerians, at an unprecedented rate. Death seems so near and so sure these days, one way or another.
In spite of this grim reality, Nigerians still respond with loud pretentiousness at the occurrence of death, death that lives with them, without disguise.
The strident outcry of the last few days, from various quarters, over the killing in Uromi area of Edo State of sixteen, or so individuals, identified as travelling “hunters”, manifest once more, the contradictions or hypocrisy in the Nigerian society. There seems to be a surfeit of deceptive innocence.
The killing of the sixteen “hunters”, itinerant or embedded, was grisly and condemnable, no doubt. Death of any human being diminishes humanity. It is worse, when death comes in such a ghastly premeditated manner, as at the hands of compatriots. That, unfortunately, is where Nigeria is at the moment. Death has become common.
But how can the government, or any citizen, in all sincerity, claim shock at what happened in Uromi? It is not just that death has been on the prowl, let loose, in the main, by the government in the last ten years, but such incident was bound to happen, one way or another.
How is the Uromi killing to be situated? Why should such an incident occur in the first place? What could have led a people who were not identified with such disposition in the past, to resort to such drastic action?
Context is everything. Unless the killing at Uromi is put in proper context, condemnable though it may be, much of the uproar over the tragedy, will remain what official reaction to such crimes have largely been in recent times; knee jerk political grandstanding. From President Bola Tinubu who reportedly ordered that the perpetrators of the heinous act be apprehended by all means, and the Northern Elders Forum that issued a threatening emotional ultimatum that the killers be found or else…. to the House of Representatives that have condemned the incident, to the many politicians that are queuing up to issue statements, condemning the crime, it is difficult to locate sincerity of purpose in sight. It is all posturing and dishonesty on display.
The killing at Uromi was grisly, especially as there was a recording and account from some survivors. Unfortunately, however, it was not the first time innocent citizens were killed in the country recently. How had the government responded to these killing of innocent citizens? What measures have been put in place to protect citizens from attack and killing by marauders?
Let the truth be told, the Federal Government, with its security agencies, followed by the state government, are the first line of entities deserving indictment for the tragedy in Uromi. It is a fact, no less, that Uromi happened, because other incidents of wanton killing of citizens, especially in their localities and farms, have gone without any modicum of response, not to talk of sanctions from the government and its relevant law enforcement agents.
The internet has been littered in recent times with cries of anguish by various communities in Edo State, bemoaning their fate at the hands of kidnappers and killers. Could it be that the government, both at the federal level and in the state, did not hear any of those groaning by the citizens of Edo State, especially on that Uromi axis? In some of the videos that went virile, farmers were shown helplessly bewailing their lot, in the background, while Fulani herdsmen let loose their cattle to uproot cassava, pineapple and yams in vast farms, ravaging people’s means of livelihood with inexplicable vengeance. Yet, nobody said anything.
Senator Adams Oshiomhole, the loquacious ranking politician from Edo State, was heard at some point, characteristically speaking from two sides of his mouth, while the crisis festered. Now, matters had come to a tragic head. The order by Tinubu that those responsible for the killing of the sixteen poor victims, be apprehended and brought to book, is, at best, a Nigerian political response. It is not designed to take a holistic look at such problems, or address them in an enduring manner.
Instances are rife, of farmers in Benue, Ondo, Enugu and Delta States, having a running battle with so-called herdsmen, who move into their farms with impunity, devastate agricultural products and continue, without sanctions. Interestingly, these declarations of war, by other means, have become more pronounced after the establishment of Ministry of Livestock which was said to hold out solution to the warfare by the invaders.
Sadly, as things are wont to happen, individuals who may not have been directly involved in visiting pain and anguish to the people of Uromi and Edo state recently, seemed now, to have ended up paying the ultimate price for crimes commited against equally innocent people.
There are other questions begging to be asked about the profile and bearing of the unfortunate travelling hunters, but this may not be the right time to ask those questions. Until and unless government summoned the courage and honesty to address the nagging issue of various manner of people bearing arms across the land, at the same time as innocent women are raped at their farms and people are kidnapped and killed at random in their localities, by persons that clearly invade communities from far distant areas, poor itinerant hunters on non-violent excursions, as it were, will always face the danger of being mistaken for weapon-wielding killers and criminals.
Nigeria is currently a haunted land. Nobody is safe. The facts, unfortunately, are there, that acts of a government and certain obtuse political tendencies, brought the country to this sad pass. Sadly, the Tinubu government has not shown any capacity to address the dire security challenges of the country, steeped in some unattainable political dreams of some people. Wishing that the problem will go away, as seems to be Tinubu’s “strategy”, will never yield result. Consumed now, as he seems, by his immediate political survival, it is doubtful that Tinubu can do much, in terms of enunciating far-reaching policies that will curtail the root of the expanding security crisis. Indeed, there is cause to worry.
While the uproar of condemnation over the Uromi killing was high over the weekend, the Nigeria Police announced in Plateau State, that gunmen attacked Rubi community in Buturu District in Bokkos Local Government Area, killing eleven persons. Commissioner of Police in the State, Emmanuel Adesina, was said to have visited the area. That, will be that. Locations around Bokkos and adjoing places in Plateau have, of course, become killing range. Nobody ever gets apprehended. Nobody ever gets to pay any price for wasting innocent lives. And life goes on, as it can in Nigeria.
It does not take any gift of clairvoyance to predict that such fears, frustration and the near end-game disposition that led to the killing at Uromi, last week, will still claim more lives across the country, in the days ahead, if the government fails to find means to checkmate the forces that stoke the fire. The victims next time, may be farmers. They may be traders. They may be professors. They may still be some travelling hunters, far from their homes. They may also be any others, among the haunted lot of Nigerians. Threats of reprisal from political enclaves offer no solution to the problem. Restraint and mutual respect among Nigeria’s uncompromisingly independent peoples hold the key. Those who have ears, let them hear.