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The heat is on. In the country and across the globe our citizens are feeling the pains of indignity. If they are not dehumanized they are being hunted and killed like animals. We start from inside the country, where there is a general perception that the lives of cattle have become far more valuable than human life.
This may sound out of place but it is the truth. We are conversant with happenings in our country in the past 15 years, attacks here and there, properties destroyed and citizens killed in large numbers in different locations just because people want their cattle to graze on other people’s farm lands and backyards. It is about animals and unlimited freedom of movement. The situation gets terrible if in the mix cattle get killed, mauraders return to sack communities and attempt to wipe out an entire community.
These barbarians come and leave an experience of blood, tears and sorrows. What adds to the trauma is not that such acts have become so many and very frequent,it is that felons invade, have a field day perpetuating evil and still get away undetected, despite their huge numbers. In this country, penultimate week media accounts recorded about 45 citizens killed in one day in attacks by bandits across three states. This is a huge number in every way.
If history is a guide in some climes even in their nascent stage of development, government will fall on account of abdication of cardinal state responsibility. State officials directly incharge would be arrested and tried for negligence of duty. This is not what we do in the country. Our style is conspiratorial and archaic. The government would keep issuing condolences for as many times as the terrorists attack, they would give fresh marching orders to security agencies and pledge to bring culprits to justice. Our leaders know we the people are a very forgetful clan; after a little while things are forgotten and anger wanes or disappears. The prevailing atmosphere is that nobody is sure who will survive tomorrow.
Our citizens are not secured in their country neither are they abroad. Stories from outside the country aren’t good at all. In Africa where ordinarily our citizens should find succour and welcoming arms, hostility has taken over. In almost all the African states the maltreatment of our people is high and frequent. In West Africa we belong to Economic Community of West African States ( ECOWAS). While our country threw open her borders the neighbours have kept to strict controls. The challenge is even not with the strictures but frequent harassment and dehumanization of our people already in the countries and sometimes killings. Ghana turned out the worse in this regard.
The story from North African countries is something the ears should hear. Our citizens are not only lured to those locations, they are stripped of humanity, they are taken into captivity and forced to become slaves. Passports, phones and funds are taken from them and hidden away, to make communication and escape very difficult. When we are happy to have an insight to the ugly development the government is either lame in response or unconcerned at all. No right thinking country led by sensible group acts this way against her own people. Like we observed earlier, the development is across the globe – Europe, America, and Asia. The one gaining biggest attention is coming from South Africa where gangs chase and clobber our people to death, for doing nothing except the decision to make South Africa their home.
Our government’s reaction to South Africa’s malfeasance explains the nonchance that have attended our country’s policy to the dehumanization and threats to lives of fellow country men and women. For too long government pretended it was no serious matter. Yet citizens have been intimidated, their means of livelihood destroyed or carted away and a few killed by mob action. Mum remained the position of the government.
When following growing discomfort and reactions from a section of the population and government decided to act, it began and ended with mere invitation to the South African ambassador to Nigeria by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The mode of interaction didn’t reflect the seriousness of the threat at hand. The matter was treated with kid’s gloves. A serious country that is convinced the lives of the citizens matter much would have given a stern warning, visit the country and place a time line for retaliatory actions to follow. Botswana cut off electricity supply to South Africa and ordered the repatriation of her citizens, no long engagement, time wasting and grammar.
Tanzania shut her borders and ordered all South Africans in the country to leave. Countries relate in so many ways so there are always tools to deploy and buttons to press to make recalcitrant countries sit up. Our country has so many advantages in this regard, but it is one thing to possess a gun and another to have the courage to pull the trigger.
Why are our citizens pouring into foreign countries in droves each passing day? Why do successive governments appear helpless about the the situation? Why is the government lethargic in reaction? A scholar, Nhieraonye Quentin, helps to proffer answers: “This is not about South Africa. It is not about Ghana, America, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, China etc. It is about us. It is about the political and leadership assault we have endured at home for decades — an assault that has broken our economy, hollowed out our institutions, and forced millions of our best and brightest to scatter across the globe in search of what Nigeria should have given them at home.
Think about it. We have been assaulted by leaders who treat public office like a private inheritance. We have been assaulted by policies that enrich a few while impoverishing millions. We have been assaulted by a system where a young graduate can spend 10 years looking for a job that pays less than a month’s rent in Accra or Johannesburg or elsewhere. We have been assaulted by hospitals without drugs, schools without teachers, roads that swallow cars, and electricity that arrives like a visitor — rarely, and never for long.
This is not bad luck. This is a leadership failure. When a nation fails its people, its people will flee. And when they flee, they carry the pain of rejection with them. So when a Nigerian is beaten in Durban or told to leave Accra, when he is turned into a third class person in other countries around the globe it is not just xenophobia or racism speaking. It is the consequence of a country that has not earned the respect of the world because it has not first respected its own citizens.
We cannot keep pretending this is normal. It is not normal for the most populous Black nation on earth to be reduced to a cautionary tale. It is not normal for our passport to be a symbol of suspicion rather than pride. It is not normal for mothers to pray harder for their children’s visa approval than for their safety at home. It is not normal.
The consolation should be that it is not an irreversible case. The solutions are available and those in places of power should go in search of them. If they mean business they will find them. Great countries give out a lot to protect the life of one citizen. Perhaps we can start from there on the immediate.
