BUHARI GOVERNMENT: ACCOMPLICE TO BANDITRY

BY Chris Tony Akhabue

Truth is like surgery. It hurts a great deal. Yet, it has the capacity to heal wounds.   Wounds of those willing to accept and administer it's healing potencies.

In the words of a famous French Writer, feminist and political activist, Simone De Beauvoir, she said and I quote, " the oppressor would not have been so strong, bold and powerful  if he hadn't accomplices among the oppressed"

The above line aptly and succinctly, without ambiguities, logically and didactively illustrates our present quagmaric circumstance as a nation in dire need of time tested and result oriented remedies.

Banditry and kidnapping for ransom collection have become the most pervasive and intractable violent crime against humanity in Nigeria in recent times.

There is hardly a day passes without an  ugly reports of kidnappings and killings in and around the Country.

It used to be, before now, a very rare occurrence to read on the pages of  newspaper or seen on television about violent crimes as opposed to what  is now the order of the day.

Before now, reports of violent killings by robbers or by assassin's used to elicit empathy from  well meaning individuals in the society. 

That was then. The good old days. But now, people have grown indefferent to daily reports of incessant gruesome killings. This is so, probably due to the frequency and quantities exterminated needlessly daily without provocations. It is fast becoming a way of life in Nigeria. Nigerians, with unbelievable and remarkable  capacity to stomach any nonsense are already getting used to this new normal. There is absolutely nothing Nigerians can not get used to. Their patience and resilience in  accepting and rationalizing the indefensible is irritantly legendary.

It is no longer  possible for anyone to keep accurate record of the dozens of  heinous Carnage of innocent people slaughtered daily  in their homes, in their farms and on transit.

Reports like, "39 killed and 26 missing in  renewed attacks",  is   common place in many parts of the country today, particularly in the northern parts of the country.

Take up any newspaper of your choice. Any day of the week. Always amazingly and incredibly  horrendous. Gory tales of reckless but needless massacre of innocent women and children and peace loving peasants in their farmlands, unprovoked.

It is now a dangerous adventure travelling by road in any part of the country as the fear of death or of being kidnapped for ransom has become  a recurring  factor in the list of considerations  of many travellers on our highways.

It is simply an understatement to say it has reached an alarming crescendo.

What is probably more worrisome is that no one seems  to pay any concerted attention to the gruesome  annihilation. Nobody talks about the unacceptable decimations.  Instead, politicians are aligning and strategizing on how to win the next elections.  What has gone wrong with everybody? 

I have since  come to the painful conclusion that Nigeria is critically sick and in dire need of drastic time tested remedy if we will ever make it back to the part of sanity as a Nation.

The faeble and ill coordinated fight against the plague of Fulani herdsmen, banditry and other allied virulent pestilences  plaguing the Nigerian nation is multi dimensional and somewhat intractable because of the support the criminal elements enjoy from among the oppressed and the highly placed individuals in the society. 

The insurgents are becoming more daring in their approach and operations,  partly because they have felt the weak pulse of response and defense from the government angle which clearly is  expository of lack of will power or  paucity of leadership .

Otherwise, how does one explain,  for instance, the audaciousness  of bandits and other criminal elements taking the war to the door steps of the military in their fortified formations? . The nation's Defense Academy, the almighty NDA,  was attacked and men killed, inside  NDA? and the bandits walked away after the attacks unmolested, just like a scene in a motion picture.  Several other government institutions and various  Police Stations, men and materials desacrated unprovoked without resistance. Highly placed individuals and serving security personnel have been abducted effortlessly without resistance. The other day, operatives of the DSS were taken like little prey on the street. Divisional Police officers, military and other paramilitary officers abducted and ransom are paid to bandits to secure  their release.

With  countless communities paying millions of naira monthly as  taxes to bandits in a sovereign nation where there is a constituted government. 

Tell me, who is safe in Nigeria? No one is. And nowhere is safe either. Everyone is scared stif and traumatized by a sense of insecurity and the  realisation that government is handicapped. So, you are on your own. You secure your self if you are able to. You provide your own security, your own light,your own water, your own education, your own transportation, your own everything. Almost Everything. You provide for yourself.

The body language of government is defeatist and the bandits are acquainted with this knowledge and are cleverly working with this understanding to their own advantage and to the consternation  and dismay of government and the governed.

The abysmal government's criminal negligence   or remissness  to secure the lives and properties of it's citizens and  the nonchalance and  complacency of our political class  in profaring timely solutions to the intractable socio economic menace is not only appallingly unacceptable but grossly incontinent and incontrovertibly nonsensical. It is ridiculously preposterous to sane minds.

Otherwise, what is your definition of a government that allows induced intimidation and psychological mutilation of the psychic of a section of the populace just to whip them into some form of ungodly submission.?

The lack of will power or paucity of internationally acceptable best practices mechanism in dealing with the menace of  insurgency has seriously tainted the credibility of the leadership of  Buhari administration in bad light.

Just some few days ago, the Buhari governor from his home state in Katsina, Governor Masari, in utter frustration, occasioned by the ceaseless attacks and wanton destruction  of lives and properties by bandits under  the watch of constituted authorities, on a  BBC TV program, expressed readiness of his government to assist citizens  to acquire arms to protect themselves since government has not been  able  to  secure  even  itself  how much more the ordinary  man on the street.

He said his religion, Islam allows a person to protect himself, family and properties. He said if one dies in the course of protecting oneself and  family that such individual dies a martyre. Still speaking, he said the annoying part of the whole thing is that the bandits, the bad guys, have unrestricted access to guns while the good people do not have any access to guns and weapons to protect themselves. He said his government was ready to assist who ever is interested in acquiring guns to fight bandits or to protect himself.

By that singular declaration from a sitting governor of a state of origin of the sitting president, it is palpable that there  is a growing vacuum of thinking and paucity of leadership that makes for a  statement  such as this to sound almost credible and a way forward.

This is completely an expository of a failed government to provide leadership and direction when it mattered most.

What is your evaluation of a government that negotiates and pays ransom to bandits and terrorists? A government that is asking citizens to come and have guns to protect themselves? 

I don't know about you. But in  my own estimation, such a government is not only irresponsibly undependable and unreliable  but also a burden and a great liability to the electorate. 

Such a government stands accused as a willing accomplice in the furtherance of the evil course of the enemy of the state.

Of what use would it serve here to highlight the various ways government has unwittingly become  accomplice ?  It would only amount to overfloging  the obvious. 

The instrumentality  of the media in nation building is monumental and can never be underestimated

In order not to be seen as a  willing tool, an accomplice to banditry and terrorism , the media should, as a matter of urgency, re evaluate and  fine-tune it's reportage of the activities of insurgency.

The current style of the media reporting  millions of naira collected as ransom by bandits is glamorizing. The reports makes it  sound lucrative and financially rewarding to the simple minded . The media should therefore deemphasize reporting the huge millions collectable from the pervasive and illicit trade so as to make the evil trade less lucrative  especially at this trying  and auspicious times of our life as a   nation groping for  time tested,  sustainable and wholy dependable  solutions  to the  malevolent and recalcitrantly malignant  malaise of banditry and terrorism.