Insecurity is so pervasive in Nigeria today that there is no more hiding place anywhere in the country. It has the character and temperature of civil strife in which everywhere is a theatre of war.
Banditry, insurgency, kidnapping, and herders attacks which used to be localized are now everywhere. Though insurgency orchestrated by religious extremists remains largely in the North, banditry, and kidnapping are now borderless.
Bandits are as active in the North as they are in the South—killing, maiming, and sacking communities. Their activities are inter-twinned with those of Fulani herdsmen who also kill and destroy farmlands.
Kidnapping has become big business with the economic luxury it affords. Whereas those operating in the North go for pupils and students, their counterparts in the South get their victims from highway travelers.
It is believed that kidnappers, especially those in the Southern part of the country, now enjoy a highly syndicated chain of operation such that their activities range from collecting heavy ransom from families of their victims to the sale and distribution of body parts of slain victims.
What this means, unlike before, is that any kidnap victim whose families are not able to pay the ransom stands the risk of being killed and his or her body parts sold in a ready market populated by ritualists.
This is the reality of living in Nigeria at the moment and it has reached a level where, according to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, the country is now flowing with bitterness and sadness.
We are greatly pained, not just by the rapid spread and the destruction of lives and property insecurity leaves in its trail, but also its deepening impact on the bond that binds us together as a people and our fragile economy.
People are being slaughtered in a manner that speaks of hate and total disregard for the sanctity of human life. This goes on unchallenged by the security agencies as if the killers are on a cleansing mission. Kaduna, Benue, and lately, most parts of the South East region have become war zones.
And the government, whose statutory duty is to protect the life and property of the people, is silent and apparently unconcerned, hence people are asking whether the country is on a mission to destroy itself.
We are alarmed by all these because this is not the time for the government to be silent and inert. It was as strange as it was curious that the Presidency and some misguided elements, for whatever reasons, spoke against the ban on open grazing in the southern part of the country. That ban came as part of measures to stem the tide of killings by Fulani herders who do that with impunity.
Another curious case were comments by President Buhari himself on the ‘war’ going on in the South-Eastern part of the country in which, rather than raising the green flag and preaching peace, the president threatened to treat “those misbehaving in certain parts of the country in the language they understand; we are going to be very hard sooner than later.”
Like many other Nigerians, we are uncomfortable with this coming from a president who is supposed to be the father of all, more so as the country is in a crisis situation. He shouldn’t be seen to be fanning the embers of the crisis in the land.
By this statement, the president has only acted like an uncaring parent who would spank a child and threatens to beat him harder if he (the parent) sees tears in his eyes. We advise he should do a rethink.
As worrisome as the insecurity situation in the southeast zone is, we feel it demands understanding. We expected that the Federal Government, by now, ought to have realised the reason for the agitation in the zone and so apply the necessary soothing balm, not the threat we have heard again and again.
If a government agent can negotiate with bandits; if ‘repentant’ insurgents can get a pat on the back from the government, then the president’s threat on mere agitators crying over marginalization of their zone in everything about the country should be condemned by all right-thinking Nigerians. We do.
Besides the waste of human lives all over the country, we are also worried about the impact of this situation on individuals, households, and the national economy. More than anything else, insurgency, in our view, is a key factor fueling commodity price increases.
As people flee from their communities searching for safety, they populate other communities, thus increasing the stress on available resources and creating scarcity in the market, prices rise accordingly.
Insurgents and herders killing farmers in villages and farmlands also contribute to food scarcity. With farming activity highly affected, food security is threatened, and prices of available foodstuff spike.
Diaspora Nigerians no longer consider investing in their homelands because nobody can guarantee the safety of such investments. Locally, many people who wish to travel home for business or family engagements now stay put for fear of being kidnapped or killed.
Investors are now risk-averse towards funding business concerns in Nigeria. A growing number of established industries and banks are already folding up their branches in the most volatile states. Ultimately, revenue generation in these states is thinning out.
These are troubled times for Nigeria and Nigerians and we are of the opinion that much of what the country is passing through is self-inflicted. Before now, everybody blamed the poor funding of the security agencies for the rising tide of insecurity in the land. That argument is no longer tenable.
Nigerians need to purge themselves of ethnic and religious sentiments and that will be the beginning of the end to the crisis that is fast engulfing the country. The government, on its part, should be unbiased in its approach to dealing with the dissidents stoking insecurity in the country.
Above all, as Obasanjo advised, Nigerians should learn how to speak to themselves in civilized language.
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