Naija and the Gaza narrative

We must wake up from our lethargy and prevent this vast nation of 170 million people upturned into a boiling cauldron. In a bid to escape the gripping disasters drowning sanity from the world we call home, I watched a VICE documentary on Western Sahara. It is a conflict that has raged for more than […]

We must wake up from our lethargy and prevent this vast nation of 170 million people upturned into a boiling cauldron. In a bid to escape the gripping disasters drowning sanity from the world we call home, I watched a VICE documentary on Western Sahara. It is a conflict that has raged for more than two decades leaving the citizens stateless.
A conflict so distant can sometimes have deep effects. In our world, it is a crime to treat any conflict in any corner of the globe with crude indifference. Last Thursday, a plane took off on a journey to Kuala Lumpur. One of the 295 passengers and crew had a morbid sense of humour. He took a picture of the giant plane and posted these words on social media – in case it disappears, this is what it looks like. It was a veiled reference to the disappearance of Flight 370, a mystery defying logic and tracking technology. The passenger was clairvoyantly right. The plane did not make it to its destination. A suspected missile hit it, scattering in bits, pieces and smouldering ruins across miles. There was no survivor. Other people’s conflicts have a way of making close impact.
A similar carnage is playing out in the Middle East, between the Israelis and the Palestinians or is it Hamas? The latest skirmish began with the kidnap of three Hebrew boys and prayers for their safe return. It was not to be. When their mutilated bodies were discovered 18 days later, an avoidable crisis was imminent. Within days, a Palestinian youth also disappeared and found days later gruesomely murdered in apparent revenge attack. The bottled anger of the Palestinians or is it Hamas boiled over as it began to launch rockets into Israel.
Sanity dies before mayhem is unleashed. Apparently, there were no elders to call Hamas to order. The Israelis appealed, the UN cautioned but it all fell on deaf ears. You do not keep teasing or threatening a stronger person in the hope that they would not defend themselves. With time, Israel retaliated with bombs making casualties of innocent women and children. Hamas while hiding in bunkers declares the dead as martyrs just like Boko Haram its suicide bombers. Its leadership is in relative safety leaving its hapless citizens as human shield.
Our country is like an ‘ophidiophobia’ patient placed on a primed grenade waiting for the snake charmer. On the national political spectrum events show that those gunning for power have no love for their own people. Their only interest is to grab or retain power at the expense of the survival of the people.
Weeks ago, a set of vehicles travelling through Abia State were stopped. The occupants, all northerners, were stripped of their fundamental human rights and tagged Boko Haram suspects. It is the ludicrous reverse logic that pronounced them guilty until proven innocent. Within hours, our overzealous security agents announced they had found a long-wanted Boko Haram kingpin among the lot. The rest remained under lock until they were set free. No rational explanation has been offered for this fundamental abuse of right of movement within the same country.
Suddenly, Naija is one continent with 36 states each of which determines what rights to give and which ones to curtail. After that episode, the state decided to register and tax northerners within its domain. This is similar to Iraq’s new rulers, ISIS, taxing Christians in Mosul on the point of death for their faith. States now register and tax non-indigenes for the accident of their birth or those of their parents. It was act like this that preceded the crimes of the second European civil war aka World War II.
Last week, a little known group, the Arewa Youth Development Foundation, issued a two-week ultimatum to non-indigenes in Kano to leave the state or be buried alive there. Such asinine stories ordinarily should never make headlines, but this nation is on autopilot while politicians are mapping out territories for contrived victory. They are too busy to be bothered about danger signals. A leader of non-indigenes in Kano was concerned enough to lead a delegation to Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II. The report says nothing about the emir responding to this numbing fear.
Should this threat be carried out, heaven knows its ramifications. There is enough in these events to fear the onslaught of a pogrom. Is this pre-1966 all over again? Can our nation survive another civil war with all the geopolitics of contending interests? What is the role of institutional and traditional bodies in resolving conflicts? Are these threats so grossly exaggerated that they should be ignored? It is easy to be in solidarity with people of like faith in distress, but who speaks for the hapless people of Damboa after Friday’s carnage. Our charity must begin at home – though not stop there.