Of Alakyo, Baga and Satiru
There was a general consensus, at least among newspaper writers who have commented on the episode, that a tragedy of immense proportions occurred at Alakyo, the ambushing and killing of 56 policemen and SSS officers by members of the Ombatse cult. Where the problem started was in apportioning blames. Personally I do not like blame […]
There was a general consensus, at least among newspaper writers who have commented on the episode, that a tragedy of immense proportions occurred at Alakyo, the ambushing and killing of 56 policemen and SSS officers by members of the Ombatse cult. Where the problem started was in apportioning blames. Personally I do not like blame games, but I could not help but notice the efforts of some politicians, community spokesmen and newspaper writers to turn the victims of the tragedy, in this case the police, into the villains. I know that policemen are not very popular in Nigeria, but that hardly justifies the current effort to rub salt into a serious injury by painting them as the villains of the Alakyo affair.
The only part of the ensuing campaign that I support is the call on the authorities to exercise restraint in the face of the tragedy and not to allow Mobile Policemen to undertake a punitive mission to Alakyo as the Army recently did in Baga in order to avenge the death of a lone soldier. So far the authorities have succeeded in doing that.
Evidently, the civilian authorities have greater control over the police than they have over the Army. If the Ombatse cultists had killed 56 soldiers, I don’t think the Commander-in-Chief or the service chiefs would have been able or willing to stop a reprisal attack a la Odi, Zaki Biam and Baga. Don’t forget, 12 soldiers were killed at Odi, 18 at Zaki Biam and one at Baga, a total of 41, less than the casualties the police recorded at Alakyo alone.
If the killed men had been soldiers rather than policemen, we would by now have added Alakyo to the tally of obliterated Nigerian towns. The fresh memory of Baga has also helped; following the national and international outcry in the wake of the Baga operation, leaders of the Federal Government would be anxious to avoid a repeat performance anytime soon.
Which reminds me. In the wake of Baga, the outcry was led by activists and commentators inspired by Western values of human rights and civil liberties. I chipped in a bit with the column article ‘Destroying Baga in order to save it.’ British government and private institutions as well as those of their cultural descendants, the Americans, such as Human Rights Watch did a lot to spread the story of the Baga massacre and to put the Nigerian government on the spot for not reigning in its soldiers. Which was a bit odd because historically speaking, Baga was but a continuation of the example that the Brits themselves bequeathed to us about how to deal with a community that kills an officer.
I am talking about the episode at Satiru village, in present day Sokoto State. According to the seminal work of Dr. Abubakar Sokoto Mohamed, the Satirawa [people of Satiru] led by the clerics Malam Siba, Malam Maikaho and Malam Danmakaho staged a Mahdist revolt against the British colonial authorities in 1906, only three years after the British colonized this land. When the British Resident of Sokoto Mr. Hillary went to Satiru to find out what was afoot, the Satirawa killed him.
What happened next was a lesson that the British High Commission in Abuja forgot to tell the Ombatse warriors. The British got the Sultan Attahiru II to come to their aid against the Satirawa. A dozen district heads from all over Sokoto Emirate mobilized hundreds of horsemen and joined the colonial army in an attack on Satiru. Every adult male member of the Satiru community, about 2,000 of them, was killed in the punitive expedition to avenge Hillary’s death. The captured women and children were dispersed all over the emirate. The village was then razed to the ground; Sultan Attahiru placed a curse on it, and today a forest reserve occupies the spot where Satiru once stood.
The Nigeria Army, descendant of the British colonial army, is still faithful to this tradition bequeathed to it by its founders but the Nigeria Police, also founded by the British, has been restrained by circumstances from living up to the same tradition. That is very good, but we should not build up from there and further cast the police as the villains of the Alakyo tragedy.
I am referring in this wise to my friend Mr Idang Alibi whose column in last Thursday’s Daily Trust was titled ‘That a great slaughter should not take place.’ He argued against allowing the police to undertake a reprisal attack, a call that I fully subscribe to. But he went beyond that; he said government should investigate why so many policemen went to Alakyo to arrest a hapless cult leader. He also said that the police have allowed themselves to be used [by the Nasarawa State Governor] in a political fight.
The summary of Idang’s position is that the police got what it deserved for meddling into a political quarrel and, as a corollary, that no further action needs be visited on the Ombatse murderers and their political supporters. Idang didn’t put it this way, but if in the face of such an appalling tragedy you paint the victim as the villain, then the net result is to ward off punishment from the men who did the mass murder.
This could well be the agenda of Ombatse’s political-class supporters. Policemen are constitutionally under the full control of civilian rulers who supposedly answer to us for any misuse of the forces. If the police was misused, at least it was obeying lawful orders. One can as well say that the Rivers State Police Commissioner is allowing himself to be misused by President Goodluck Jonathan in his political fight with Governor Rotimi Amaechi.
Within hours of the Alakyo killings, Senator Solomon Ewuga, who represents Eggon land in the Senate, was calling on the Federal Government not to allow a reprisal attack. At least in the newspaper stories that I read, I did not see the senator forcefully condemning what happened and calling for the perpetrators to be brought to book.
As I said earlier, policemen are not very popular in Nigeria but they are the men and women who stand between us and total annihilation by armed robbers, cultists, kidnappers, 419ners, communal warriors and quasi-religious insurgents. Minister of Information Labaran Maku’s many statements echoed on NTA and FRCN were mostly about personal absolution from blame, not forceful condemnation of what happened.
I don’t expect believing Christians such as Maku and Ewuga to be members of a cult that practices traditional religion even though all over Africa, adherence to the universalist religions of Islam and Christianity has not stopped many people from patronizing bokaye and babalawos. People seem to believe that their spiritual interventionist power is more efficacious than universalist religious prayer.
Yet, from emerging evidence, Ombatse is a political fighting group at least in addition to its religious worship. No one outside Eggonland seems to have heard of it until political squabbles began after the 2011 elections. Senator Abdullahi Adamu, who ruled Nasarawa State with a firm grip for 8 years, who has been in politics for four decades and who knows the terrain like the back of his hand, said in yesterday’s Sunday Trust that he never heard of Ombatse until recently.
Ombatse means “Our time has come.” Its adherents say this is a message from Eggon ancestors to cleanse their land of spiritual impurities but others say it is a reference to the Eggon’s determination to capture the state governorship in 2015. It is all okay for anyone to scheme for power in 2015 but anyone who did what Ombatse did on May 7 deserves exemplary punishment. Don’t buy the spin that the police are your fiend; government must apprehend and punish the Ombatse murderers of 56 policemen.