Column No.6: Tears for Katsina are tears for Nigeria

In case you’ve been under a rock for the past few months, I’ll bring you up to speed. Katsina State has been struggling with security issues, headlined by an armed bandit problem, topped by a kidnapping ‘pandemic’, and garnished with a cattle-rustling mess. COVID 19: Katsina records 24 deaths, discharges 705 Banditry in Katsina will […]

In case you’ve been under a rock for the past few months, I’ll bring you up to speed.

Katsina State has been struggling with security issues, headlined by an armed bandit problem, topped by a kidnapping ‘pandemic’, and garnished with a cattle-rustling mess.

COVID 19: Katsina records 24 deaths, discharges 705

Banditry in Katsina will end soon — Senator Barkiya

The good people of the state have cried out time and time again, about their suffocation by deadly criminals on killing sprees. Policemen have been deployed, and redeployed.

Grand-sounding military operations have been carried out. Even the governor has cried out in a memorable incident that cut a picture of a deeply worried man, and ordinary people feel neglected.

But the situation, as people in Katsina would tell you, remains the same.

Some of them would actually say it’s worsening, which I’m inclined to believe.

‘Why Katsina?’ some may wonder. Well, for starters, it’s a Nigerian State with a robust population, per the famous 2006 census, of 5,801,584. It’s got seven degree-awarding institutions, and hundreds of notable Nigerians in a wide variety of fields. It’s also the home-state of President Muhammadu Buhari.

(Quick note: This is not a Buhari-bashing piece. If that’s what you’re here for, please catch the next train to Twitter-land, where a simple hashtag can hook up a veritable banquet for you. Bon Appétit!)

Back to my point: Katsina, like any other state in the nation, deserves security. If anything good is to grow and thrive, security must first grow and thrive. But recent trends, sadly, do not look promising.

As recent as a couple of days ago, bandits – that ever-so-vague tag – shot and killed someone at Gidan Gizo, in Faskari LGA. Same baddies also injured four persons, and kidnapped two sisters, Amina and Zainaru, both in their early 20s.

Pause for a second and internalize how that must feel to their families, then magnify it a thousand times, to include Kaduna, Kogi, Benue, Kano, Bauchi, Plateau, Kebbi, Sokoto, and all the other states plagued by ‘banditry’.

If you’re like me, the pain will also be magnified a thousand times. If you’re not, that’s also fine. It’s perfectly normal to be jaded when it comes to these kinds of things, as a sort of coping mechanism.

What’s not OK is being OK with it when your job – your responsibility – is to make sure people are safe.

Quick research shows that almost a hundred people were killed in Katsina State from January 2020 to now, and only God knows what’s going on there right now, as I type this in the middle of the night.

Even more worrisome is the way said bandits are getting more audacious. Can anyone remember sometime in July when they reportedly killed three officers and 12 soldiers in an ambush in Faskari?

I do. And even though it was also reported that 17 bandits were neutralized during that bloody exchange, I still feel cheated.

I always feel cheated when men and women who laid down their lives so Nigerians can live lives, are cut down most brutally. Then don’t get me started on the warning from the United States, that Al-Qaeda and ISIS are penetrating Northwestern Nigeria.

Our government’s response, via Coordinator of Defence Media Operations, Major General John Enenche, was: “This isn’t the first time [the US is] raising such an alarm.” Frankly, to ‘be aware’ isn’t enough. What are you doing about it?

Before anyone lectures me about real-time experience, let me quickly add that as a veteran of an ambush by bandits in Kaduna (a story for another day, I promise), I know a thing or two about the dangers of encountering those criminals. To cut a short column even shorter, we need to sit up.

Obviously, these bandits aren’t quite ‘ragtag’ anymore, with the kind of body count they’re racking up. Yes, the terrain is difficult for non-natives, as the bandits are known to rove from remote settlement to remote settlement, but it’s not rocket science.

If we know their modus operandi, and we’re committed, how difficult can countering them be?

Bandits are stealing sleep, property, and even lives. What’s happening in Katsina, as well as many other states nationwide, could happen in your state. It’s happening in my own home-state, Niger State, right now.

It could happen to any one of us. And that’s exactly why any tears shed for Katsina – and Katsinawa – are tears shed for Nigeria. And that’s why it rests on those whose job it is to ensure Nigerians don’t shed a single tear, to do the needful.

Basically, do your job.

We don’t want your Kleenex, or whatever brand of toilet tissue or dirty handkerchief you’re handing out for people to dab their eyes with. We simply don’t want to cry anymore.