The darkening tunnels

The killing of our policemen has become a routine daily occurrence in virtually all parts of the country

The front-page lead headline in the Daily Trust of April 11, bears repeating to double underline these precarious times in our nation: “Police operatives live in fear in S’East.” This, the newspaper reported, was consequent on the IPOB attacks in Imo State in which prisons were broken into and criminals set free with policemen suffering non-collateral damages to their persons.

The men needed no one to advise them on what precautions to take to protect themselves because they too, like the rest of us, do not feel the presence of the Nigerian state in their hours of need in the course of their service to the nation. They do what policemen have always done in Lagos: move about in mufti, carrying their uniform in nylon bags between their homes and their places of work.

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The killing of our policemen has become a routine daily occurrence in virtually all parts of the country. In other countries, the killing of security personnel can never be tolerated by the state because it is a direct challenge to the nation. Security personnel make security possible. To kill them is to lay the nation open to the reign of terror and jungle injustice. If the state faces such a challenge and refuses to take urgent and necessary steps to contain it, it empowers criminals and makes its citizens sitting ducks. It is shameful that our leaders treat what is unacceptable elsewhere as a mere hazard of the job of our security personnel.

You may find it funny that the fear of criminals is the beginning of self-protection among our police men and women. But you would only laugh to cry. We face monumental dangers as the insecurity worsens, putting our future in jeopardy. If our policemen and women, our civil security forces, cannot protect themselves it is pure fiction to expect them to protect the rest of us. Criminals have virtually taken over, imposing their will on the Nigerian state. Our political leaders continue to sit on their haunches savouring power without responsibilities. A thousand pities.

It has become a cliché to point out that these are the worst of times for our country and its security forces. It has indeed become an under-statement. In the past two weeks or so, we saw some of the worst cases of attacks against security forces, particularly in Imo and Benue states. In one, policemen bore the brunt of IPOB operatives daring to take up arms against the Nigerian state; in the other, twelve soldiers on routine security duty were ambushed and killed.

The Nigerian Governors of Forum had the presence of mind late last week to condemn the killing of our security forces. But that is usually how far the forum would go and its job was done. Governorship is not the mere celebration of new designs of babar riguna. Someone needs to remind their excellencies that the fate of this country at this time, in this moment in our national history is in their hands. They toy with it to our collective detriment.

The governors constitute the most powerful political power bloc in the country. I am afraid not many of them appreciate their power, much less its use beyond making them look important and speaking rather importantly because their position confers on them the right to be heard. The Nigerian Governors Forum is given to pussy footing, unable to take proactive actions to impress on President Buhari that every country pays a price for its peace and security; and that he needs to do more to engender public confidence in his capacity to pull us through our frightening security challenges in one piece.

The governors, in the worst cases of sycophancy, would rather indulge in sugared and buttered words to make the president feel good about his leadership style that has denied us the right to know where we are headed in our national development and has polarised the nation along our major fault lines – ethnic, political and religious.

A coalition of northern groups, including the outspoken Northern Elders Forum and Arewa Consultative Forum, cried to President Muhammadu Buhari last week, telling him, in case he was not made aware by his acolytes, that the north was sinking. Well, Northern Nigeria is sinking because the Nigerian nation is sinking.

Last week, Ohanaeze Ndigbo warned that “Nigeria may soon cease to exist as a country if urgent steps are not taken to check rising insecurity in the country.” The Guardian newspaper of April 16, quoted its president, Dr George Obiozor, as telling newsmen in Enugu that the country was passing through one of “the worst times in virtually all aspects of our national life.”

Other groups have made similar statements in the past, urging the president to seek to benefit from the collective advice and wisdom of compatriots who, like him, want to see the emergence of an egalitarian nation fair and just to all its citizens. But always, silence is the answer to any and all such views and voices from Aso Rock because the president and his men and women believe in the superiority of his own wisdom. It is not in the nature of human societies that collective views are trashed in the face of the kind challenges we face today. If God did not think that many views and voices were essential to human development, he would not have made so many voices and gifted men and women with many views.

We are fast losing it. Problems do not solve themselves; nor do they disappear because a leader chooses to do nothing about them. We elected Buhari in 2015 and re-elected him in 2019, to lead the country along the path of focused modern development in all aspects of human development – social, economic and political; to cement our national unity and make Nigeria a country in which we are equal stake holders and equal beneficiaries of the national largesse. If, under his watch, the drums of ethnic nationalism have become increasingly deafening, it can only mean greater challenges for him; he needs to do more to set the nation on that path of national cohesion and unity through an open but deft management of our diversities. It is time for him to listen to voices other than those of his aides who are dismissive of other people as mere noise-makers. We make noise in an effort to make our voices penetrate the rocks that make Aso Rock a sound proof castle.

Our country is in dire straits, no question about it, even if we pretend to the contrary. The urgency of the situation requires our leaders to do better than Nero by not giving in to the equivalent of fiddling while insecurity is consuming us and our security forces. The president, the state governors as well as federal and state legislators should wake up, sit up and give some serious and pragmatic thoughts to recovering our nation from the hands of criminals and the ethnic champions. We have paid enough price and sacrificed enough to make our nation great. Let’s not forget where we came from.