“…In keeping silent about evil, in
burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface,
we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future.
When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply
protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations
of justice from beneath new generations”
—Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
I will never understand how this Boko
Haram phenomenon got this far. Sometimes when I read about their
atrocities, I pinch myself to be sure that this is still the same
Nigeria where I grew up. Things have really gone out of hand in this
country.
Incredible things have started to happen
here. One of them is the total lack of respect for the aged. Things
weren’t like this. In the days when I grew up, no one would dare harm
the elderly. We all wanted to advance in age and we imagined that anyone
who wanted to grow old would not disregard, let alone, do harm to an
elderly person. This was more so in the north where religious,
monarchical and patriarchal authorities were almost incontestable. But
all that has evaporated before our very eyes.
Just a few hours before I started
writing this, Nigeria’s one time Minister of Mine and Power, Dr.
Shettima Ali Monguno, was kidnapped in Maiduguri, the Borno State
capital. I found that as unbelievable as I found it disheartening, a
telling sign of how fast we are plunging into the abyss. Ali Monguno is
not just an extremely old man of 92 years, he was returning from Jumat
service where he had gone to worship God. Those are two immutable
reasons why no one should have contemplated snatching the old man, but I
guess I live in ancient times. Things have so terribly changed that we
can barely recognise ourselves again.
But maybe we needed to get here. For
years now, Boko Haram insurgents have terminated the lives of thousands
in a variety of violent ways. Some were slaughtered, some were bombed,
some were shot, some were burnt alive. And sex or age did not matter.
Men were killed; women were killed, so were children; these killers
discriminated against nobody.
Although statistics will very likely
show that more Christians and southerners, especially people from the
South-Eastern part of the country have died in the hands of these
godless human beings, there were times that they didn’t care where the
people they were killing came from or what faith they professed. They
killed in churches as they killed in mosques. They killed in restaurants
and drinking joints, they killed in market places and on the streets,
places where one would never be able to say who was who. It was like
they were possessed by the demon of destruction. At the last count, no
fewer than 3,000 people, as the Human Rights Watch claims, had lost
their lives in the hands of these misguided elements.
Yet, not one concerted effort at putting
an end to this unfortunate menace has come from elders and leaders of
the Northern stock. We are talking about a North which produced the
current second, third and fourth citizens of the country.
I mean the
Vice-President, the Senate President and Speaker of the House of
Representatives. A Northern Nigeria which parades the likes of the
Sultan of Sokoto, the Emir of Kano and Shehu of Bornu, the Emir of
Zauzau and so many heavy weight traditional cum religious leaders. We
are talking about a region which produced former leaders such as Gen.
Yakubu Gowon, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, Gen.
Ibrahim Babangida and Gen. Abdulasalami Abubakar, all of who are still
alive.
A region with countless elder statesmen and politicians, 19 state
governors, God knows how many intellectuals in the various fields;
federal cabinet ministers, chairmen of boards and government
parastatals; local government chairmen and so on and so forth. All these
people, even the big shots in government, do nothing but call on
government to put an end to the killings.
The failure of these respected leaders
to intervene in the insecurity that has taken over the North-East, parts
of the North-West and North-Central of Nigeria has always bothered me.
Not even attacks on the Governor of Niger State, the Shehu of Bornu,
Emir of Fika and the Emir of Kano triggered the patriotic alarm in these
leaders. I have concluded that there must either be some conspiracy at
work or the North is not as united and homogeneous as we believed in
those days. We were told about a few mafia groups in the North and that
whenever these groups got together and took a decision, the North fell
in line. The last few years indicate that this either existed in the
imagination of some people or the North is up to some grand conspiracy.
Oh well, I remember the recent blackmail
of the President into considering amnesty for the terrorists. And in
spite of how bitter that tasted in my mouth, I thought these leaders
were at last standing up to the situation, only for me to hear the
rejection of any amnesty by the leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau,
as he indeed boasted that it was the Federal Government that should seek
amnesty from the group. That shocked me to the bones. Does it mean that
those who canvassed for amnesty did not even talk to the intended
beneficiaries before they started harassing government? Did they just
assume that amnesty would work for Boko Haram insurgents? Shouldn’t
these Northern elders, including governors have come together to arrest
the attack on the total psyche of the North all these years?
In my opinion, it is the failure on the
part of all these leaders that has brought us to where we are now. Now,
the chickens are coming home to roost. These criminals have moved from
killing the common man to attempts on the lives and kidnap of high class
target. Suddenly, no one has a hiding place, not the poor, not the
rich, not the young, not the old; we are all at the mercy of these cheap
crooks. We are all victims.
Our leaders have failed us by their
silence and unless they find their voices promptly, there would be dire
consequences for our future. I guess this is what the Russian writer and
historian means in the quote above. These leaders have kept quiet for
too long. Thank goodness that it is not too late to save us all from the
doom which continuous silence and tacit approval of this evil portend.
Now is the time for everyone who commands some respect in the North to
speak up and save the country from this avoidable bloodletting, unless
of course, there is some subtle message that the carnage is meant to
send to us. We all should remember that when fire gets out of hand, it
could consume the man who lit it up!
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PLEASE LET US SAY WHAT IS ON GROUND THE WAY WE SEE IT. THE KIDNAPPING OF DR SHETIMA IS PART OF THE BOKO HARAM NORTHERN DRAMA. HE PAID 50,000,000.00 AS RAMSON, TODAY BOKO HARAM WANT TO BUY FIGHTER JET. IN EVERY NONESENSE THERE IS SENCE.
ReplyDeleteIt is my sincere believe that it's time Nigeria should divide, we're of diffrent culture, we don't speak the same language, we don't eat the type of food, we don't practise the same type of religion, we don't have the samr educational-status, that one is what brought about the saying of - Western education is Sin, we don't love ourselves, we don't believe in our unity, please let somebody tell me the reason why we should not divide and let each region form its own country, the Yorubas, the Igbos, the Hausas, the Riverines, the middle-belt, let each region form its own countries now before this problems turns to Civil-War.
ReplyDeleteExcept it is not a prophecy with its prophet and the God of the prophet else I can well say I know the simple reason for and solution to the Nigerian socio-econmic and politicaly inclined issues.
ReplyDeleteIt's really a simple one...
Note on this side man's intellectual prowess the learned use gigantic formulas and processes to solve difficult problem but on the other side of "reality" use is made of based things to confound the "high things"