Prologue.
Small, yellow-tipped flames danced above the
campfire’s white-hot embers. The air had a sharp harmattan nip to it, and overhead, a canopy of stars winked brightly to compete with the light of a sickle moon. I stared at the campfire, not focusing on the flames themselves but rather the charred ends of the sticks that lay on the outer cycle.
The partially burned wood reminded me of the homesite I had seen earlier in the day. Blackened timbers, charred rubble, and gray ash piled like autumn leaves were all that remained of the house that had once stood there. A friendly passerby said Boko had burned it. So many families had fled and taken refuge in the IDP yard.
I took a walk past field after field lying fallow; after crossing pastures empty of livestock and overgrow with weeds; and after observing homes abandoned, most ransacked, some burned to the ground, all the stories I’d heard of Boko assumed meaning and became real for me. Talk of guerrilla bands terrorizing the countryside, pillaging and looting and killing–striking with swiftness and devastating force of a lightening bolt before vanishing- had seemed impossible. One hadn’t believed it was as bad as they said. Now I did.
At times I find it odd the way the past seems to repeat itself, thoughtfully, I recalled the Mataitisine riots of the 80s, the Zango Kataf of that era, the several Kaduna riots, upheavals and killings, Bunuyadi, and now the Boko and herdsmen insurgents, all of whose recruits were sure fighters, everyone of them. They knew nothing of military discipline and protocol, but they knew how to fight,
leave on their trails death, sorrows, tears and blood.
From the MMII terminal the aircraft took off effortless into the sky and in a matter of the moment shared the proximity with the moon at 20000ft altitude with its upper rim only slightly indented by the earth’s shadow. At this height it seemed almost as big as the sun itself and its golden light was certainly more beautiful.
This tropical night, great silver cloud ranges towered into the sky,and mushroomed into majestic thunderheads, and the moonlight dressed them in splendour. The aircraft fled swiftly between the peaks of cloud, like a monstrous black bat on backswept wings it bored, staring ahead into the starry, moonlit depths of space.
Aroused by the cabin crew’s crooning as the aircraft approached Heiphan-Jos, still in its nose-high landing configuration. I became alert, although with eyes unfocused and blinking away cobwebs of sleep.The seatbelts and no-smoking lights burned brightly down the length of the cabin.In minutes the bird landed,
and with it came my usual stomach-dropping swoop. It had rained as the airport lights glinted on the
puddled tarmac.
As we alighted, nosy me,
began to watch the faces of everyone around the aircraft, faces reflecting an almost uniform expression of sadness, of shock and trepidation. I saw fear bloom like an evil flower in a do nothing, say nothing atmosphere in those faces.
The debate going on as we
gathered to board the shuttle bus, was on the culpability of government and its agencies in the ‘mass murders’ going on in and around the nation. It was sad indeed. But our blames, notions and opinions with its suggestive legend should not be overtly or covertly subjective, but must be very gentle, very balanced in spite of our feelings and sense of loss.
Most of the arguments against the government smirked of a beautiful rendition and exhibition of cheap politics. But would hasten to add that the constitution gave an open hand provision, when it
empowered the states governors, either in Zamfara, Benue,Taraba,
Plateau or elsewhere to act as the respective chief security officer’s, and, thus, the prerogatives and
discretions to ensure the security of lives and property of the States under their individual command.
The sad visage of vicious brutality of men, callous indifference to another man’s pain in a world where you wrapped a chain around your gloved fist and smashed a man in the ribs again and again until you heard the dry, crunching snap of breaking bones and watched impassively as he began to spew up his own bright blood, sticky, crimson lotion, in the presence of his spouse and children, and ignored the animal screams of pain that came out of his
torn throat and paid no attention to the wracking spasms that wrung his body into limp muscle and ripped tissue was terrifying as it was worrisome.
In this theatre of ‘war’,the stench of cordite lingered and mingled with the taint of flesh blood and human burnt flesh spider webbing our democratic surface. Though accustomed to death in its most bizarre and obscene forms, these bodies offended me more deeply than any before. This were a contemptuous flaunting of all the deepest rooted taboos of society.
With this still on my mind, we filed into the shuttle bus en-route Barking Ladi,
heads revolved slowly in unison as we watched with a mixture of indignation the fascination of horror. A voice which contained a hint of mischief, a little undercurrent of laughter, “-and you call this country a giant”?!
The passengers in the bus
stirred like the leaves of a tree in a vagrant breeze, somewhere a woman began to weep. It was a strangled passionless sound and nobody even looked in her direction.One began to ponder, where are our heroes for freedom and for the dignity of man. Can this nation be purged and cleansed of injustice and oppression and dedicated to the welfare of all its people residing anywhere within the geographic space called Nigeria. The woman was still weeping, and now a female Youth Corper joined her on a higher, more strident note, shaking like a fever victim with shock. Quite a number of us were in a massive physical trauma with the ugly scene.The state government could not even afford the luxury of body bags for the burnt remains of victims.
The body of a young woman lying in the gutted interior of a salon. Her lovely young body stripped by the blast of all but a flimsy pearl-coloured pair of lace panties. The smell of a family, father, mother and three small children, in the interior of a smouldering saloon car, the bodies blackened and twisted in a macabre ballet. The frightened eyes of a child, through a mask of dried blood, a dismembered arm lying beside her, the rotten fingers still clutching a grubby little rag doll. Ghastly death and mutilation.
At the IDPs, there were so many people all crowded together. The sanitary conditions are
deplorable – refuse everywhere, open latrines. I shudder to think what the rations have been, as isolated as this campsite is, and as tenuous as its supply line is and deficiencies in cleanliness and diet. With so many families living at the IDPs for protection, the needs are endless.
I observed that the handlers had to identify the points of concern. A hot afternoon breeze drifted in the sun’s heat through the opened doorway, its dusty freshness providing a respite from the rank odours that permeated the rest of the site.
Death is always so undignified. The images of lifeless bodies flashed in disjointed sequences. The
‘enemy’ have grown more spiteful, hateful, even grown stronger and more inhuman. Hatred was the enemy’s vice, from it sprang their twisted philosophy and their monstrous actions and threat to the entire society and its civilized rule of law.If this evil should be allowed to triumph, then in the future, laws, unjust laws
would be made by the ‘evil-eyed revolutionary’, with guns, grenades and daggers in their fist-the nation would be run by destroyers instead of the builders.
When a law is patently unjust, the political system is bound to be in chain and its the duty of an honest man to subvert it. Even though my old-fashioned sense of rightness had baulked at such logic, but should the butchers went free, because an impotent society looked on.
A society which had systematically stripped itself on defense against the next attack with no national approach to a problem that is national in scope and overall view of the nation’s world of violence and intimidation, at a time when there had been that hiatus in international
terrorism with modest breakthrough victories.
The relentless attacks had given meaning to the nation’s local terrorism as a growth industry run by men blinded by hatred or crippled by parochial interests and limited goals.
a. To destroy the people
with universal tyranny.
b. To free the people by making them slaves to terror.
c. Seeking to right the wrongs of the nation with evil and injustice.
A beast with a thousand heads and for each that was struck off a thousand more would grow, primed to see the end only and hardened to the means, becoming bolder, harsher with godlike pretensions. How could a nation fathom the minds of men who could embark on such a course.
Beyond the famed Herdsmen, Boko Haram and other militia configuration north, south and east of the Niger, the nation must be aware that a new one had been unleashed, that was set to attack the nation’s
foundation of civilization, and set to shook the columns that held the rule of law and society.
Something more deadly than the nation had thought
or believed, possible, and one had no illusion that the beast was more than barely wounded, next time this unrepentant, and undaunted
elements may be more powerful, more cunning, having learned from this inconsequential failure of leadership in a failed state.
With this came a powerful and overwhelming wave of dread and despair. Its likely that the nation has taken a seat on the back of the tiger from which it may never be able to dismount. However, the leaders owe a duty to humanity and the dignity of human life and the force of moral law. The old truth are still good, “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown”.
The very existence of an interesting contradiction in the states governors and their roles, power and functions as chief security officers in a democratic setting, and a constitution that gave an open hand signal on this, has amidst dark whispers come under scrutiny, vitriolic attacks and been condemned in extravagant terms. However, the media should ‘begin at the beginning,’ as the king of hearts said to Alice, and call for an immediate demand that in the spirit of true federalism,
the National Assembly is the one that should conduct an investigation of all the circumstances surrounding all the killings and massacres in and around the nation, and if it is ascertained that criminal negligence and irregularities did exist in the conducts of the state governor that in anyway hampered the efficient discharge of that function, should proffer solutions, which should not be limited to requesting the police to
bring the person(s) responsible for the mayhem before the civil courts.
The nation’s media were howling outrage and suppressed threats, protesting in the most severe and extreme terms against the infringement and disrespect to a people’s god-given rights, but should further bring into the homes of all civilised people images of dreadful death and mutilation, lovingly photographed in gorgeous colour with meticulous professional attention to all the macabre details. With
this enthusiastic chronicling of their deeds, the ‘enemies’ could lose most of the impetus.
For sneaking moments one envied the police, the powers they have to force irresponsibles to act in the best interest of society.
Unfortunately, the media and the police had yet to unravelled the full scope of the senseless and incessant elimination of dear compatriots, even,
with the lawmakers, who themselves should be honourable and distinguished enough to develop political and social conscience, distinguished by total belief in shining ideals and essential beauty and goodness of mankind watching with some measure of indifference.
The government patently slow and benign indecision,
portrayed it as
overburdened with guilt of apparent dereliction and or negligence. Its reactions was like that of one
quarantined by an almost conspiratorial air of camaraderie that offered for an introspective inspection the perfect mons veneris of motives and intention of the fifth column, and in a teasingly flirty manner at the ventriloquist dummy launching the heinous and despicable killings over mere ‘venial faults’- killings that had delivered devastated blows that more or less had spread-eagled the PMB’s administration against the wall.
The Nigerian people with beads of perspiration across their upper lips like transparent blisters calm acceptance of governments’ infected economic pain and induced poverty and misery and also, its grudging acceptance of PMB’s
explanations are not one and the same, in a land of deep triangle bisected by the fold of different and diverse tongue, culture and history, which had continually rucked up into the cleft, daily throwing up questions, national questions, on the sincerity and wisdom of the quite awkward and ephemera
epithet ‘one Nigeria’; and whether or not the APC’s led government have a strong social conscience, and how well it is promoting and permitting greater individual freedom in the struggle to build socialism and an egalitarian society.
The incessant killings in and around the federation had helped placed all of this in a greater perspective on a spreadsheet, and how well government responds to it all would speak volume about PMB, a sprightly 76year old leadership abilities.
One considered PMB’s
culpability in the matter to be untrue in substance and in fact and to be extremely prejudiced in the court of public opinion. In spite of his extemporaneous impolitic and weak reactions, one most humbly found it difficult to accept that he is to be blamed,
particularly, in a federation with the independence of the federating States.
The state governors must accept blames for the Midnight’s misadventures of the disgruntled elements and their socially unacceptable behaviours. The battering on the presidency, PMB as it were, may weakened further the governors resolve to up their ante, as CSO’s of their respective states and inability to take full control and command of the security apparatus, in spite, of the quiet underlying influence, and dichotomy in the lines of command with the c-in-c and the IGP.
Laws are made by man,
almost always by the rich and the powerful, laws are changed by men, usually only after militant action. Having said that, the refusal of the governors lawful orders could be reported with quick understated efficiency for further action of the c-in-c, the constitution should have this in view. This would have saved the day for the current feeling of mutual wariness.
No sane man should anticipate violence and death, and all the misery and suffering which attended them, but, one found contempt for the perpetrators. However, the military school’s I attended briefly, thought me to learn never to hate adversary blindly. But, understand his motives “á lallemandé” or “á latallienne”, release of prisoners, social and political demands or straight demands for money, whichever it is,
recognise and respect his strengths – and you’ll be better prepared to meet him.
Yes,the buck ends on Mister president’s desk, he must therefore, take his feet off the desk, thumped them together unto the floor, get certain of his identification of the enemy, and as the leader, took his flight, in a tight ‘fingers five’, up into the front, into the short unsurfaced strips in unlikely corners of the nation, rock the wings in the “Follow me” command of mirage pilots. He must do well to struggle up through the nation’s
present deadening, suffocating fake death of anaesthetic.
It is equally worrisome and funny, in a comical way, that all of the security chiefs hailed from the north and all the fervent sporadic attacks were also concentrated in the northern axis. Therefore, PMB, must know that for such complex concept of security, his personnel deployment must take due cognisance of the fact that,
i. It needed the philosophers tempering influence over trained military personnel.
ii. It needed the tact and charisma of the diplomat and,
iii. It needed that steely intellect to make the ultimate decisions that could involve hundreds of innocent lives and incur fearsome political consequence.
Before the nation could see this infractions and issues of security through, it would be forced to examine itself and its peoples own consciences very closely and, develop its plans in line with new development while striving for novel solutions, trying to think ahead of an ‘enemy’ that was still faceless and infinitely menacing. No doubts, the nation is dealing with politically motivated militants and not merely a gang of old-fashioned religious bigots or cow herders, who don’t worship cows, NDA, MASSOB, IPOB,
and so on. If this people win their objects, it’s a victory for the fun – and it would place all Nigerians in jeopardy. With the overwhelming knowledge of treason and of undreamed-of evil, the nation have no better than an evil chance.
Thus, one disagreed to some extent for the call for state police, it would only compound the issues further and may add on imported problems of its own creation. What is required is for the nation to
a. Create a single unit combined forces, utilitarian, impersonal and with an uncommon unconscious panache, cutting all national boundary and considerations, and able to act swiftly and independently, with high quality of resilience and independent thought.
b. Their intelligence must not be diverted into conventional channels nor the preference for independent thought and action held in check nor harboured in the
tradition-bound portals of the officer’s mess.
c. The first principle of the enemy’s strategy was to strike at the point where national responsibilities were blurred, the unit under the direct command of the c-in-c must not wait for hostile act before it could react.
d.it must not rely on other organizations with all their internecine rivalries and bickerings-for its vital intelligence.
e. It must be used with the greatest discretion, not an assassination outfit.
The nation need to know who those killing,mutilating and maiming its people were and who their sponsors were, and what they are been sent to do, and who and what they are after in a meticulous fashion, not in the wild panic-stricken struggles of someone held under icy water with empty lungs.
Sartre and Bakunin and Most had discovered one of the great truths of life – that the act of destruction, of total destruction, was a catharsis, a creation, a reawakening of the soul. But this undirected,
destruction, mindless, merciless death with the bitter taste of all human excesses from our northern cousins was also lack of concern for life and they can’t force the nation to abandon principles and descend to theirs. There won’t be time in the years ahead for the agony of disillusion, of cherished Nigeria.
When I came to from the deep black coma induced by jet lag, only the graffiti that adorned the bare brick wall had passion and vitality.
P.S.
In the Hiace bus on the way back to Heiphan,I saw on an acre of grazing land a long hard gallop over good going and open pasture to the crest of the ridge, with only one gate. A girl led on her bay filly. She was in the midst of the passionate love affair that most pubescent girls have with macho men, horses and power bikes,and she looked truly good astride the glistening thorough bred- Argentina. The cold struck high colour into her Fulani complexioned cheeks, her face was pale with deep parentheses framing the mouth and the braid of honey-coloured hair thumped gaily down her back at each stride.#
Jimi Bickersteth
Jimi Bickersteth is a writer and blogger.
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