Last
Wednesday, I got a phone call from a reporter at one of Italy’s major
newspapers, la
Repubblica. It was the second anniversary of the abduction of more
than 200 schoolgirls from Chibok, Borno State. In a macabre move, the terrorist
group that abducted the girls, Boko Haram, had released a video featuring some
of their victims. The Italian reporter sought my response to the traumatic
event.
I told her that the abductions
reminded me, above all, of a country incapable of focusing on getting the small
things right. And I insisted that this failure at small tasks accounted, in the
main, for the broader tragedy in Nigeria.
To illustrate, I reminded the reporter
that the girls were captured during a period of emergency rule in Borno, Yobe
and Adamawa—the three states most besieged by Boko Haram insurgents. Emergency
regulations entailed the restriction of vehicular movements in the three
states. So how were the abductors able to travel close to midnight in several
trucks to the Girls Secondary School, Chibok, where the girls were seized?
It’s a question that no Nigerian
government official has answered, even though then President Goodluck Jonathan
had set up a presidential committee to investigate what happened in Chibok on
April 14, 2014. In announcing the imposition of the state of emergency, Mr.
Jonathan had declared, “Some northern parts of Borno state have been taken over
by those whose allegiances are to a different flag than Nigeria.” Then he
disclosed that security agencies “have orders to take all necessary action,
within the ambit of their rules of engagement, to put an end to the impunity of
insurgents and terrorists.”
If recent revelations hold up in
court, it appears Nigeria’s top security chiefs, charged with leading the war
against Boko Haram, preoccupied themselves with dividing billions of dollars of
the defence budget among themselves and political cronies. These men allegedly
splurged on personal mansions and fattened their bank accounts. If they spent
at all on weaponry, it was on substandard fare. It was as if the security
honchos had attended some warped military academy that incorporated mindless
corruption and depraved acquisitions in its training manuals.
According to reports by human rights
organisations, Nigeria’s security agencies often used the emergency regulations
as cover to terrorise innocents. In fact, scholars date the organised violent
phase of Boko Haram to the July 2009 extrajudicial execution of the group’s
founder, Mohammed Yusuf.
At the time he was murdered, the
founder of Boko Haram was unarmed, his hands tied behind his back. The police
had every right to prosecute Mr. Yusuf, but zero right to kill him. Five police
officers were charged in his illicit killing, but the case, like many a crime
by the Nigerian state, has been quietly shelved. That kind of homicidal
highhandedness is on display in the South-East, where heavily armed security
agents routinely murder agitators for hoisting pro-Biafra placards.
As a presidential candidate and,
later, president-elect, Muhammadu Buhari pledged to find and rescue the Chibok
girls. We’re closing in on the first anniversary of his tenure, but Mr. Buhari
has not found a single one of the abducted girls. A day after the abductions,
separated by a few hours from suicide bombings that left scores dead and many
wounded in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, Mr. Jonathan was waltzing to music at a political
rally in Kano. It was as perverse a political moment as could be found in any
time or place.
On
the second anniversary of the girls’ abduction, President Buhari’s wife, Aisha
Buhari, chose to stage her own insensitivity, even if in minor key. She made
the bizarre decision to launch her book on beauty therapy on the anniversary of
this most unfortunate event.
I told the Italian reporter I did not
see the Chibok abductions in isolation. For me, the Nigerian state’s failure to
forestall the abductions spoke to a broader indifference. Nigeria is organised
to serve the interests of a narrow, idle class whose appetite for lucre
outstrips its capacity for common sense, including the imperatives of
enlightened self-interest and the common good.
Nigeria is particularly at war with
children, the young, the aged, women and the poor. If the Chibok girls’ parents
belonged to the group characterised in Nigeria as “political stakeholders”, the
Nigerian state would have done everything to find and rescue the victims of
abduction. The children of the poor are absolutely dispensable. I made clear to
my Italian interviewer that, despite the official sentiment of commitment to
the goal of salvaging the missing girls, the mission was not promising.
If Nigeria were competent at doing the
small things right, the girls would not have been abducted to start with.
During a state of emergency, security blocks are supposed to be mounted in
strategic places. Insurgents bent on seizing girls gathered at a hostel to take
exams should not have been able to drive for more than a mile or two before
they were stopped. Since security agents knew full well that the insurgents
used Sambisa Forest as a fortress, all the major approaches to the forest
should have been cut off. Instead, Nigeria’s ill-equipped, poorly motivated
security agents seemed to slumber as the men they were meant to fight off
roamed the highways of Chibok and stole hundreds of girls.
Despite the obvious ineffectiveness of
the emergency regulations, the government was unable to imagine a different
policy. In a detailed report in November 2014, Deutsche Welle,
Germany’s broadcaster, reported on the debate to extend the state of emergency.
It reported that many people, including members of the House of
Representatives, “think that the emergency rule imposed 18 months ago, in
North-Eastern Nigeria has only worsened the situation rather than improving
it.”
In an even more pointed rebuke, Farooq
A. Kperogi, a US-based scholar and perceptive commentator on Nigerian affairs,
wrote: “I learned early this week that President Goodluck Jonathan has written
to the National Assembly to request the approval of a third (!) extension of
the emergency rule in the North-Eastern states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa. I
won’t mince words: this is straight-out insane.” He added: “Emergency rule in
these three North-Eastern states has done nothing to contain or countermine the
sanguinary fury of Boko Haram. In fact, it seems to have escalated it. No one
contests that fact. It is utter insanity to repeat the same thing that has
proved to be ineffectual three times in a row.”
When a government fails at its most
basic of tasks, the citizenry feels bereft, abandoned to its own devices. Last
week, a cherished friend and relative sent me a text of a message he had sent
to his beloved. It read: “The story of the Chibok girls is refreshing the issue
of personal insecurity in Nigeria. The impunity of the Fulani herdsmen is
adding to fear. Terror convention is changing and you get to know only when
terror has occurred. The first principle for safety is curtailment of
adventure. Second is isolation from gatherings where you can easily be
anonymous. Therefore I need to know beforehand any travel plan by any member of
my family. I need to clear such plan in my private thoughts, irrespective of
purpose. Let everybody be extremely vigilant.”
In a climate where the institutions of
the state have become chronically ineffectual, such private anxiety is bound to
be (sadly) ascendant.
Please follow me on twitter
@okeyndibe
No comments:
Post a Comment