The currency and rapidity of events in Nigeria often defy the common laws of social gravitation, political calculus or economic fundamentals. Sadly the interplay of forces in Africa’s largest country, of approximately 170 million citizens, leans more on negative realities than mere pigmentations of people’s imagination. From corruption to destruction!
These gory stories range from little offences of cyber crime, burglary and robbery; to daylight kidnapping and midnight mass annihilation of innocent compatriots through conflagration and gunshots from evil-filled ‘agitators’ possibly born-cold-to-harm others, without a tinge of remorse or any milk of humanity in their veins. Heralding this era of total insanity of terror and fratricidal haemorrhage in our country are the so-called Boko Haramites! Do they have any ideology aside ‘No to education’?
Up till now, the Boko Haram cause or curse is still unfathomable. But the deadly course and consequences of their dastardly acts daily cohabits with hapless and helpless normal beings. Today, with nearly 5,000 in hurried graves, Nigeria bears the pictured of a hot zone within the comity of troubled nations.
Such brush of brutality that sweeps everything in sight needs be nipped in the bud. Not even the innocence of youth could spare the lives of many unsuspecting victims, often cut down before their flowers bloom. So who is going to bell the cat of these monstrous loose cannons in our midst? More so, as the military might of the Nigerian State is already stretched taut. The recent blame game from Governor to President, North to South and East to West may never end this ravaging locust; lest our nation loses her right to sleep in peace and wake to development.
Come to think of it, would there be this war of attrition if successive governments have braved the odds by sending every Nigerian child to school and alleviating the poverty level among the teeming unemployed youths?
Seriously, as we celebrate 100 Years of ‘nationhood’, our leaders need to hasten up the drive for building the people that will build the nation. For investment in people is not expenditure but a safe-valve for unity and security. Building a few Almajiris’ schools here and there plus adhoc tokens given to the hungry, can only gloss over the deep crack on the wall of our social imbalance, created many years ago. So if left untreated, this wound would soon fester and become cancerous.
Certainly, a situation where the uncle of a sitting President and the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, was abducted and held to ransom in broad day kidnap; no doubt sends chilling feelings through the spines of all citizens. And the fear of fear is the worst fear. Who is safe now? And how long do we want to shy away from this implosive crisis that is tearing our psyches apart? These cankerworms of anti social behaviours of dare-devil suicide bombing, armed robbery and kidnapping must be curtailed and contained with immediate effect.
We can ill-afford to welcome perfidy posters on our doors at this period of our chequered history. Hence, a lasting solution must be found to this wave of unsolicited decimation of our country’s population through acts self-destruction and misguided implosion. Those born cold to harm, should be limited by the fire power of the state. Power, surely, belongs to the mass of the people! Not a few.
After all in conflict resolution, consultation and mediation are civilised principles; but where debate fails debacle takes over. Therefore it is confrontation time, for us all, to rid our territory off the menace championed by a demented few and their sponsors who have refused to table their cause and rub minds with humane compatriots.
Those who kill innocent souls, particularly children and women, have no right to live in decent society. Those whose pastime is to step up the tide of spilling innocent bloods, have no doubt themselves murdered sleep and bade farewell to any form of peace of mind, till Karma takes its toll to rip them apart in tears and sorrow.
All hands have to be on this deck before talking about 2015 elections. Let ours not become another gory story of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia or Syria! May that time never come? But a wise word is good for our world. Long live Nigeria!
*The writer, Alaba Yusuf, is an International Publicist, Strategist and Commentator based in Abuja.
