By Steve Osuji
This house called Nigeria is rapidly coming apart. It is falling down around our ears starting from the north. The first step to mitigate or completely ward off this impending catastrophe is to call on the elite of the north to brace up or be caught in the roubles of a mighty fall.
Steve Osuji
Our brother elite from the north have over the years, been acting most soullessly and unconscionably concerning affairs that affect the wellbeing of their people and their environment.
SELF-INFLICTED CALAMITIES OF THE NORTH: It’s time for soul searching and for deep self-introspection for their own good and very survival; and of course for the health of our country, Nigeria.
In the last two decades, the elite of the north have suicidally brought on itself: Boko Haram (BH), Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), refugees in neighbouring countries, bandits, killer herdsmen, almajirai, out-of-school children, virginal fistula infected young girls, child malnutrition and anaemia, among others.
Over a decade ago, and before our eyes, some rascally fellows in Borno State, northeast of Nigeria, in moments of maddening megalomania sowed the seed of BH. Since then, ignorant religious tendencies and Nigeria’s strain of viral corruption have nourished and kept BH live, what may yet become history’s deadliest and dumbest terror war.
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As at last year, no fewer that 27,000 people have been killed. About 500,000 are in camps in neighbouring countries of Cameroon, Chad and Niger Republic and IDP are in excess of 2.3 million people.
Abduction of young girls and women; hunger, diseases and misery in the camps complete the tragic matrix of woes that the northeast states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa have become.
While Nigeria’s full complement of military and intelligence corps have fallen flat on their faces this dark decade, BH has morphed into deadlier splinters, forming alliances far afield and at times inflicting disgraceful injuries on Nigeria’s sovereign forces. Not even the country’s improved air capability has vanquished the insurgents.
BANDITS OVERRUNS A SOVEREIGN STATE: As if BH wasn’t enough trouble for a country, another armed insurrection open in the northwest flank of the country about two years ago.
States like Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Adamawa, Sokoto and even Niger are now and again, besieged and assaulted by hordes of young men that swoop in droves, not unlike locusts.
According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNCHR), about 70,000 Nigerians have fled across the northernwestmost borders into Niger Republic.
There we have Nigerian refugees littering the territories of all her northern neighbours.
What was considered the most deadly attack by the faceless bandits occurred last April in a simultaneous raid of three LGAs in Katsina State. That is the home state of Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, by the way.
About 50 persons were reported dead, with injuries, abduction, rape and pillaging left in their wake. Women and children are most affected.
How did colonies of bandits grow in the northwest of Nigeria overnight? A source had proffered that the so-called bandits was a large gang recruited, armed and camped in the forests of the southwest prelude to the 2015 general elections.
This has been denied but how come all the forces in Nigeria cannot seem to fathom what hole these AK-47- bearing demons crawl out from? To think that the burgeoning waifs had been offered amnesty and all sorts of bribes by state governments to no avail. I wonder whether any other country in the world fights bandits with her airforce!
RISE OF MILITANT HERDSMEN: The Buhari presidency from 2015 seemed to have stirred the beast in herdsmen; granting them fresh impetus to lay claim to territories unheard of. With the Miyetti Allah also growing an errant strain of muscles and choosing militancy and slinging od Kalashnikovs instead of the good old shepherd’s rod, stage was set for mayhem, first with their north central farmer neighbours and even further south.
The killing and bloodletting have also been particularly gruesome especially in the last five years. Villages have been obliterated and thousands have been killed and maimed.
But the herdsmen story may have been occasioned by the increased rustling activities which in turn was gingered by acute poverty, hunger and deprivation, especially of the average northern youth.
But the point is, which country still herd cattle hundreds of miles on foot? What manner of elite make so many male children herders instead of head men in academics, commerce and industry? An unconscionable elite it must be.
ALMAJIRAI AS THE EVIL FACE OF NORTH: So much has of course been written about this pseudo-religious phenomenon which has currently come to a head and shows up an elite that has neither soul nor heart.
By UNICEF’S count, there must be over 10 million children, mainly young boys who are out of school in the north of Nigeria.
The Almajirai is probably at the root of the current catastrophic upheavals spewing like the molten lava of a volcanic eruption.
Almajirai are the handy recruits for Boko Haram; they are the bush and mountain dwelling hit-and-run bandits; they are cattle hustlers and of course, the militia herdsmen.
In this age, even educated minds get twisted and dangerous how much more so uneducated ones.
Yes, some governors have woken up to the fact that they have to deal with the Almajirai conundrum, thanks especially to the COVID19 pandemic.
It seems simply a question of grafting the Almajirai schools into normal education system and making education compulsory for the first 12 years. We can also enact laws to make parents responsible.
SHAME OF CHILD MARRIAGE AND LIFETIME VIRGINAL INJURY TO GIRLS:
The stench of virginal fistula has suffused the north from the beginning of time, yet I don’t think the elite of the north have been moved enough to make simple laws against adult males damaging the reproductive organs of little pre-puberty girls.
Millions of young girls are kept out of school due to early marriage and consequent health challenge of virginal damage. These girls suffer even a worse fate; most of them seared beyond salvage and are left to litter the streets for life.
A RAPINE AND SPOILT ELITE: These and more are some of the pains self-inflicted on the north by her elite. It is an elite that has actually been spoilt sick by Nigerian state: they have the most number of past heads of state, retired generals, former top civil servants, the most number of major oil block owners and even more treasury looters!
With all these advantages, the north ought to have been transformed into something near paradise. Monthly allocations to local governments
alone could develop the north but most LGAs remain a wasteland and battlefield of the deprived horde.
The north’s elite suffer from the the last vestiges of its annihilating feudalism. The very society it has rendered dysfunctional is imploding all around him.
But the tragedy is that introspection and soul-searching still fails him!
– Steve Osuji, 25.05.20
