By BALLASON Gloria Mabeiam
Our greatest threat is that we fail to be true to the realities that we are up against. Even routines are dreary and dreadful. How does anyone explain what happened yesterday at St. Philips Catholic church Ozubulu, Anambra state where people went for worship and then coagulated in their own blood? What do you say of the case of Canon Otto who was kidnapped in Port Harcourt or Rev. Jen T. Moses who was kidnapped in Bwari Abuja over the weekend?
How does anyone process the kidnap of University of Maiduguri lecturers who are now in the den of Boko Haram? Mindless and senseless as these may sound, the merchants of this violence are deliberate about what they seek to achieve. Nothing is random or aberrant; everything is scripted.
Th e Villains are succeeding as planned because they know we have short attention span to tragedies – nothing is grave enough to hold us down to the need to fi nd concrete and lasting solutions and so the cycle of barbarism in the north, south, east and west of Nigeria continue unabated. Governor Obiano’s statement yesterday at a church where varying accounts report between 20-50 people as killed, is predictable: He described the occurrence as sacrilegious, totally unacceptable in Anambra State and urged people to go about their daily businesses without fear or panic noting that the isolated case must be followed to the root and all perpetrators would be brought to book.
Typical indeed. One appositive word that stands out is isolated. Tens of people die, it is isolated. Hundreds of people die, it would be termed isolated. Boko Haram kills many and kidnaps some in Maiduguri which was previously declared insurgency free and again we will ascribe isolation to the scenario.
Th e ideology of warming up and numbing up to violence is now inherent in the country. It is the biggest enabler to the cycle and viciousness of violence we now see- not Boko Haram, economic hardship, kidnappers, poor amenities…no, not any of these problems. Th e ideology of it is not bad enough is fi rming up its roots in the soil of our ineptitude. It is putting on Nigeria more weight than it should bear and so the seams are gradually giving up the nakedness of our compromise and delusion. Th e fault lines we now see are smartly playing up on our fanatical and fortitious idea that things will somehow sort themselves out. Rwanda tells a story worth listening: Over the weekend, Rwanda and Kenya conducted national elections. While Kenya, the East African giant, was preceded by violence, Rwanda got off fi rst on a referendum on how it could have a change of leadership while sustaining its stability and development. Rwanda’s story is not new. It is a country where about 20 percent of the Tutsis and Hutus were massacred. Following the Rwandan genocide the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) which is credited to have ended the pogrom, converted into a party.
Th at country is today believed to be one of the safest countries in Africa with an unrivalled GDP. Kagame swept the polls with about 98% in the face of Democratic Green Party’s contention at Rwanda’s Supreme Court against the amendment that allowed Kagame a third term. Prof Manasseh Nshuti argues that serious internal debate and consensus serves Rwanda’s purpose well. He believes that the system is the product of the underlying historical context of the nation arguing that no one size fi ts all and another method may deem Rwanda to failure or a slide back to the days of its woes.
One would agree that consensus is working for that country even if we note that a perpetual Inability to give opposition a chance will not augur well in the long term.
Th e overarching lesson though is this: A country failed in the past and is unwilling to fail again. To win against our many plagues in Nigeria, we need to be clear about how we want to tide over our struggles. We cannot for instance speak about moving forward by doing a media blackout against insurgency, declaring a premature victory over an asymmetrical warfare or shutting down any voice that cries out against the failings of government and governance.
We will be kidding ourselves if a bill as important as a 35% affi rmative action for women representation is thrown out while a bill that creates immunity for legislators is brought in all by a set of legislators who do not think the Nigerian public are entitled to be part of the Constitution reform process nor do they seem to care that the crunching economy and near absence of security are real issues the populace are grappling with and should therefore be priority. Th e idea that elected governments are private estates of a certain class of big men is not only an aberration but insulting.
Above all, it creates a dichotomy of we and them where those who have the reins of powers at their disposal are unfeeling about the millions of people who go to bed hungry, the hundreds of people who lose relations to Boko Haram, kidnappers or robbers or the many girls who are abducted and forced into religion and lifestyles that they would rather not. Given the circumstances the news about 70 lecturers resigning at University of Maiduguri is not such a big deal neither is the fact that our roads have become kidnappers den; they are after all, in the words of Obiano and in the mannerism of the present government-isolated incidences.
To be clear, we cannot continue to be unfeeling of the pain that our people go through or act like we are calibrated to get it wrong. We were once a country called great by other great countries. Th ere was a time when parishioners at St. Philip would not have imagined what happened yesterday nor would Canon Orondaam have been whisked by dare devil abductors. Rev. Jen Musa would not have been abducted by hoodlums neither would the many now experiencing exotic, avoidable and needless agonies in our country know the pain they now bear. What is baffl ing is that before 2002, there was no Boko Haram. It would have been strange to imagine prior to 25th February 2014 that 59 boys would be slaughtered in Buni Yadi or that 276 girls would be abducted wholesale two months after the Buni Yadi horror and all that behind an otherwise protective school wall.
What about our economy? In September 1980, the exchange rate of naira to dollar was 53k to a dollar barely three decades and seven years after, its N376 to a dollar-talk about deliberate failure! Now, we can argue the whole time about who is to blame, what has gone wrong and what excuse fi ts this disastrous neglect that is now heavily taking its toll on us but if we don’t stop our own version of the Shanghai Maglev that is now at its highest speed furiously driving our nation to doom, we shall all likewise, perishall of us whether you are a singing Senator, ailing President, healthy citizen, distressed national…
whatever fi ts our best excuse will be insuffi cient to save us on our day of doom. We must renew our search for truth and justice. We must tear down the barriers that defi ne us in regions, religion or status and impeach the entire regime of corruption. Where there has been blood, mistrust and marginalization, we should replace them with love, honesty and the giving of everyone their due. We must resolve to rebuild a nation where the rest of the world might say of us that our ruins became the boulders by which we bounced stronger and that graft became the evil monument by which we swore Never Again. May we work to discard our selfaffl icted plagues and may the souls of those who have needlessly departed fi nd rest in the hereafter. God Bless Nigeria.
