Remember the stateless people of North-east

A savage of Abubakar Shekau’s audacity may not be a subject of the writings of western political thinkers who once deliberated on the ideals and essence of the modern state hundreds of years before Mungo Park “discovered” River Niger, but, in these sparks of his pseudo-theocratic nihilism, Shekau has teleported the humans of the present civilisation into those medieval eras, and into anguish, exposing an aspect of our existence we haven’t truly protected: the lives of the common man.
While we debate and contest the truths of the happenings in the northeast, politicising and even trivialising the killings of fellow countrymen who, by our President’s own admission, are only occupying the “fringes” of this territory supposedly under him, there is a band of beasts advancing and challenging the statehood of a part of Nigeria. And if we’ve been countering this invading force as required, the result is a disaster, a call for urgent global intervention by all right-thinking humans at the UN, AU and all institutions that exist to preserve humanity.
Shekau, based on his rhetoric and malarial rants, may be dismissed as an irredeemable psychopath by the people still in the comforts of their homes and offices, away from the bangs of his bombs and splattering of the blood of those he’s sentenced to life; to those in the fringes abandoned to their fate, to the luck of our militarily overpowered troops struggling hard, with inferior arms, to protect the territory of this country, Shekau is more than just a psychopath. He’s an incarnation of death itself, having destroyed their houses, families and, very painfully, joy.
Politically, Shekau is more than just a threat, because killing and having thousands of citizens packed in refugee camps is not a small matter. His declaration of the “fringes” as a sovereign state – inalienable, occupied, and, sadly, seized – a caliphate bound by the backing of whatever he really worships, isn’t also an empty boast. Shekau may be a delusional insurgent but his threats are being undermined at our perils.  For, with every deaf ear turned to his threats, especially at the State House, hundreds die, hundreds are injured, thousands rendered homeless and millions set to mourning mode.
Most of the popular theories of state seem to be a tribute to this visitor from millennia past, here to re-introduce us to the savageries previously known to Nigeria only on the screens of our television sets, here to drag us back to the “State of Nature”. In his pursuits of the impossible, he has extolled the Divine as the giver of power, a theory understood. He’s applied force, an excessive and somewhat superior or effective military might, to “expand” his territory. What the savage doesn’t need is a social contract to officially confirm the state of his imaginary caliphate; a legitimacy. This, even if a thousand referenda are conducted, is not achievable. This, he knows, but this he doesn’t even need.
He may be a savage against everything that represents or promotes western philosophy which, to his ilk, is a branch of intolerable atheism but his savageries in his quest for a State have been validated hundreds of years ago by thinkers whose descendants he now considers spiritually unclean to exist, their knowledge abomination. Shekau’s brand of savagery was studied and explained by the Frenchman Thomas Hobbes, and also by the Italian political schemer, the infamous Niccolo Machiavelli, who both agreed that a government is no longer legitimate when it’s lost its territory, and if this dangerous statecraft is applied in our analyses of this country’s deadliest man of the century, then we may begin to fear for the stateless people of the northeast.
These people who, on Fridays and Sundays get decked in their best clothes, fragrance thick, and head to join fellow worshippers for the day’s congregational prayer at Mosques and Churches – to share their stories and worries with their Creator, the Manager of the unseen and the things ahead. Only, in just a spark, in split seconds, to find their bodies, those frail sophisticated machines, torn in blasts, dreams shattered, eras truncated, dependants destroyed, and souls recalled by their all-knowing Owner. By the design of the savage called Shekau!
These people whose part of the country, those fringes that are now abattoirs, going by Machiavelli’s ideology, has lost legitimacy and only waiting for a few detonations and more deaths of “former” Nigerians to be truly understood as lost. Why am I writing this? I write this out of fear, out of concern and out of a certain observation; which is the marked difference in the responses to the bombing in Kano in contrast to the sympathy being attracted by the happenings in the northeast. Aside from the #BringBackOurGirls campaigners who refuse to give up on Borno, our silence and hopelessness are loud enough for even the international community to notice. The difference, if I’ve to spell it out, is: the fringes of the northeast, unlike the Kano city,