In the very popular Bob Marley song, ‘Redemption Song,’ the lyrics goes thus: “How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look? “
If you substitute the word prophets for masses in the music maestro’s scintillatingly and solemnly rendered lamentation song, he might have been singing about Nigeria of today, even though the music was sang and released in June 1980, about 40 years ago.
The reason why the song resonates in Nigeria is due to the fact that a similar circumstance of life at its most horrific level, slavery and colonialism, which prompted Marley to sing this song of agony, is here with us in Nigeria.
Our country has been transformed into a killing field. Unlike white oppression, which Marley was wailing about, the misery is not being brought upon us by external forces, but by our own people with extremist views. They are at war with society and have committed atrocities that debase human lives and demonstrate a complete loss of value of life.
In his song, Bob Marley also wailed about prophets being killed. The current reality in Nigeria is that the innocent and hard working masses are being butchered in droves in the past 10 years or thereabouts of the malaise being brought upon us. And it appears as if the outlaws – terrorists, bandits, known and unknown gun men are getting bolder in their evil enterprise as they are currently setting their eyes on leaders (of the political hue), some of who they have killed.
The evidence of the ugly phenomenon that is evolving is the recent assassination of a commissioner and a member of the cabinet of Katsina State Government, Dr Rabe Nasir Bindawa, a fortnight ago.
Barely a week after that incident, a lawmaker from Kaduna State, Mr Rilwanu Gadagau, was also murdered by terrorists as he travelled between Kaduna to Zaria. As the Yuletide is now upon us, many politicians living in the relative safety of Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, will be going back to meet with the long suffering members of their constituencies in the same places where intense acts of terrorism is being unleashed on the defenceless masses.
In the light of the two recent killings of members of the executive and legislative arms of government in both Katsina and Kaduna States highlighted earlier, it is not beyond the marauding outlaws to seize or kill a state governor very soon.
The suspicion that politicians are being targeted is not being made up by this writer. The Directorate of State Services, DSS recently issued the alert via a press release.
The merchants of death, for want of a better adjective to describe them, may have failed in previous attempts to take the lives of governors Babagana Umara Zulum and Samuel Ortom of Borno and Benue States, respectively. Both governors only managed to escaped, by the whiskers, from the dragnets of the bandits now officially branded terrorists by the authorities in Abuja.
But the terrorists are getting bolder.
Having failed to kidnap or kill a state governor or other high ranking politicians via ambush on the road or while attending a public event , as was the case of Prof Chukwuma Soludo, governor-elect of Anambra State, whose police aides were killed during an attack on him and Governor Hope Uzodinma of lmo State whose country home was recently razed down by arsonists, who were after his life, the out laws may even attack a Governor’s Lodge or Government House in the North or South- East.
The reasoning above is not far-fetched. It is underscored by the fact that if they succeeded in attacking the Nigerian Defense Academy, the premier military training institution in Nigeria that is supposed to be as impregnable as Fort Knox and abducted a serving Army officer after killing a few other residents, why would they not attack a Government House or Governor’s Lodge? These terrorists have reportedly shot down a Nigerian Air Force fighter jet, from which a brave pilot managed to return safely to base after a search and rescue team scouted the forests for him.
The Katsina State Governor and Chairman, North West Governors’ Forum, Aminu Bello Masari, who in the face of unbridled killing, raping and maiming of defenceless and innocent indigenes of his state by terrorists, had advised his compatriots to take up arms and defend themselves against further attacks from terrorists.
Since the bearing of firearms by non-members of the armed forces was against the laws of our country, there was public condemnation of the proposition by the governor, who was obviously compelled to make the statement out of desperation and a burning desire to save his people in the absence of an effective action by the armed forces to protect the people’s lives and properties.
Following the renewed onslaught against residents of Katsina by the terrorists, Masari has again doubled down on his call on citizens to bear arms in self-defence to curb the overwhelming security threat, particularly in northern Nigeria, and which is also rapidly taking shape in southeastern Nigeria.
Masari’s counterpart in Sokoto State, Governor, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, has also, perhaps arising from a sense of desperation after 23 (by another account, the casualty number is higher) innocent passengers in a commercial bus were shot dead by terrorists and their bodies set ablaze inside the same vehicle in which they were traveling, told a delegation from the presidency comprising security personnel that government should bring back South African mercenaries, who former President Goodluck Jonathan had contracted to flush out Boko Haram insurgents from the Sambisa forest where they first made their home.
In the same bid to combat terrorism, but from a different perspective, Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje of Kano State, who identified reserved forests in the northern part of the country as home to the criminal elements, also called for the reclaiming of forests by government through what he described as full ownership. Ganduje’s proposition is in tandem with the Sultan of Sokoto, His Eminence, Saad Abubakar’s suggestion that the military should make deliberate efforts to occupy all the forests so that they would cease to be havens for terrorists. This position reinforces my plea in a previous media intervention that all the forests across the country should be converted to farms, not only for the purpose of preventing terrorists from making them their permanent hideouts, but also as a verifiable source of food for the masses. The forests should be actively cultivated to feed the nation.
To be continued.
- ONYIBE, a public policy analyst and former commissioner in Delta State, contributed this article from Lagos
