By Abuchi Obiora
Suddenly, the information hit the newsstands as newspapers carried the headline: “Northerners Begin Online Campaign, Demand Buhari’s Resignation over Worsening Insecurity Under his watch.” This was followed by street protests in the northern part of Nigeria and Abuja with the protesters carrying different placards and banners with different inscriptions under the common aegis of #NorthIsBleeding.
My comment here on the #NorthIsBleeding protests will not dwell on the undoutable and undeniable need and necessity to kick out a non-performing government as the protesters demanded but on the weird timing and lack of spontaneity which usually has always been the hallmark of all people-driven, mass-oriented protests in the history of political activism in Nigeria.
Though the people who staged the protest may feign ignorance of the reasons why northern Nigeria is bleeding, every observer of events and politics of Nigeria understands why northern Nigeria is bleeding. These reasons are very obvious, almost visible to the blind and audible to the deaf. Some of these reasons are what I am going to explore today, because they are so many, enough to make a book of several volumes. I am, therefore, going to look at the subject of why northern Nigeria is bleeding quintessentially. Before I get into examining the reasons why northern Nigeria is bleeding, let me first speculate on what the people who staged the protests mean by the term ‘North is Bleeding’.
Since the inauguration of the government of President Mohammadu Buhari, there have been heightened activities of the ISWAP, the Boko Haram and the Bandits in northern Nigeria. In fairness to the incumbent government of President Mohammadu Buhari, there had been periodical assaults by the ISWAP and the Boko Haram. These assaults were rife during the tenor of the immediate past President, Goodluck Jonathan, though they were isolated within the north eastern part of Nigeria.
Conversely, banditry in northern Nigeria derives a peculiar origin – an origin which has been linked to the discordant tones in the post-election management of mercenaries brought from outside the shores of Nigeria for the purpose of securing victory for the incumbent APC government at the centre.
It must however be noted that before the present ugly security situation in the north, northern Nigerian had always bled. Northern Nigeria had long been bleeding for more than twenty six years now, gushing out the blood of northern Nigerian Christians. If anybody decides to challenge my claim here, that person must know that I have several documents to this effect issued by several Human Right groups and international organizations including the United Nations on the genocide and bleeding of northern Nigerian Christians for a period close to thirty years now. These documented evidence buttress my claim.
Meanwhile, for the purpose of this work, let me quickly gloss over this injustice on northern Nigerian Christians wherefore it seems that some blood is redder than the others – wherefore the gushing blood of northern Nigerian Christians who have for almost three decades been mowed down in either their homes, or their farms by marauding occupationist Fulani headsmen, have not been enough to attract the attention of the conveners of #NorthIsBleeding, to stage protests in the northern part of Nigeria and Abuja.
Though the aforementioned injustice is well known and advertised around Nigeria and the international community, let me continue to ignore it, pretending it never existed and gloss over it again because the conveners of #NorthIsBleeding protests did not hide the reasons of the activities of the bandits in northern Nigeria as the driving factor for their protests, in spite of the fact that the activities of the Fulani herdsmen predates that of the bandits in the region.
It is surprising that the conveners of #NorthIsBleeding protests never noticed the dangerous activities of Fulani herdsmen in northern Nigeria which obviously pointed to a calculated hideous plan to dispossess both the core northern and middle belt northern Christians of their ancestral homes for a period approaching thirty years. Well, let us leave this different reason of the Fulani Muslim herdsmen bleeding the blood of northern Nigeria Christians and get back to how the conveners of #NorthIsBleeding protests want us to see the bleeding of northern Nigeria.
The question is: why is northern Nigeria bleeding? The primary reason why northern Nigeria is bleeding is because of the feudalism influence of the governments in northern Nigeria which have been founded on the feudalist foundation of the emerging emirates that displaced the well-established indigenous Hausa kingdoms which existed in northern Nigeria before the successful Jihadist expedition of Sheik Othman Dan Fodio in 1804.
This expedition overthrew the sprawling civilization of the old empires of Kano, Rano, Bornu, etc., in northern Nigeria, destroying the vibrant commerce and local hides and skin and other allied industries of the once industrious and highly conservative indigenous Hausa natives. The trans-Saharan traders of these kingdoms cringed by the heavy taxation levied on the indigenous Hausa natives by the colonialist Jihadist expansionist immigrants of 1804. These Jihadists worked in concert with pockets of their Muslim Fulani tribesmen that settled earlier in that part of the country to subjugate and conquer the indigenous Hausa natives. Before anybody develops goose pimples, this is history, and can be found in any good history book.
These empires were replaced by emirates that heavily taxed the natives destroying the incentive of the natives to work and in the process breeding what has been known to be, and called ‘Talakawas’ in northern Nigeria. This and the generational understanding of governments in northern Nigeria which tilts to the original tenets and precepts of feudalism in that part of the country has bred subsequent generations of uncared and un-catered for youths who found solace in expression of bottled-up anger as a result of being abandoned in a country blessed with immense natural and human resources.
The next reason why northern Nigeria is bleeding is the reason of the downward trend in the economy and the economic distortions thereof, which makes it difficult for Nigerian youths to secure employment in endeavors that sustain their lives. This is not limited to the north, but applies also to other parts of Nigeria. I discussed this issue in the work titled, “Is Nigeria A Failed State?” which was published in the Kaleidoscope.
The third reason why northern Nigeria is bleeding is the literal handover of that region by the security agents to the bandits who seem to outwit the combined security networks of the security operatives through calculated and sustained attacks causing mayhem in that region. While the government and the security agencies are accused of playing politics with national security, introducing nepotism, tribalism, and protecting the interest of one of the two major religions practiced in Nigeria in the fight against terrorism, bandits in northern Nigeria have ensured that the north bled unceasingly.
The truth is that not only northern Nigeria is bleeding. Nigeria as a country is bleeding, and profusely, too. All around Nigeria, there have been something like the peace of the graveyard while the country bleeds. While the bandits and Boko Haram kill and maim Nigerians in the northern part of the country, Amnesty International recently published that not less than 167 Nigerians of the south East extraction were extra-judicially killed by the agents of the government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria between January and June 2021. This figure excludes so many hundreds of young Igbo men who were captured in their ancestral homes and paraded as the dreaded Unknown Gun Men within the same period. These were unsung cases of flesh of Nigerians bleeding blood which did not attract the attention of the conveners of #NorthIsBleeding.
And now the ultimate case! This ultimate case is the profuse bleeding of southern Nigerian youths at the hands of the now cosmetically-disbanded SARS (Special Anti-Robbery Squad). Sometime ago, precisely on October 20, 2020, youths of Southern Nigeria spontaneously arose to protest the long-time inhuman brutal and extra-judicial killings of southern Nigerian youths by the officers of the Nigerian Police Special Squad known as SARS. While these protests lasted, the northern Nigerian youths, most of who came out to campaign that north is bleeding, stayed put in their respective homes and endeavors.
Perhaps, the blood of southern Nigerian youths who died in their hundreds as a result of police brutality did not have blue colour in their pigments. Their blood, most probably, were not queenly or princely, being possibly, at worst, blood of slaves or at best, blood of second-class and conquered citizens of Nigeria. While the south burnt during the #EndSARS campaign and protests, these northern youths were brainwashed to believe that the #EndSARS protests were staged and meant to unseat their brother, the executive President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria who is a northern Muslim.
An Igbo proverb says that the slave who rejoices because he escaped being buried with his master, mocks and puts tantrums on his colleagues who perished with their deceased master, has forgotten that the new master will be required to be buried with the living slaves. So it was that the northern Nigerian youths forgot that insecurity in Nigeria was not an exclusive problem of the southern youths till the bandits, brave as never before, having been emboldened by the government’s inability to curtail their operations, knocked brazenly harder on their doors.
It is an irony of life that these same youths from northern Nigeria were later to see and bear the brunt of what southern Nigerian youths have seen when the southern youths demanded during the #EndSARS campaign that the President must resign. Yes, it is a greater irony that these northern Nigerian youths of the #NorthIsBleeding protests also demanded the resignation of the President whom they called all sorts of names claiming in many of the placards that the man was sleeping while the north bled.
This issue brings me to the vulnerability of the camp of Nigerian youths who can easily be swayed with tribe, ethnicity and religion. In those #NorthIsBleeding protests, I observed several placards announcing something like “North/South Alliance” and understood very well that such impromptu creativity was the handiwork of some political jobbers and shenanigans in professional activism who are only and always in the business of activism to be settled by any incumbent government. My understanding is that nothing like a “North/South Alliance” exists in Nigeria to challenge the audacity and impartiality of a non-performing government whose Chief Executive Officer has met all constitutional requirements to be chased out of office through impeachment by the combined action of both the Green and Red Chambers of the National Assembly.
The fact that there have been deadly onslaughts against the bandits shortly after #NorthIsBleeding protests makes so much statement about how Nigeria works. Additional to the victories against the terrorists in northern Nigeria after the #NorthIsBleeding protests is the declaration by the Federal Government of Nigeria of bandits as terrorists on Wednesday 5th January, 2022. All these positive efforts by the government may be because recently, a former APC governorship contender in Zamfara state was killed by the bandits. Nigerian Military Generals have also been victims of bandits’ attacks. As a matter of fact, the bandits have knocked so hard that northern politicians and top businessmen can no longer visit their country homes. Now, all the ‘sacred’ grounds hitherto thought to have been impregnable to, and insulated from the bandits’ attacks, including Sokoto, have been penetrated by the bandits.
Evidently, the government has just began to take security issues seriously in Nigeria because the blue blood of the slave masters is no more spared by the bandits. What a country!.
Why has the security agencies waited this long to unleash mayhem on the camps of these bandits, these harbingers of terror and merchants of death? In the interview which he granted the channels television station, Sheik Ahmad Abubakar Gumi, an Islamic Cleric, Scholar and former military officer with the rank of Captain in the Nigeria Defence Academy, who by dint of his former position as a former military officer, should be in the know of certain classified security matters, insisted that the government knows when, where and how it can track down the bandits if it wanted to do so.
To buttress Sheik Gumi’s claim, I am recording here that it was once reported that the man at the helms of affairs of the aims-bearing Nigerian Customs came out publicly to announce to Nigerians that he gave bandits who waylaid them on the road some bags of rice to allow his men pass through the bandits cordon in a sovereign country where he would have used his position to mobilize the security forces to trash the bandits.
With this type of action from this highly placed government official, Sheik Gumi has been proven right. The government decided to act now because the bandits have stepped on the toes of the princes, princesses, queens and kings in Nigeria, nay the slave masters. What a country! At last, the government has confirmed to Nigerians that all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others” (Courtesy, the book “Animal Farm” by George Orwell).
Much as Nigerians condemn the posture taken by Sheik Gumi in addressing the issue of banditry in Nigeria, I see a point in the presentation of the Sheik who must be talking based on his deep knowledge of the origin of banditry in Nigeria. People may not believe me, but I see the Sheik as a soft-headed father with great sense of humanity and not an accomplice in banditry. This much shows in his aura as one observes him during the interviews he granted. In his recommendation to address banditry in Nigeria, the Sheik seem to be a man who would want a perfect society where people should honor their promises – even to the people they recruited to do their hatchet jobs who later became the foundation of the sprawling activities of banditry in northern Nigeria. Make no mistake about my position, I am talking only of my own analysis of the situation, without regard to any other thing the society may hold against the Sheik.
The killing of bandits alone as once recommended by the governor of Kaduna state will not give permanent solution to the issue of insecurity in northern Nigeria, more so as these bandits have aligned their operations to those of the ISWAP and the Boko Haram. My opinion is that if one of the incumbent government’s strategies to win election has eventually become sour grapes in their mouths, they must find other ways to clean the Augean stable. The government should articulate a three pronged programme of persuasion, subtle force, and fierce force, packed up with a stand-by welfare programme for rehabilitation. But please, there should not be any absorption of repentant bandits into the Nigerian security forces. I assume like Sheik Gumi told Nigerians, that the government knows the bandits because you cannot actually eat your cake and have it.
Secondly, governments in northern Nigeria must begin to discard their feudalist perception of governance which has made the whole north something like a glorified serfdom. Governments and individuals in the north must begin to plan for northern youths, especially those less privileged ones marooned in the vast desert of Nigerian’s economic woes, in such manners the other tribes like the Igbos who adopt their youths and train them up as apprentices through “Nwaboy” discipleship chain, or the Yoruba who send their children or wards to schools through family or community scholarship programs do.
Politicians, businessmen and elites in northern Nigeria must take joint responsibility in making northern Nigerian communities safe through creating opportunities for northern Nigerian youths to engage in legitimate endeavors, otherwise, the region will continue to breed hardened youths who will continue to terrorize them and bleed the north in different ways.
ABUCHI OBIORA
FOR:
Global Upfront Newspapers
REMARK:
Read Similar Post by ABUCHI OBIORA as archives in:
The Kaleidoscope