It is with utmost sadness and dejection that I write this. The current state of insecurity in Nigeria is extremely pitiable. From the first day of October 2012 (a public holiday and supposedly a day of celebration), the country experienced first degree carnage. Over two dozen students were killed right in their hostels in Mubi, Adamawa state. It may interest you to know that the current Governor is an ex- high ranking military officer. You would have expected several preventive measures in place in that state to secure lives and property. The killers had the luxury of all the time in the world to carry out their massacre. They were in no rush. The incident took some hours, yet no security operative arrived to apprehend and stop the culprits.
About four days later, in Aluu, Port Harcourt, Rivers state, the most inhumane incident occurred. Four young men were murdered in cold blood. I think everyone needs to see that video to have a clue about what those young men went through before their death. That was simply savagery. It was barbaric and gruesome. I couldn’t believe humans will inflict that level of hurt on their fellow humans until I saw the video. Even animals should not be killed that way. No human or even animal should be killed in that manner. The most pernicious and wickedest (pardon my grammar) men (the likes of Adolf Hilter and Stalin who killed millions of people) were not killed and did not die in that way or anything similar.
Death by hanging or a firing squad was far better than the treatment (or mistreatment) meted out on those boys. As I understand in major religions in the world, killing of even animals (including for consumption) should be swift. It must not be slow, painful and agonising. One of the conditions is that a sharp blade should be used in slaughtering of the animal. You can now imagine what it will be like killing a human being with a blunt stick.
A man in that video repeatedly hit the young men on the head with a club with shouts from the crowd saying ‘u never die?’. I found the people of that town (at least from the video) very callous. How come none of the spectators could stop the killing ? They could have said ‘enough is enough’ and saved those boys from dying, but they kept on watching. I don’t think extra-judicial killing under any circumstance is acceptable. I am of the opinion that even if that man who held the club and hit the victims on the head is eventually found, he should be properly tried and his human rights should be fully respected.
I understand that there is a lot of frustration, sorrow and anger in the country (of course from the masses). But the stupidest thing is to take it all out on your fellow masses. You may want to remember that most of the elite children are not in public schools. They school abroad or in private universities where their paths may never cross with that of an ordinary Nigerian.
These same people (masses) will roll out drums and praises if any of the present or former public officials or politicians arrive their communities. They will offer them front row seats in the religious places; confer on them with chieftaincy titles and honours.
A few days after the Aluu incident, there was yet again more carnage. The joint task force (JTF) ransacked a town and killed over 30 civilians and burnt houses in Maiduguri, Borno State because one or two of their colleagues were killed by a bomb planted on the road. This was widely reported by different media outlets. Bodies were identified and counted at the hospitals. But of course, in accordance with Nigerian track-record, the JTF denied going on a revenge mission or killing inhabitants of the town.
All three of the above events occurred within nine days. This again highlights and brings to the fore the issue of (in)security in the country. We are being deafened with talks of all types of transformation (health, female gender, agriculture, aviation etc) but security. I believe action speaks louder than voice. Those talks are not needed; the works should speak for themselves. I think the security system in the country needs to be overhauled (sorry, I would not use the word transformed because it has been over abused in this part of the world).
For the first time, I agreed with the senate president (David Mark) who recently just backed the call for state police. He had formerly rejected that notion. I am not sure if there is any country with very good security in the world that has a centralised police force. Centralisation brings about bureaucracy. Bureaucracy in this sense is complex, rigid, frustrating, corrupt and very inefficient. Security of life and property is too important an issue to be made complex. It has to be as simple as possible with little or no bottlenecks. The pros of state police are far more than the cons. I will not delve into the issue of state police in this write-up.
After the killings, as usual the authorities came out and read out condolence messages and finished by saying the perpetrators will be brought to book. I think they can and should do better than this. Authorities should be proactive and not reactive. Nigerian authorities do not seem to know this; in fact they are not even reactive in several cases. Of what use is the police who seem to most times arrive just in time to pick up dead bodies?
All three cases enumerated above could and should have been forestalled. They did not happen within seconds, they took several hours. Should the police authorities not be able to deploy their resources to any part of the country in a matter of minutes ? Definitely, some people were found wanting and heads should roll. I think the appropriate authority to blame here is the agency in charge of security, that is the Nigerian police. I think the police, especially the divisional police officers of those areas should be made to account for what happened.
It is their duty to make sure criminal activities don’t take place any where. Obviously they failed. As for the JTF, I think it is wrong to have military men taking charge of internal security under any circumstance especially for long periods. Whenever I see military men clad in their full gears on the streets, I always wonder if the country was at war. I remember when the London riots in 2011 that spread to most parts of the United Kingdom seriously overwhelmed the police. The then prime minister offered to support the police by deploying the military to help quell the riots. The police commissioner replied with a resounding ‘No’. He said he would rather be the last and only police officer on the streets than allow the military to come out of the barracks. Of course, the riots were eventually stopped by the police themselves.
Now there is a lesson to be learnt from the Aluu incident. I think there is a consensus amongst most watchers of that worrisome video that the spectators and even the cameramen should also be blamed for the killing of those young men even though they (the spectators) did not wield clubs or hit the victims. Most people agree that merely watching someone being clubbed to death is wrong.
They believe the spectators should have intervened and stopped the perpetrators. I want to use this as an analogy with Nigeria. Those boys being beaten, clubbed and burnt are the state resources (natural & mineral resources, taxes, funds etc), the perpetrators holding the sticks are our political office holders and public officials, while the spectators are me, you and every other ordinary Nigerian. If the spectators had stopped the perpetrators, those boys will be alive today; likewise if Nigerians stop the public officials and demand accountability from them, our resources would not go into private pockets. Nigerians could do these by coming out en masse to vote (don’t say my vote will not count), demonstrate zero tolerance for corruption and stop praising and worshiping public officials. If, we learn from this Aluu incident, Nigeria would be a much better place.
You can discuss with the writer on twitter @beeshaiban
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