The most debilitating of evils beset men and nations in the exultance that trails their periods of victory. The joy of the exploit of such moments exposes people who do not employ wisdom to two ultimately destructive tendencies.
The first is that they forget where they are coming from, the mistakes that they made yesterday and the weight of repercussions that they suffered from those errors. They move on without any lessons learnt and dap themselves in revelries of their new, if you like, hard won victory. They lose their guard, let their hair down and get vulnerable and penetrable.
In addition, men, when they get the upper hand, momentarily get busy with what they consider to be the important things without attending to the little things. Unfortunately, when such little things are ignored, they gain space; they fester and like little foxes which spoil the vine, little things, when ignored, congregate to destroy the essence of men and nations, unless heed is expeditiously taken.
This is the light in which I see the Nigerian government’s handling of recent agitations led by the Movement for the Actualisation of Sovereign State of Biafra and the Indigenous People of Biafra. The protests, which have now been suspended, followed the arrest and continuous detention of London-based Nnamdi Kanu.
Kanu, Director of Radio Biafra, a propaganda organ for the actualisation of the state of Biafra in reaction to what they refer to as the marginalisation of the South-Eastern part of the country, was arrested in Lagos on October 14, 2015 shortly after he arrived the country from his UK base. Reports indicate that an Abuja Chief Magistrate Court granted him bail a few days after this but the Department of State Services refused to release him.
To legalise its continuous hold on “the mantle carrier”, as some of his supporters call him, the DSS quickly approached the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja for an exparte order to keep Kanu in detention for 90 days pending investigations.
So, Kanu has been in custody for close to 60 days, he has not been allowed to enjoy the bail reportedly granted him by the Magistrate Court even as the case against him is going at a snail’s pace as is customary with law suits in Nigeria.
In reaction to his plight, MASSOB and IPOB mobilised for protests in states in the South-East and South-South. They have recorded surprising successes and on one or two occasions, these otherwise peaceful protests turned violent with innocent citizens suffering untold hardships. You then wonder the wisdom behind government’s handling of Kanu and his Radio Biafra?
Before July 2015 for example, very little was known about Radio Biafra and its self-declared director. Although the frequency had been in the news on occasions in the past two years, it did not appear that anyone paid much attention to it until the National Broadcasting Commission claimed to have successfully jammed its signals. The immediate past Permanent Secretary in the Federal Minister of Information, Ms. Yemi Esan, made the assertion just while leaving a meeting where she briefed President Muhammadu Buhari on the activities of her ministry. It was therefore, not difficult to assume that the declaration had the seal of the President.
Unfortunately, Radio Biafra continued with its programming hours after the claim by the Federal Government. And things have never remained the same. The hitherto unknown radio gained global attention and more listenership in the eastern part of Nigeria where it daily spewed propaganda against the government of the country. Announcing the attempt to stop the unregistered radio station from broadcasting is the first misstep of the government in my opinion, as the failure of the attempt unwittingly validated the platform.
In addition, granted that Kanu, from available reports, broadcast a lot of falsehood and bile about Nigeria, (which he is alleged to refer to as a zoo) and its government, the latter made no attempt to attenuate the damage caused for the months. And Kanu, a young man who may have desired nothing more than the attention that the government is currently giving him by holding him and slamming him with charges bordering on terrorism, is having his time in the sun! Now, Kanu and mission have gained traction with media organisations all over the world. He has also gained more supporters in the past few weeks than he garnered in 24 months! The Buhari administration has simply provided free publicity services for Kanu and the Biafra idea.
And this brings recollections of the trajectory of the terrorist organisation that is now known as Boko Haram. First, the Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad, as Boko Haram was known then, was neglected and treated with kid gloves until the uprising between the organisation and security forces in 2009 reportedly left about 1000 people dead. And then the leader, Mohammed Yusuf, mysteriously died in police custody. He was believed to have been summarily executed and Nigeria has never been the same.
Unfortunately, people hardly learn from history. If they did, government would not treat the current agitations with the kind of threats that we have had from the army authorities as well as the police in the past couple of weeks. And now, the arrest of Kanu, who has suddenly become a cult hero amongst the people who possibly always shared his sentiment but not his ideology.
The wisdom I thought Nigeria would gain from Boko Haram’s gradual descent into an annihilative mode, is to attend to citizens’ discontent with the passion of a father. This is more so because the cry for marginalisation and threats of repercussions are not peculiar to any one ethnic group. Just four years ago, we had some people from the north threatening to make the country ungovernable.
And in the case of President Buhari, the Igbo nation really does have reasons to worry about a President who once indicated that people who did not vote for him were not likely to get as much of his attention as those who voted for him. They knew that the gauntlet was theirs to take up. This is why Buhari has to go the extra mile to ensure that all ethnic groups in Nigeria are fairly treated.
But in consonance with our tentative attitude to issues, Nigerians, have after the success of the 2015 elections, forgotten the much advertised United States advisory on the dangers that Nigeria might become a failed state in 2015.
A 2012 report by some experts on sub-Saharan Africa, who came together under the auspices of America’s National Intelligence Council suggested that: “… The most important would be the outright collapse of Nigeria. While currently Nigeria’s leaders are locked in a bad marriage that all dislike but dare not leave, there are possibilities that could disrupt the precarious equilibrium in Abuja… Indeed, an overwhelming majority of terrorism in Africa will be caused by indigenous groups waging war against their own or neighbouring governments or against other population groups, defined by religion or ethnicity.”
Like they were oblivious of this scenario painting, Nigerian leaders have in the wake of the success of the last elections retreated into their ethnic and religious cocoons, promoting primordial interest and only mouthing national concern.
While President Buhari is pursuing his interest in fighting corruption and setting Nigeria back on the path of sustainable growth as he has promised, one equally important pole of his reform should be resolving the national question. And forestalling insurgencies like the one that has ravaged the northeastern part of the country for the better part of the last decade.
Employing a sledge hammer to crush demands for self-determination as the Biafran situation currently presents, would only exacerbate the situation. A country should listen to the grievances of its people and ensure that their children are able to go to school, that their roads and bridges are built, that the best is made of their natural and human resources and that they are seen to be fairly treated in the scheme of things. This appears to be the only way to save Nigeria from being plunged into another insurgency, one which would be too much for it to endure.
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