President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s most cherished national anthem, which he eagerly signed into law on May 29, 2024, has a profound message in the second stanza. It reads: “Our flag shall be a symbol that truth and justice reign… To hand on to our children; A banner without stain.”
The President always emphasised the last line -to hand to our children a banner without stain. He likes those lines. Sadly, the banner -the flag- which is ‘a symbol that truth and justice reign,’ has been badly stained by the blood of Nigerians who desire to live and die peacefully, not to have life brutally and criminally snuffed out of them by their fellow citizens. That is the new normal in Nigeria, a country where leaders talk about justice, as campaign promises, but will never lift a feather to deliver justice to the victim, the accused and the society.
As it now is, the reality would seem to be that Nigeria’s best day would be one which passes without report of blood spill in any part of its territory. It says something to us -that Nigeria has returned to the Hobbesian state of nature where life is brutish, nasty and short; where life is freely taken at will; where surviving a 24-hour cycle is at the mercy of a gunman who is absolutely certain that he will neither be apprehended nor have justice delivered to him even when nabbed. Nigeria has now descended into a geographical space where every man lives at the mercy of one gun-toting criminal gang or the other. It is either a crime gang christened bandits is waiting for you somewhere in the north western part of Nigeria, or terrorists from Boko Haram and ISWAP groups are firing at you for game in the north-eastern part, or you have brutally mindless kidnap gangs in the south eastern part waiting to kidnap you, collect millions in ransom from your family and still determine if you are good enough to still see your loved ones ever again. You may also be lucky to escape criminal gangs operating as armed robbers and kidnappers in the south western and north central regions of the country.
In all these, armed criminal gangs operate with brazen impunity knowing that law enforcement is not the least perturbed about what happens to the citizens in so far as political leaders, top business leaders, and some privileged few with legs in the corridors of powers, are secured by dozens of armed law enforcement officials, leaving the general population at the mercy of blood-sucking gangs. This new summary of Nigeria is depressing.
This has become the new Nigerian reality under the watch of leaders who swore on oath to secure lives and property and guarantee free movement of citizens across the country. This blood shedding happens because government has carelessly demonstrated its unwillingness to rein in marauding armed groups. With government lethargy, gunmen who run riot and pull the trigger on unarmed citizens, are told that they can have their holiday as they desire, and run amok over the citizens who look up to government for protection. And this vicious cycle will continue until government executes its side of the social contract with the citizens, and in response to its constitutional function of safeguarding the lives and property of citizenry. That exactly was the idea behind government. As Hobbes argued in ‘The Leviathan’, people freely submit their will to a group of people called government in exchange for security and good order of society. Without this, society will be run on the framework of survival of the fittest. But the situation here is that while people submitted their will, freely to government, the government grabbed this will and ignored the people not minding what happens next so far as they (government) are secured.
The insensitivity of government and its lethargic response to killings across Nigeria, led to the Uromi killings. Government’s refusal to punish perpetrators of violent crime across the country fuelled the Bokkos, Plateau State and Yobe massacres. Will it end with these? It is doubtful because the government has openly demonstrated its unwillingness to show leadership in putting an end to these situations. As a matter of fact, the basic reason vigilante group have sprung up, in almost every state of the federation, is government’s demonstrated failure to secure the citizens.
A mental run down on the policing structure in your local government area, especially, those in rural communities, will bring to consciousness the reality of the failure and the existential danger that rural communities face. Except for police formations in urban local government headquarters, which may have some equipment to work with, those in the rural communities are stripped of necessary equipment to work with. Majority do not even have operational vehicles and cannot boast of adequate manpower to operate effectively. The problem lies here. If the Police was effective, perhaps, the police, not vigilante, would have apprehended the ‘hunters’ at Uromi and properly managed the situation. Perhaps too, the police would have been able to nip the Bokkos massacre. But, a country that has consistently ignored the need to equip its police to become very effective, and rather depend on its military to execute ordinary police function, is only postponing the evil day. It will explode someday.
President Tinubu’s lethargy is managing insecurity across Nigeria, comes on the heels of Muhammadu Buhari’s classic indifference to the menace of the gun-toting terrorists. It seems that while Buhari extended fraternal courtesy to criminal gangs across the country, Tinubu is pleased to give them a soothing massage. This is not what Nigerians bargained for when they freely submitted their will to government. As it is, when friends sit out, they reminisce on the good old days of road travel across Nigeria. Those were days when one could drive from Port Harcourt to Maiduguri, stopping at some major towns to eat and refresh without fear of being attacked or molested. Those were days when Nigerians treated travellers who sojourn in their communities for rest, with great care making sure h/she is comfortable. Those were the days when Nigerians demonstrated that “though tongue and tribe differ,” in brotherhood they stood. Regrettably, the past is now better than our present.
Can we return to that past? That is, assuming, but not conceding, that the future is terribly bleak. The future will remain bleak and frightful if law enforcement in Nigeria keeps attending to crime looking at the ethnicity of the criminal. When you take the ethnic group of perpetrators of crime into consideration before deciding if a crime was committed, you legitimise crime and challenge not-favoured ethnic groups to do their worse. And, their response could be devastating. Guess that is what we have now developed for Nigeria and that is basic reason that blood is flowing freely.
Those who have healed their societies always delivered justice to the accused and the victim. For them justice is an instrument of healing. They made very good use of the blindfold on the lady of justice. But in Nigeria, the lady of justice is not blind. She looks at your face and takes your ethnicity and religion into consideration before delivering justice. That is why our flag has become a symbol that truth and justice do not dwell here. However, there could be a way out: How about a new legislation liberalising gun ownership and usage? Perhaps, that will go a long way in empowering the people to defend themselves as government demonstrates its absence. We have gotten to that state of existence.
