In Nigeria`s curious leadership circus, it is not everyday that a public officer, or a government, admits either directly or indirectly that it has failed in some way to guarantee the security and welfare of the citizenry which is constitutionally cast as the primary purpose of government.
In a country where governance has been reduced to grandiloquence, grandstanding and no little graft, even those who put in no shift in public office whatsoever when they have the opportunity to do so, are always at hand with some well-rehearsed argument about how they have done their best. This they rinse and repeat to the exasperation of Nigerians for whom good governance has become a fleeting dream.
A state on a slippery slope.
If in 2009, Boko Haram chose Borno State as the launch pad of its chilling terrorist activities, Zamfara State has since become a strong contender for the capital of terrorism in Nigeria. At the heart of the travails of a state that for so long was content to move at its own pace while wrapping its head around the Nigerian conundrum are bandits who have gone painstaking lengths to unleash raw terror on innocent communities.
In a state renowned for its farming prowess, so much so that its slogan is “Farming is our pride,” when in May, bandits ordered some communities in Maradun Local Government not to take advantage of the raining season and farm, about seven villagers who defied the order were brutally slaughtered.
It tells of the audacity that terror has acquired in Nigeria that criminals can take over communities and make laws for the citizens as if they were a government.
A government on the ropes.
Following recent brutal attacks on the people of Mada town in Gusau Local Government Area of Zamfara State which continued the chain of attacks that have recently convulsed the state, the Zamfara State Governor Bello Matawalle has directed the citizens of the State to get guns and defend themselves while ordering the Commissioner of Police in the state to issue licenses to residents willing and fit to bear arms to protect themselves against armed criminals. He also disclosed plans by the State government to make it easy for those who wish to obtain weapons to defend themselves.
This directive, borne out of desperation, can only mean one thing: that the state government has run out of options in curtailing the deadly surge of terrorist violence across the state.
Fluffed federal feathers.
Of course, as has become the norm in a country whose flawed federalism is as cumbersome as it is burdensome, Matawalles directive has drawn the disputation of no less a security chief that Lucky Irabor, the Chief of Defense staff, who has been at pains to clarify that the Zamfara State Governor has no power to ask the residents of the state to bear arms as Nigerias security forces were on top of the situation.
The Chief of Defence Staff has also gone on to ask the Attorney General of the Federation to set the records straight as to whether or not the Zamfara State Government can ask the citizens of the state to bear arms in defence of their families and farmlands.
A defeaning chorus
It is perhaps a sign of the times calls for self- defence have grown into a defeaning chorus. All over the country, but especially in Zamfara, Kaduna, Benue, Niger, Borno, Sokoto and Yobe States especially, some of Nigerias worst nightmares are coming to life as terrorists operate freely, safe in the knowledge that Nigerias creaking security apparatus cannot check their crimes.
Unsurprisingly, this state of affairs in which it appears that the Nigerian state can no longer sufficiently ward off the many predators preying on its citizens has continued to fuel calls for Nigerians to take up arms and defend themselves in spite of the clear and present danger that a proliferation of arms will worsen what is an already parlous situation.
But can it get any worse? Can Nigeria`s current insecurity nightmare get any worse? Can things possibly get any worse than the fact that from time to time communities are attacked, many slaughtered or abducted, and women raped?
Can it get any worse than the extortionate levies imposed on impoverished communities by criminals who continue to defy the Nigerian government to crush them?
A flailing federation
Nigeria continues to flunk the federalism test over and over again. With each failure, soul searching questions should be asked. But it remains rather unfortunate that those who should ask these soul-searching questions prefer that their egos are massaged, while they prance and preen, projecting themselves as the defenders of a united country.
If Nigeria`s security forces which are increasingly showing that they cannot adequately protect Nigerians are not to subject themselves to further embarrassment with devastating consequences, then perhaps, Nigeria can revisit even more dispassionately the question of state policing.
But in any case, it has become as clear as day that in the face of relentless attacks by those whose enterprise is in the excruciating agony of others, Nigerians must be allowed to play active roles in defending their lives and property.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
