All is not well with Nigeria. These are, indeed, desperate times for the country. The signs are ominous. And many concerned Nigerians have been sounding the alarm, warning that the country is at a major crossroads at this moment in its history and needs urgent settlement before the tinder littering the landscape explodes into conflagration.
These warnings have followed the avalanche of criticisms against the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, by ordinary Nigerians but especially by very prominent citizens. All the critics have highlighted the divisions among Nigerians and lack of national cohesion arising from poor management of internal political dynamics, saying the country has never been more divided than now.
They have also drawn attention to widespread poverty across the land, insecurity, poor economic management, nepotism, gross dereliction of duty, condoning (or outright encouragement) of misdeed, lack of progress and hope for the future, and widening inequality– all consequences of poor performance of the present Federal Government.
The critics have also berated those calling on Buhari to run for a second term in office and advised the president to, in the interest of the country, shelve his second term ambition and honourably retire when his tenure terminates in 2019.
But, more importantly, the critics have condemned outright the government’s poor handling of the menace of the rampaging herdsmen who have unleashed terror on communities across the land but mostly in the North-Central states of the country.
Though the Presidency and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) have always risen in defence for every criticism, keen observers say these defences hold no water as the failure of the Buhari administration stares everyone in the face.
The dust raised by the recent call by Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma, a retired Army General and former defence minister, on Nigerians to defend themselves against marauding herdsmen is yet to settle.
Barely a week ago, while speaking at the maiden convocation ceremony of Taraba State University in Jalingo, the state capital, Danjuma said Nigerians must rise and defend themselves or continue to suffer casualties. He spoke against the backdrop of recent violent attacks by killer herdsmen, who are reported to have taken over 1,351 lives in the first 10 weeks of 2018 alone.
“You must rise to protect yourselves from these people; if you depend on the armed forces to protect you, you will all die. I ask all of you to be on the alert and defend your country, defend your state,” he admonished.
“This ethnic cleansing must stop in Taraba, and it must stop in Nigeria. These killers have been protected by the military; they cover them and you must be watchful to guide and protect yourselves because you have no other place to go,” Danjuma warned, saying “the ethnic cleansing must stop now otherwise Somalia will be a child’s play”.
Danjuma may have just upped the ante by calling on Nigerians to rise in self-defence, but he merely followed the pattern of previous critics.
It was former President Olusegun Obasanjo that set the pace early in the year. In a special press statement in January, Obasanjo likened “the situation of the country” today to “what and where we were in at the beginning of this democratic dispensation in 1999” when the nation was tottering, “people were hopelessly groping in the dark” without a hope for a bright future, and “it was all a dark cloud politically, economically and socially”.
While giving Buhari some credit in the fight against corruption and insurgency, Obasanjo lambasted him for the poor handling of the killer herdsmen issue, failure to accept responsibility, and for nepotism.
“The herdsmen/crop farmers’ issue is being wittingly or unwittingly allowed to turn sour and messy. It is no credit to the Federal Government that the herdsmen rampage continues with careless abandon and without finding an effective solution to it,” Obasanjo said.
“The issue of herdsmen/crop farmers’ dichotomy should not be left on the political platform of blame game; the Federal Government must take the lead in bringing about solution that protects life and properties of herdsmen and crop farmers alike and for them to live amicably in the same community,” he said.
Obasanjo pointed out three other areas where Buhari had failed – “nepotic deployment bordering on clannishness and inability to bring discipline to bear on errant members of his nepotic court”, which he said has grave consequences on performance of Buhari’s government to the detriment of the nation; “poor understanding of the dynamics of internal politics”, which “has led to wittingly or unwittingly making the nation more divided and inequality has widened and become more pronounced” and “also has effect on general national security”; and “passing the buck” and “not accepting one’s own responsibility”.
He advised Buhari, irrespective of his health status, to “neither over-push his luck nor overtax the patience and tolerance of Nigerians for him” but “to consider a deserved rest at this point in time and at this age”.
Obasanjo’s call was followed by that of former military President Ibrahim Babangida, who asked Nigerians to cooperate with President Buhari until his tenure ends but vote for a new generation of leaders in 2019.
“In the past few months also, I have taken time to reflect on a number of issues plaguing the country. I get frightened by their dimensions. I get worried by their colourations. I get perplexed by their gory themes. From Southern Kaduna to Taraba State, from Benue State to Rivers, from Edo State to Zamfara, it has been a theatre of blood with cake of crimson. In Dansadau in Zamfara State recently, North-West of Nigeria, over 200 souls were wasted for no justifiable reason. The pogrom in Benue state has left me wondering if truly this is the same country some of us fought to keep together,” Babangida said in a press statement by Kassim Afegbua, his spokesman.
“I am alarmed by the amount of blood-letting across the land. Nigeria is now being described as a land where blood flows like river, where tears have refused to dry up. Almost on a daily basis, we are both mourning and grieving, and oftentimes left helpless by the sophistication of crimes. The Boko Haram challenge has remained unabated even though there has been commendable effort by government to maximally downgrade them. I will professionally advise that the battle be taken to the inner fortress of Sambisa Forest rather than responding to the insurgents’ ambushes from time to time,” he said.
Babangida said the unchecked activities of the herdsmen continued to raise doubt on the capacity of the Buhari government to handle with dispatch security concerns that continue to threaten our dear nation – “suicide bombings, kidnappings, armed banditry, ethnic clashes and other divisive tendencies”.
“We need to bring different actors to the roundtable. Government must generate platform to interact and dialogue on the issues with a view to finding permanent solutions to the crises. The festering nature of this crisis is an inelegant testimony to the sharp divisions and polarisations that exist across the country. For example, this is not the first time herdsmen engage in pastoral nomadism but the anger in the land is suggestive of the absence of mutual love and togetherness that once defined our nationality. We must collectively rise up to the occasion and do something urgently to arrest this drift. If left unchecked, it portends danger to our collective existence as one nation bound by common destiny; and may snowball into another internecine warfare that would not be good for nation-building,” he said.
Earlier in January, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, in an essay entitled ‘Impunity Rides Again’, criticised President Buhari for the failure of his government to act decisively against Fulani herdsmen whom, he said, “have declared war against the nation, and their weapon is undiluted terror”.
Soyinka said the government’s reluctance to act decisively and punish the killer herdsmen contradicts its swiftness in declaring the separatist group, Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a terrorist organisation, despite the fact that IPOB is not known to have perpetrated widespread killings like the Fulani herdsmen.
“[How] do we categorise Myeti? How do we assess a mental state that cannot distinguish between a stolen cow – which is always recoverable – and human life, which is not. Villages have been depopulated far wider than those outside their operational zones can conceive. They swoop on sleeping settlements, kill and strut. They glory in their seeming supremacy. Cocoa farmers do not kill when there is a cocoa blight. Rice farmers, cassava and tomato farmers do not burn,” Soyinka said.
Other prominent voices have since followed suit, including Anthony Cardinal Okogie, Emeritus Archbishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of Lagos, who described Buhari’s second term ambition as an insult on Nigerians; Archbishop Emmanuel Chukwuma, Anglican Bishop of Enugu Diocese, who asked Buhari to perish the idea of returning to power in 2019 in order to save the country from destruction, among others.
Okogie said the recent terrorist acts of herdsmen and the way the Federal Government has reacted bear a disturbing resemblance to the issue of dramatized parade of suspects.
“The laws of this country were broken by those who butchered citizens of Nigeria the way they would butcher their cows. First, the reactions of leaders of Miyetti Allah, by way of self-implication, did little to hide the identity of the criminals. Secondly, government officials came up with contradictory explanations. Some government officials blamed it on the fact that the herdsmen were not treated as Nigerian brothers. We were told the herdsmen acted in such unparalleled barbarism because they were not accommodated by their fellow Nigerians. We were treated to the tale that the herdsmen committed such heinous crimes because of a law made by a state government. We were told, by the Inspector General of Police that the killings were consequences of communal clashes. In other words, clashes among communities of Nigerians,” Okogie said.
When the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) met with President Buhari at the State House, Abuja in February, it was to draw his attention to everything that was wrong in the country.
“There is too much suffering in the country: poverty, hunger, joblessness, insecurity, violence, fear… the list is endless. Our beloved country appears to be under siege. Many negative forces seem to be keeping a stranglehold on the population, especially the weaker and defenceless ones. There is a feeling of hopelessness across the country. Our youths are restive and many of them have taken to hard drugs, cultism and other forms of violent crime, while many have become victims of human trafficking. The nation is nervous,” the Bishops said in a message signed by Most Rev. Dr. Ignatius Kaigama, Archbishop of Jos and President, CBCN, and Most Rev. Dr. William Avenya, Bishop of Gboko and Secretary, CBCN.
They urged the government to take very seriously its primary responsibility of protecting the lives and property of its citizens and ensure that such mindless killings do not reoccur.
“Herdsmen may be under pressure to save their livestock and economy but this is never to be done at the expense of other people’s lives and means of livelihood. We would like to add our voice to those of other well-meaning Nigerians who insist that a better alternative to open grazing should be sought rather than introducing ‘cattle colonies’ in the country. While thinking of how best to help cattle owners establish ranches, government should equally have plans to help the other farmers whose produce is essential for our survival as a nation,” the Bishops said.
Analysts say rather than live in denial; the Buhari government should look into the criticisms and see what it can do to remedy them before things get completely out of hand.
CHUKS OLUIGBO
