You will likely wonder at the obvious contradiction in the oxymoron of “unarmed gunmen.” Well, it’s just a way of saying that, on a deathly prowl in Nigeria of today, are individuals carrying arms without legal or state authorisation.
To put it in a more explicit, though obverse, way, while legitimate bearers of arms are armed (what else?) by government, there are some armed men, like cattle herders, who bear arms without government approval, even if it looks like they enjoy government indulgence.
There is another violent group, also without label, but is causing violence, death, and deathly attacks on the Federal Government security facilities, like police stations, prisons, as well as installations of sub-national facilities in the South-East of Nigeria.
The mother of them all are Boko Haram insurgents who conduct raids even into military barracks in the North-East Nigeria to steal food, supplies, guns, guntrucks, rocket launchers, and other ammos.
Unfortunately, other players in this vicious phylum of renegades are political thugs, serving desperate politicians, assassins, armed robbers, bandits, kidnappers, ritualists and separatists, who seek to exit Nigeria.
Those with a higher sense of humour and mischief have invented other phrases, such as “Unknown gunmen” and “Ungunned known men,” to describe the generally unidentifiable individuals who make life difficult for other Nigerians. Unfortunately, there is an impression that the state cannot restrain most violent non-state actors.
The domestic war (it’s not yet a civil war) going on in Imo State in Southeastern Nigeria between federal troops and the Eastern Security Network, the military wing of banned separatist Indigenous People of Biafra, is increasingly looking like the use of state violence to frustrate agitation for self-determination by a section of the Igbo nation in a certain language.
The question, what is government going to do to disarm these groups of people, needs an urgent answer from government, if Nigeria will not be carved out among armed warlords who will dictate the quality of lives within the territories they control by force of illegitimate arms.
It will be a shame if Nigeria were to go under the knife, as the entire Africa did during the 1884-1885 Berlin Conference. But this time, the warlords may just be extremely brutal, in the order of war loads who wrought genocide in Rwanda.
They will not be “benign” like the British whom Frederick Lugard, first Governor-General of Nigeria, swore only joined the Continental Powers of Europe to take possession of African peoples and their lands just “to assist in putting an end to the overseas slave trade.”
Just last week, a gang of bandits overwhelmed policemen, killing one officer, in an eight-hour gun duel and made away with several students, teachers and others from the Federal Government College in Birnin Yauri, Kebbi State.
It took the Joint Task Force of Operation Hadari Daji of the North-East Nigeria to confront the abductors. Three of the students were killed, as well as one of the bandits, but happily eight students and two of the teachers were freed by the task force operatives.
But the narrative is slightly being altered by the Kebbi State Governor Atiku Bagudu, who seems to be attributing total credit for the rescues only to a certain 22-man Anti-Terrorism Task Force. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if you give the child to the breast or the breast to the child, as long as the child is breastfed.
One can only hope that the abductors will not kill the other abductees still in captivity, or begin to molest the females amongst them, as they continue to stick to their demand for N150 million ransom. The prospects are harsh and scary.
Their leader, a well-known villain who roams the bushes like Robin Hood, is so brazen that he comes out in the open to demand a swap of the abductees for his men who are in the custody of the state.
Meanwhile, students and teachers of Salihu Tanko Islamic School in Tegina, Niger State, remain abductees of the bandits who abducted them. The Niger State Governor, Abubakar Sani-Bello, is unable to do much besides expressing sympathy to the families of the abductees.
Residents of Lagos, the state said to be the safest in Nigeria, (but is ironically the second most stressful city in the world), are experiencing attacks in their homes and in traffic on their way back home nearly every day. If the governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, is aware of this, he hasn’t effectively rallied his forces to eliminate the danger.
This situation is attributed to massive unemployment of youths, many of whom even have higher educational qualifications, but cannot find jobs because of dysfunctional macroeconomic policies of all strata of government in Nigeria.
How those in government, running the economy, cannot link job losses and tanking economy to insecurity, both directly proportional to each other, in a bizarre chicken-and-egg loop, is difficult to understand. Many farmers have abandoned their duty posts.
Yahoo scams and advance free fraud are no longer very lucrative. The “Magas,” or the victims, don’t even have the money that anybody can scam anymore. Poverty has gone round every neighbourhood.
If you watched the movie, “Hotel Rwanda,” which tells of how ethnic division led to the genocide (of the Hutu against the Tutsi of Rwanda) and murder of more than 800,000 victims, in just 100 days, you will vociferously join those who want the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), to act swiftly to prevent a looming bloodshed.
Things may escalate further if the Ijaw National Congress, who thinks the Federal Government is taking the silence of the Ijaw for granted as Nigeria is experiencing insecurity, injustice, nepotism, banditry and other existential problems.
The recent television interviews granted by the President ahead of the June 12, 2021 Democracy Day celebration showed a man whose mind is alert and can take necessary steps to address the situation – if he wants to.
Well-meaning Nigerians must therefore ask him to walk his talk. Not many Nigerians take his tough talk, asking the military to double down on anyone unlawfully carrying an AK-47 assault rifle, because of his perceived tacit encouragement of herdsmen who harm their compatriots.
The Yoruba would say all you need tell a Strongman to redress anomalies in his country is no more than half-a-word. It becomes whole as he reflects upon it. Though the English phrase, a word is enough for the wise, doesn’t quite say it, it is in the ballpark.
The footnote is that as Boko Haram insurgents have reportedly elected a new leader to replace Abubakar Shekau, whom rival Islamic State of West Africa Province claims to have killed himself to avoid the humiliation of being taken prisoner, one wonders how much of Shekau’s territory is ceded to ISWAP.
Though the unstated reason for the President’s visit to the Northeast theatre of war cannot be too far from raising the morale of the officers and men, as well as to assure the civilians of their safety, some still wonder what the visit was all about.
After the President’s visit, what Nigerians expected was an upgrade of military action, not an appeal by War Commander, Brigadier General Eyitayo, asking hardboiled insurgents, ideological fighters who do not buckle easily, to surrender their guns and embrace peace.
