Political Class And Conspiracy Of Silence

By Muiz Banire SAN

The security situation in Nigeria has become wholly intractable.
What started as an isolated case of insurgency in some parts of
Borno State has become a national malaise rapidly expanding and
threatening the fragile fabric of the nation called Nigeria.

The human losses at present have befuddled our capacity to take
records and there is hardly an accurate account of people already
consumed by the violence of the men of the gun. Thousands of lives
have been snuffed out by Boko Haram bombs and guns in the
northeastern parts of the country. Suddenly, the North-West caught
the fever of banditry, which is operating in a most deadly fashion,
leaving behind sorrow, tears and blood everywhere the unscrupulous
young agents of death have chosen to carry out their nefarious
businesses. Katsina State, the home state of the President, has not
been spared the horrors of banditry, killing and kidnap.

The volumes of death, maiming and rape of women by violent
herders have left the whole of the North Central states of Niger,
Nasarawa and Benue a wide expanse of gnashing teeth and fearsome
living. The macabre of death enacted by the orgy of violence by
bandits in Niger State has divided the state under two
sovereignties as the victims of banditry and Boko Haram campaigns
have submitted to the regime of the men of the underworld in order
to purchase their peace. Boko Haram now levies and collects taxes
from the hapless citizens whose fate is better procured by
self-help rather than the constitutional protection that the
government ought to guarantee. Bandits have made Zamfara a deadly
zone and the allures of gold that the government allowed to be
exploited illegally have become a source of destruction and wanton
loss of life and property. Kaduna State under El-Rufai has become a
theatre of war.

Thousands of lives have been lost in the internecine conflicts
between the southern and northern Kaduna characterized by
ethno-religious dimensions. Now the bandits have made a beautiful
Kaduna another home of kidnapping and huge ransom collection. The
raging fire of destruction and devastation has spread to the
otherwise peaceful areas of Oyo State as the whole of the divisions
of Ibarapaland have been invaded by people referred to as foreign
Fulani herders who are in search of land to graze, a home to call
their own notwithstanding that any part they visit is not terra
nullius, not hitherto occupied by anybody. Forceful eviction of the
traditional and original landowners, killing and maiming of
dissenting indigenes, kidnapping and laying of siege have combined
to make the food-producing parts of Oyo State a place of
terror.

The dark and lonely forests of Ondo and Ekiti states where D.O.
Fagunwa created the entertaining fables of brave hunters of Igbo
Elegbeje, Igbo Eledumare and Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmale have
today become real forests of horrors as gun-wielding herdsmen have
replaced the gnomes, leprechauns and pterodactyls of Fagunwa’s
fertile imagination. The nobility associated with the sojourn of
the ancient characters of the creative mind of the writer is,
however, foreign to the current occupiers of the forests as their
articles of trade are kidnapping for ransom, killing and maiming of
their victims. The Niger Delta with its characteristic violence
birthed under the struggle for resource control in the fate of
environmental degradation, has assumed another dimension as the
lords of today are those youths born into squalor and violence in
the ’90s and who have been deprived of any meaningful future by the
terrible system that sees nothing good in good governance. The
whole of the South-East today has bolstered itself ready for
another civil war in the secessionist struggles of Indigeneous
People of Biafra (IPOB) whose agitations have assumed a more
dangerous dimension. The whole of Nigeria is witnessing all sorts
of violent agitations and destructive elimination by dangerous
fighters of no noble cause.

In the midst of the conflagration, a new business was born: mass
abduction of schoolgirls and boys. Starting with Chibok, later
Dapchi and Kagara, the records of mass kidnap today have assumed an
unprecedented dimension. Schoolchildren and adults are kidnapped in
their hundreds and ransoms are collected by bandits in millions of
naira and dollars. A most conniving government has given fillip to
all these undesirable elements by paying ransom to purchase freedom
for victims.

A poor herder making a few thousands of naira monthly in the
business of herding cattle from Kano to Lagos has discovered a more
profitable venture in kidnap of Nigerians, terrorizing them until
their relatives or the government pay. Thousands of lives have been
snuffed out in their glory when these rapacious elements lay siege
on our roads and force hapless citizens into forests. The
government complains that the violent and dangerous herders who
graze animals openly and kill the farm owners are foreign Fulani
herders and yet it is not ready to enforce the criminal laws
against these foreigners. This lends credence to the accusation
that the government of President Muhammadu Buhari is pro-Fulani and
is only trying to eliminate other tribes to create a huge
territorial home for Fulani invaders across Africa. The long
silence from the President and his occasional warnings to bandits
and Boko Haram elements paint the picture of a eunuch who only
gives verbal expressions to his potency to impress women.

The worst aspect of it all is the average demented Nigerian
politician who carries on campaigning for power grab in 2023 as if
the whole security crisis in the nation is a tea party. We have
seen them junketing from one local government to another mouthing
their insane promises and wild projections. They keep quiet
whenever the horrors being perpetrated by Fulani herders are being
discussed. They maintain a tied tongue anytime their opinions would
conflict with the sentiments of the Presidency. Their people are
daily subjected to bloodshed and devastations and yet the Nigerian
politician is insouciant in his reckless ambition to govern a
burning entity. They are keeping quiet, except for a few whose
conscience would not allow them to give further inordinate
protection to party loyalty and collective insanity. It was quite
impressive to hear Smart Adeyemi, the senator representing the Kogi
West Senatorial District, the other day lamenting the security
situation in the country. His genuine emotions could not contain
his manliness when he burst out in tears calling on his comrades on
the floor of the Senate to rise up in defence of the land. Ali
Ndume has been heard on a number of occasions condemning the
conspiracy of government and the elite in what is otherwise a
consuming conflagration that is herding us towards Somalia, Liberia
and Rwanda. Instead of the various political gladiators coming
together to find a solution to the challenge of this vanishing
country, they are busy strategizing over election into an office
that is appearing to be a mirage. The elite in Nigeria, the civil
society inclusive, have given all manner of justification in
defence of Buhari’s government, from the sensible to the
ridiculous.

At first, the body language of the President was dangled as the
magic wand that would cure Nigeria of all ailments. Later they
relied on the ignorance of the President and the man too was never
aware of any evil happening around him. An excuse at a time was the
incompetence and corruption of President Goodluck Jonathan’s
government, as if that was not what prompted us to elect Buhari.
The elite community and the political class has forgotten that when
Nigeria finally descends into Rwanda, they themselves would be
dislodged from their Don Quixote horse and be made to worship the
miscreants that would be in charge of the various streets. Many
believe they would run away from Nigeria with their families,
forgetting that no one can carry both linear and extended families
into safety when the threatening war finally begins.

The sentiments against the Igbo have made many to see the demand
for Biafra as a ranting of some lunatics. They have forgotten that
to still such voices of secession, we need to have restructured the
country genuinely to cater for all interests and the present
government is too docile and criminally conniving to save the
fragile entity that is about to explode.

The politicians have been carrying on as if nothing mattered
except securing a place at the top; 2023 is too much of a paradise
to jeopardize by the present hell of calling for the country to be
preserved. One wonders if there would be anything to govern when
Nigeria finally descends into the steaming cauldron of civil war
with its unceasingly flowing currency of bloodshed. One wonders if
there would be a President effectively in charge of different parts
of the country under various warlords the number of which is
sufficient in Nigeria of today to make every street a sovereign
state under its own government of hoodlums and miscreants. The
multitudes of thugs we have produced, sufficiently armed and
deployed in the past to unsettle democratic process through rigging
and violence, are enough to make Rwanda a child’s play. The last
EndSARS protest with the aftermath takeover by vagrants in Lagos
and many other cities is a pointer to the lugubrious imminence of
government of the thugs, by the thugs and for the thugs.

This is the time for the Nigerian politicians and elder
statesmen to rise up. This is the time to call a spade a spade and
let the devil both home and abroad be shamed. This is the time for
the civil society to jettison its silly and empty sloganeering of
fighting corruption in its roundtable approach and call for the
government to do something serious about the insecurity in the
land. While politicians can afford to run away, the question is
where will you run to when the crisis finally embraces the entire
land. Few peaceful spots in Nigeria that have not been effectively
visited by these so-called foreign invaders are already under the
spy gaze of their agents who are only waiting for the call to
action.

Nigerian politicians in their elite conspiracy have been in
soulful silence of an irresponsible egoism. They dare not voice out
their concerns, they do not want to be regarded as an enemy of the
government. Remember that when the chips are down, when the die is
finally cast, the money you have kept, the offices you currently
occupy, the privileges you fear to lose will not be available to
save you and the nation. The time to speak out is now.

By Muiz Banire SAN

The security situation in Nigeria has become wholly intractable.
What started as an isolated case of insurgency in some parts of
Borno State has become a national malaise rapidly expanding and
threatening the fragile fabric of the nation called Nigeria.

The human losses at present have befuddled our capacity to take
records and there is hardly an accurate account of people already
consumed by the violence of the men of the gun. Thousands of lives
have been snuffed out by Boko Haram bombs and guns in the
northeastern parts of the country. Suddenly, the North-West caught
the fever of banditry, which is operating in a most deadly fashion,
leaving behind sorrow, tears and blood everywhere the unscrupulous
young agents of death have chosen to carry out their nefarious
businesses. Katsina State, the home state of the President, has not
been spared the horrors of banditry, killing and kidnap.

The volumes of death, maiming and rape of women by violent
herders have left the whole of the North Central states of Niger,
Nasarawa and Benue a wide expanse of gnashing teeth and fearsome
living. The macabre of death enacted by the orgy of violence by
bandits in Niger State has divided the state under two
sovereignties as the victims of banditry and Boko Haram campaigns
have submitted to the regime of the men of the underworld in order
to purchase their peace. Boko Haram now levies and collects taxes
from the hapless citizens whose fate is better procured by
self-help rather than the constitutional protection that the
government ought to guarantee. Bandits have made Zamfara a deadly
zone and the allures of gold that the government allowed to be
exploited illegally have become a source of destruction and wanton
loss of life and property. Kaduna State under El-Rufai has become a
theatre of war.

Thousands of lives have been lost in the internecine conflicts
between the southern and northern Kaduna characterized by
ethno-religious dimensions. Now the bandits have made a beautiful
Kaduna another home of kidnapping and huge ransom collection. The
raging fire of destruction and devastation has spread to the
otherwise peaceful areas of Oyo State as the whole of the divisions
of Ibarapaland have been invaded by people referred to as foreign
Fulani herders who are in search of land to graze, a home to call
their own notwithstanding that any part they visit is not terra
nullius, not hitherto occupied by anybody. Forceful eviction of the
traditional and original landowners, killing and maiming of
dissenting indigenes, kidnapping and laying of siege have combined
to make the food-producing parts of Oyo State a place of
terror.

The dark and lonely forests of Ondo and Ekiti states where D.O.
Fagunwa created the entertaining fables of brave hunters of Igbo
Elegbeje, Igbo Eledumare and Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmale have
today become real forests of horrors as gun-wielding herdsmen have
replaced the gnomes, leprechauns and pterodactyls of Fagunwa’s
fertile imagination. The nobility associated with the sojourn of
the ancient characters of the creative mind of the writer is,
however, foreign to the current occupiers of the forests as their
articles of trade are kidnapping for ransom, killing and maiming of
their victims. The Niger Delta with its characteristic violence
birthed under the struggle for resource control in the fate of
environmental degradation, has assumed another dimension as the
lords of today are those youths born into squalor and violence in
the ’90s and who have been deprived of any meaningful future by the
terrible system that sees nothing good in good governance. The
whole of the South-East today has bolstered itself ready for
another civil war in the secessionist struggles of Indigeneous
People of Biafra (IPOB) whose agitations have assumed a more
dangerous dimension. The whole of Nigeria is witnessing all sorts
of violent agitations and destructive elimination by dangerous
fighters of no noble cause.

In the midst of the conflagration, a new business was born: mass
abduction of schoolgirls and boys. Starting with Chibok, later
Dapchi and Kagara, the records of mass kidnap today have assumed an
unprecedented dimension. Schoolchildren and adults are kidnapped in
their hundreds and ransoms are collected by bandits in millions of
naira and dollars. A most conniving government has given fillip to
all these undesirable elements by paying ransom to purchase freedom
for victims.

A poor herder making a few thousands of naira monthly in the
business of herding cattle from Kano to Lagos has discovered a more
profitable venture in kidnap of Nigerians, terrorizing them until
their relatives or the government pay. Thousands of lives have been
snuffed out in their glory when these rapacious elements lay siege
on our roads and force hapless citizens into forests. The
government complains that the violent and dangerous herders who
graze animals openly and kill the farm owners are foreign Fulani
herders and yet it is not ready to enforce the criminal laws
against these foreigners. This lends credence to the accusation
that the government of President Muhammadu Buhari is pro-Fulani and
is only trying to eliminate other tribes to create a huge
territorial home for Fulani invaders across Africa. The long
silence from the President and his occasional warnings to bandits
and Boko Haram elements paint the picture of a eunuch who only
gives verbal expressions to his potency to impress women.

The worst aspect of it all is the average demented Nigerian
politician who carries on campaigning for power grab in 2023 as if
the whole security crisis in the nation is a tea party. We have
seen them junketing from one local government to another mouthing
their insane promises and wild projections. They keep quiet
whenever the horrors being perpetrated by Fulani herders are being
discussed. They maintain a tied tongue anytime their opinions would
conflict with the sentiments of the Presidency. Their people are
daily subjected to bloodshed and devastations and yet the Nigerian
politician is insouciant in his reckless ambition to govern a
burning entity. They are keeping quiet, except for a few whose
conscience would not allow them to give further inordinate
protection to party loyalty and collective insanity. It was quite
impressive to hear Smart Adeyemi, the senator representing the Kogi
West Senatorial District, the other day lamenting the security
situation in the country. His genuine emotions could not contain
his manliness when he burst out in tears calling on his comrades on
the floor of the Senate to rise up in defence of the land. Ali
Ndume has been heard on a number of occasions condemning the
conspiracy of government and the elite in what is otherwise a
consuming conflagration that is herding us towards Somalia, Liberia
and Rwanda. Instead of the various political gladiators coming
together to find a solution to the challenge of this vanishing
country, they are busy strategizing over election into an office
that is appearing to be a mirage. The elite in Nigeria, the civil
society inclusive, have given all manner of justification in
defence of Buhari’s government, from the sensible to the
ridiculous.

At first, the body language of the President was dangled as the
magic wand that would cure Nigeria of all ailments. Later they
relied on the ignorance of the President and the man too was never
aware of any evil happening around him. An excuse at a time was the
incompetence and corruption of President Goodluck Jonathan’s
government, as if that was not what prompted us to elect Buhari.
The elite community and the political class has forgotten that when
Nigeria finally descends into Rwanda, they themselves would be
dislodged from their Don Quixote horse and be made to worship the
miscreants that would be in charge of the various streets. Many
believe they would run away from Nigeria with their families,
forgetting that no one can carry both linear and extended families
into safety when the threatening war finally begins.

The sentiments against the Igbo have made many to see the demand
for Biafra as a ranting of some lunatics. They have forgotten that
to still such voices of secession, we need to have restructured the
country genuinely to cater for all interests and the present
government is too docile and criminally conniving to save the
fragile entity that is about to explode.

The politicians have been carrying on as if nothing mattered
except securing a place at the top; 2023 is too much of a paradise
to jeopardize by the present hell of calling for the country to be
preserved. One wonders if there would be anything to govern when
Nigeria finally descends into the steaming cauldron of civil war
with its unceasingly flowing currency of bloodshed. One wonders if
there would be a President effectively in charge of different parts
of the country under various warlords the number of which is
sufficient in Nigeria of today to make every street a sovereign
state under its own government of hoodlums and miscreants. The
multitudes of thugs we have produced, sufficiently armed and
deployed in the past to unsettle democratic process through rigging
and violence, are enough to make Rwanda a child’s play. The last
EndSARS protest with the aftermath takeover by vagrants in Lagos
and many other cities is a pointer to the lugubrious imminence of
government of the thugs, by the thugs and for the thugs.

This is the time for the Nigerian politicians and elder
statesmen to rise up. This is the time to call a spade a spade and
let the devil both home and abroad be shamed. This is the time for
the civil society to jettison its silly and empty sloganeering of
fighting corruption in its roundtable approach and call for the
government to do something serious about the insecurity in the
land. While politicians can afford to run away, the question is
where will you run to when the crisis finally embraces the entire
land. Few peaceful spots in Nigeria that have not been effectively
visited by these so-called foreign invaders are already under the
spy gaze of their agents who are only waiting for the call to
action.

Nigerian politicians in their elite conspiracy have been in
soulful silence of an irresponsible egoism. They dare not voice out
their concerns, they do not want to be regarded as an enemy of the
government. Remember that when the chips are down, when the die is
finally cast, the money you have kept, the offices you currently
occupy, the privileges you fear to lose will not be available to
save you and the nation. The time to speak out is now.