“52 people die in suicide attack in…100 others injured“… the kind of headlines we see every other day in our national dailies and blogs and these days we just scroll through and look for more ‘juicy’ stories.
Pre-civilian political era, these kinds of everyday killings might have been linked to the Military Head who, of course, most times has no sense of democracy – in terms of free speech or open confrontation.
But eighteen years down the civilian line, it has become a daily phenomenon (I stand corrected) that a number of innocent citizens die from suicide bombs, attacks, clashes, political violence and so on.
When President Muhammadu Buhari started his campaign in the Goodluck Jonathan era, he relied on the security challenges, among other things, to garner votes and he eventually won but has security really improved three years after?
Recent months have seen a proliferation of senseless acts of terrorism. From attacks on military and para-military men at checkpoints to attacks on barracks housing these same men, to suicide bombings at local areas like marketplaces, and so on. Extremists who want to make a greater impression are turning to the more lethal weapons that technology has made available.
Some have argued that some of these acts are not perpetuated by extremists but by agents of ethnic cleansing just as the former Minister of Defence, Lieutenant-General Theophilus Danjuma said:
In this state [Taraba] and of course in all the riverine states of Nigeria, we must stop it. Every one of us must rise up. The Armed Forces are not neutral. They collude with the bandits that kill people, kill Nigerians. They facilitate their movement. They cover them.
If you are depending on the Armed Forces to stop the killings, you will all die one by one. This ethnic cleansing must stop in Taraba State and in all the states of Nigeria. Otherwise, Somalia will be a child’s play.
Time has come for people to find other alternatives to defend themselves.
They added that:
How can you preside over the affairs of a Nation when you cannot protect the life of an average Nigerian? The Fulani herdsmen are killing innocent members of the public with impunity and yet your government is on a daily basis defending them, coming up different ridiculous excuses.
As a Yoruba pressure group, we are appealing to Nigerians especially people of Benue, Kogi and some parts of the country which have been experiencing recurrent killings by Fulani herdsmen to find alternative ways of defending themselves.
Sometimes, we are of the opinion that these killings happen far away from our comfort zone, so why should we bother? Other times, we display obvious laxity when we should be regularly confronting the relevant authorities on why these things still happen despite all these promises, monies and press releases that the culprits have been ‘technically defeated’.
In other words, when it does not directly concern us, we simply ‘look away’ and pretend to admit that these things actually affect every single citizen living in that space. How do I even begin to explain how the death of one single Nigerian affects the whole of Nigeria?
The increase in the frequency of killings in the country can definitely, believe it or not, affect the psyche. Security is one the most basic human needs and such occurrences erases people’s ability to trust that they will relatively be safe when they go out of their homes – sometimes, the distrust extends to their own family members. Many people have understandably become more hypervigilant, less trusting of strangers, more isolative, more easily startled and even more paranoid in spaces they once associated with safety and a positive sense of community.
It cannot be then overstated that as much as we begin to make draws conclusions that such killings might not end, in the light of the government’s lackadaisical attitude towards resolving the crises, we should also go back to our personal journals and write this down: “Do we really think we should stop demanding that our leaders should be more proactive than reactive in terms of these killings?” Find the core problem and provide lasting solutions to them!
We cannot even start a conversation on what trends on social media these days…
