Nigeria has become one long fairytale. Every day it is from one salacious news item to the other until it borders on the ferocious.
The greatest challenge to living in Nigeria today is insecurity. The animals who prowl the unguarded forests of Northern Nigeria are multiplying quickly and amplifying their cruelty. But the greatest danger is that they are getting bored.
They are getting bored with picking off poor, vulnerable villagers, dragging them deep into the forests to mutilate them. They are getting bored with raping women. They are getting bored with the size of their stomping grounds in Northern Nigeria.
So, they are spreading their tentacles and their flanks. They are ruthlessly ambitious. They want more than the North. They dream of trampling an entire country under their terrorist boot heels.
Confronted by a pack of ravenous wolves whose insatiable bloodlust is the stuff of legends, an impotent Nigerian government has developed palpitations and wobbly legs. All it appears to do beyond half-hearted fisticuffs is wave olive branches instead of a ragged red rag in the face of the rugged filth who defy Nigeria’s security, sovereignty, and integrity.
Instead of moving in to decisively crush the terrorists while dismantling the vast network of their supporters and sympathizers, the government treats them with trepidation, preaching reconciliation, rehabilitation, deradicalization, and reintegration.
Recently, when fifty frail elders from Magamin Diddi village in the Magami/Faru Ward of Maradun Local Government Area of Zamfara State gathered scraps of what is left of their courage and dignity to go for what was dubiously called a reconciliation meeting with the bandits, their status swiftly changed from peace veterans to victims before they could even bat an eyelid.
The gifts they bore to appease Nigeria’s insatiable gods of terrorism did not even make the terrorists reject the reconciliation moves and send them away. This is the country Nigeria has become, and these are the consequences of dereliction and corruption it must now contend with.
It is heartbreaking that it is the poorest and most vulnerable of Nigerians who have been left at the mercy of terrorists. They are the ones who bear the brunt of terrorism in Nigeria.
They live in rural areas where they are poor and their lives are bare, usually with no government presence. So they are easy targets for the terrorists who use them as bargaining chips as they haggle for Nigeria’s sovereignty.
The elders in Zamfara must have gone into the bush desperate to negotiate with Nigeria’s newest rulers, and why not? After all, Nigerians, including infants kidnapped from Ariko in Kaduna State since Easter Sunday, have now spent more than a month in captivity.
The terrorists have demanded well over one billion Naira in ransom. Ransom is not forthcoming, and the Nigerian state is at a loss as to how to confront its mortal enemies and free its citizens.
To be a Nigerian living in Nigeria these days is to face an existential dilemma.
Beyond the fog, what is clear is that Nigerians absolutely cannot continue like this.
Kene Obiezu is a lawyer and writer.
