In Nigeria, the litany of lamentation goes on and on sung from the lacerated lips of those who have seen Nigeria become a loser, a sore one at that. Nigeria`s journey to the lurch it is in today has been a slow but eventful one. It has been spirited. There has been nothing lazy about it. It has not been enervating, instead, it has been energetic. It has not been done in a mist of mistakes, instead it has been most methodical.
In the animal kingdom, lizards nod for a variety of reasons. It could be to attract mates, to show dominance, to mark territory. It is only the reptiles that can explain the repertoire of their nods and why they are so relentless at it.
In Nigeria`s halls of power, it is a lot of nods going into the process of governance; a lot of salutations that is sycophancy, a lot of assent that is acquiescence and with embarrassingly little dissent that would pass off as constructive disagreements.
Under our federalism, flawed as it is, while the principle of separation of powers has practically shrunk into its shell, that of checks at balances continues to be cut as confetti for complicit cordiality. Thus, the lone voices that cried in the wilderness of the 8th National Assembly have long retreated into silence replaced by sychophancy in the 9th. Meanwhile the judiciary still smarting from the brutal decapitation of its head in 2019 remains a walking corpse. Together, they have formed the lounge of nodding lizards that nod at Nigeria`s obsequies.
In 2015, as the PDPs puzzlingly poor performance in power unfathomably nudged the APC and Mr. Muhammadu Buhari towards Aso Rock on the shoulders of professional image launderers. Even then, those Nigerians who count among historys brightest students had the presence of mind to ask if the leopard had changed, or could, change its spots, and If the severity of military khakis could ever be replaced by the diplomacy of democratic gaffes?
Many Nigerians gave them only a short shrift then, putting their faith in his effusive promises and the mechanics of a teenage democracy.
The question dismissed then as paranoia has well turned out to be a prophecy as Nigerians have had to shield their eyes from the garish adaptations of the chameleons in the corridors of power. It has not exactly been a naked iron fist as the outcry will be deafening and crippling. But it has been a naked fist nonetheless only tempered by the many silk gloves that democracy distributes. The ferocity, severity and efficacy of the iron fist lives on in the lounge of lizards that continue to nod at practically every executive action.
While the procession of forced cheers and false camaraderie goes on in Abuja, ruthless terrorists have set up quasi governments in many parts of the country. Under their draconian codes, their immediate subjects who include some of Nigeria`s poorest continue to be crushed like fern and fauna under the bootheels of a fleeing gang of thieves.
Over sixty passengers picked off a Kaduna-bound train on March 28,2022 recently clocked a full month in the lair of terrorists whose central demand remains that their members held by the government be used in exchange. Without the brightness of the full moon, terror in Nigeria is calmly coming full circle.
The Nigeria Army has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at the terrorists operating in Nigeria. In fact, the heroic fortitude shown by the men many of them barely in their twenties in the face of the barrage of terrorist fire from superior weapons have gone a long way to make Nigerians forget the wounds the military inflicted on the soul of the country for a cumulative period of almost thirty years.
But like men, their mortality has remained immutable. Practically every day, they continue to count bodies, bodies they recognize as their own. That they have continued to battle away at what is a malevolent force tells of the sheer strength of the Nigerian spirit.
As the fight against terror has stretched improbably into the night, the Nigerian military has improbably held out an olive branch, a kind of sop to the terrorists that if they lay down their arms, they will be offered a new lease of life. Many of them, drunk with the blood of innocent Nigerians, have predictably taken up the offer which from the first day has whipped up a cyclone of controversy.
Borno State in northeast Nigeria served as the launch pad of Boko Haram just over a decade ago. The state has also been at the receiving end of most of its ruthlessness. Thus, many Nigerians were caught off guard when Mr. Babagana Zulum the Borno State Governor recently announced in faraway United Kingdom, that over 35,000 repentant Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) terrorists were being disarmed for reintegration into communities.
Many Nigerian jaws dropped at the sheer number. And mention of communities. What communities? The same communities they had decimated with slaughter, rapes and burning? Without being properly cured of their leprosy, should lepers be allowed to take leave of their colony and live in the community of the uninfected simply because the community squirts the milk of human kindness? We do not think so. Nigerians cannot fully see the wood for the trees in the whole idea of reintegrating supposedly repentant terrorists into communities they had gleefully decimated.
The many contradictions in Nigeria have become condiments in the recipe of chaos that is scalding the country in many places. Terrorism is changing the way families live in Nigeria and even the experience children have of Nigeria
Since terror is now affecting and eroding practically every aspect of life in Nigeria, the national response which has been tepid at best must now become more forceful, for in Igbo folklore, if the bird learns to fly without perching, the hunter will learn to shoot without missing.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
