It is a truism that in the present-day Nigeria, human beings are massacred with impunity and properties wasted almost on a daily basis. No day passes without reports of kidnapping, ritual killings, banditry, attacks on state infrastructure, especially police stations and airports, armed robbery, murder and wanton killings.
In recent times, the northwestern state of Kaduna and southeastern state of Anambra have been literally under siege. On March 26, gunmen attacked the Kaduna International Airport killing an official of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) after allegedly storming the runway. Two days later, on March 28, gunmen also launched a deadly attack on a Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) Abuja-Kaduna evening train carrying an estimated 398 passengers with explosives and gunfire. According to reports, the incident left at least eight people dead — among them a young medical doctor Chinelo Megafu and Musa Lawal-Ozigi, secretary-general of the country’s Trade Union Congress — and at least another forty-one hospitalized, while some of the passengers were abducted.
Similarly, the situation in Anambra State, a safe haven for booming businesses, has, for the last few months, been a sad tale. Anambra has become a killing field with the wanton destruction of state institutions and property by gunmen who not only attack politicians, but also attack harmless and unarmed citizens and police officials, as well as set property ablaze.
The sheer brazenness of these attacks throw into relief the present administration’s so far unsuccessful measures to impose some kind of public order even as the country continues to spiral into general lawlessness. As a result, confronted with the reality of a government led by a president who has failed in fulfilling its constitutional mandate to the people, many Nigerians, including some very prominent ones, traumatized by the worsening security challenges, are today advocating self-defence as a counterpoise strategy.
Former Chief of Army Staff and Defence Minister, Theophilus Danjuma was the first among leaders to make the call in 2018. Speaking at the maiden convocation ceremony of the Taraba State University in Jalingo, the Taraba State capital, Danjuma called on the people to “rise and defend themselves against the killers.”
Recently, the call was re-echoed by Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, Ado Doguwa, who, during plenary last week Thursday, when the House was debating the aftermath of the terrorist attack on the Abuja-Kaduna train, said Nigerians should be allowed to bear arms in self-defense considering the deteriorating security situation in the country.
And, he is not alone. Other prominent citizens had previously made similar call. The governor of Katsina State, Aminu Bello Masari had, last December, called on Katsina residents to acquire arms with a view to protecting themselves from incessant attacks by bandits. Furthermore, the governors of Benue and Taraba States, Samuel Ortom and Darius Ishaku respectively, had made similar calls, after security agencies, failed to protect their states from the marauding militias that have been maiming, destroying farms, burning houses, kidnapping for ransom and raping.
Clearly, the call for Nigerians to resort to self-defence is borne out of total frustration; given the calculated and practised indifference of the administration of Muhammadu Buhari to the human carnage currently on-going in Nigeria. The mere fact that this advocacy have arisen is proof that Nigeria currently suffers a squalid anomaly.
Notwithstanding that the call for self-defence is a call for Nigerians to exercise their rights under the constitution and various Penal Codes. The advocacy, however, shows that the government, whose primary obligation it is to secure lives and property, is incapable of doing so: citizens should not be seeking to defend themselves against criminals if there is a capable government.
Rather than such a call, the government and its agencies should strive to live up to their responsibility; instead of relinquishing such premium task to any other individual or body. Especially, for an administration that came into office with the mantra of security as one of its cardinal tenets, there ought to be no excuses for inaction in the face of inescapable challenges of governance.
The quagmire in which insecurity has placed Nigeria as a nation is unquantifiable. It, therefore, calls for so much more to be done by the government — which controls the coercive instruments of the state — in bolstering the security apparatus of each state, and not entirely entrusting the citizenry to defend themselves against well-armed bandits with cudgels and sticks.
Ezinwanne writes from Abuja via ezinwanne.dominion@gmail.com
