I will not watch the videos of the reported genocide that took place in Uromi, in which travellers were lynched on suspicion of being terrorists and kidnappers. The reports emanating from the media are gruesome enough. The incident dehumanises us all as Nigerians and is yet another commentary on our country’s rapid descent into barbarism. It is sad. My unqualified sympathies go to the victims of this mob justice and the other sundry victims of mob justice all over our country.
It is fitting that the entire country has been united in its aversion to such mob justice, evidenced by the condemnations that have been expressed. This is as it should be. Mob lynchings of fellow citizens ought to belong in ancient history.
Incidentally, as usual, the government, whose complicity and ineptitude have led to this pathetic situation in Nigeria, has been busy in its well-oiled machinations to deflect blame for the development. Vigilante groups have quickly disbanded. Police commissioners have been redeployed. And there have been well-commended visits by the Edo State Governor to his Kano counterpart as well as bereaved families with promises of compensation.
The Uromi incident, however, ought to help redirect our attention as a country to the sundry contradictions that collectively act as the “cause” of the growing epidemic of insecurity in our country (the “effect”). It is to these contradictions, these deliberate failings by the government, that Nigeria ought to target its most vociferous outrage.
One of the most glaring contradictions is that the biggest perpetrators of terrorism and kidnappings in Nigeria are known and reachable. In 2022, at least two media organisations, the BBC (“The Bandit Warlords of Zamfara”) and Daily Trust (“Nigeria’s Banditry, the Inside Story”) conducted discrete investigations into banditry in northern Nigeria. In the course of these investigations, they conducted one-on-one interviews with terrorist leaders. Mere privately financed journalists were able to track and engage the leadership of various terrorist gangs holding huge swathes of Nigeria for ransom. For whatever reason, however, the reaction of the Federal Government at the time was to impose a fine of N5m on the BBC and Daily Trust.
In a more recent incident, the Kaduna State Government announced a peace deal with dozens of known terrorists. In so doing, terrorists whose scope of operations and escapades, including killings and kidnappings, are well-known and documented, were fished out and invited to a round table. Some of the terrorists at the “peace meeting”, which was also graced by the military and the security forces, were armed.
The Kaduna State “peace deal” with terrorists follows in the footsteps of similar dalliances between the government and terrorists over the years. A particularly instructive deal is one that Nigerians appear to have forgotten. On February 18, 2018, terrorists abducted over 100 schoolgirls from their school in Dapchi, a town in Yobe State. Five girls lost their lives to the emotional and physical trauma of that event. By March 21 of the same year, all the abducted girls except one, Leah Sharibu, were released to the Federal Government. What could have been responsible for the sudden change of heart of the terrorists? Compassion for the kidnapped girls? A generous ransom by the government? We will never know, but what is clear is that the government, via some formal or informal channels, negotiated the release of the girls with the terrorists. The same terrorists it repeatedly claims it is fighting and bombing, and “decimating”.
According to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics, Nigeria’s kidnapping industry helped to amass well over N2tn for its perpetrators between May 2023 and April 2024. A huge proportion of such monies apparently goes into the purchase of the sophisticated arms, which these bandits bear and with which they often unabashedly raze entire villages to the ground. Worse still, former victims of kidnappings often lament that these terrorists are better armed than the military, who are saddled with the task of neutralising and eliminating them. Banditry documentaries so far indicate that security agencies often delay responding to attacks by these terrorists on communities, ostensibly on account of the superior firepower of the terrorists.
No media house has yet produced an investigative documentary on the state of the Nigerian military, including how well-equipped and motivated its operatives are. However, the circumstantial evidence of the occasional videos made by a handful of soldiers on the battlefront who lament their lack of equipment, poor motivation and lack of support for hospitalised colleagues coupled with the apparent hesitancy of security forces to respond to distress calls in villages under attack by terrorists, strongly suggest that the Nigerian military and security forces are morbidly under-resourced and ill-prepared to tackle the monstrosity of terrorism.
But Nigeria has in the last 15 years since the gradual incursion of terrorism into our polity budgeted the equivalent of billions of dollars annually towards defence and security. Where has all the money gone? Has defence spending ever been audited and by whom? Have the heads of several defence agencies ever been requested to account for defence spending over the last decade and a half?
So clearly, government chicanery and incompetence in tracking and eliminating terrorists and bandits from the polity are worsened by corruption. Going by the operating manual in the Nigerian public sector, it is reasonable to infer that only a small fraction of the annual budgetary provisions for defence and security may have actually been deployed to defence and security since 2009.
Amid the incompetence, corruption and insincerity of government, therefore, citizens across the country have over the years been left no choice but to take over community policing and security, by forming vigilante groups among others. But community policing has a specialised role. It is a role that is meant for trained professionals within a system that ought to be properly overseen, reasonably well-funded and managed by unbiased operatives. It is a role for the police and security forces, not groups of untrained operatives called “vigilantes”, formed out of desperation by citizens. Little wonder, therefore, that vigilante policing despite pockets of success has sometimes created bigger societal challenges across the country.
It is the selfish and hypocritical dithering by politicians towards eliminating terrorism that has fuelled the expansion and increasing brazenness of the terrorists. If they strike nocturnal deals with the presidency and attend “peace meetings” with governors decked in their fake military fatigues while brandishing military-grade rifles, why should they spare a thought for the victims they beat up, rob, extort, rape and decapitate? Or those whose homes they raze to the ground? Why should they bother when they invade farms, uproot tubers and feed them to their herds?
The Uromi incident ought to mark a turning point for our country in the protracted and badly prosecuted war against terrorism. Why are our politicians, like the Roman Emperor Nero, fiddling while the country burns? Why is Nigerian politics so laden with corruption, incompetence and deceit? Should all terrorists in Nigeria decide to shun terrorism today and embrace an honest living, what manner of living would they face? Where are the jobs? How many more Nigerians need to die needlessly before Nigeria decides to call its politicians to order?
- Okoruwa works for the communications company, XLR8
