–Mahfuz Mundadu.
I will rather stay safe than fall a victim of any act of gangsterism, state or other wise. What the security operatives engage in, at least in the Northern part of this country was and still is purported to be with the intent of fighting terrorists and other sundry criminals.
Yet at the end of it all the law abiding citizens are worst hit and worse off. Given the option: would you rather live with the enormous human and material cost of the Gazafication of the Northern Nigeria (apology to Adamu Adamu) or de-Gazafied North that is ‘terrorist’ infested; then I would choose neither. Simply because none of both represents an option but the real monster that we shall all unite against. More so the former exists on the false pretext of the later.
Particularly so that the security operatives are loosing the “battle” which, from all intent and purpose, is becoming clear to all discerning minds that somebody somewhere is acting the scripts of Zionism in this country. Though the condition for such a crook and crude phenomenon to succeed is for the rest of us to remain mesmerizingly reticent or narrow and shallow minded in outlook. Even as taking away our fundamental human right of freedom of movement wasn’t and still isn’t translating in to a more secured nation.
Ask me how do I know they are loosing the battle, if at all it is one, and I will ask you rhetorically how many cases were successfully prosecuted to a logical conclusion, in spite of spending an average of One Hundred and Twenty Million Naira every hour (!) for the past 12 month at the federal level alone. All in the name of security or lack of it?
How would you feel or how would you have reacted if you are to be arrested and asked to prove beyond reasonable doubt that you are not Boko Haram. What will be your take on a government that let loose its security operatives who habitually gather your able bodied men and summarily execute them for the singular reason that they have failed to know how a Boko Haram look like or where he stays within the locality.
How will you ever forget an encounter in which your children were held hostages by security operatives and asked to pay a ransom on each for you to save their lives, not from Boko Haram but the same security operatives? This is not a snap shot from occupied Palestine. This isn’t a hoax either. This is what is happening currently in this country.
Yet under the watchful eyes of the President that swears to live and lead by the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Same constitution that clearly states that everybody is innocent until proven guilty. Put differently the burden of proof of innocence in this context does not even arise.
Up to this moment some arrested individuals have been behind bars for years with no end in sight to their ordeal. Apparently because though the security operatives do not have enough evidence to prosecute them, they are sure ( don’t ask me how, it is enough they are just Muslims) that their captives are as guilty as Benjamin, Bush or Blair; the triple B*******
The question was and still is how did it all started? In the Beginning there was a preacher Muhammad Yusuf by name. One bright summer morning in the North-Eastern city of Maiduguri, the state capital of Borno, one of his followers died. His disciples went on funeral procession. Some of them on motor bikes with no crash helmet. Along the way they were apprehended by the police and commotion set in which eventually left some of the mourners dead and many more injured from alleged police bullet wounds.
Instead of at least tendering an unreserved apology, the Nigerian Police Force was neither sober nor remorseful. Apparently set up to be provoked, what the media now call Boko Haram fall in the trap. With that, a blank and sweeping order was foolishly yet callously issued by the then President to crush the group which we all came to understand later as a license to commit not only murder but genocide. All in the name of maintaining law and order at the end of which we have gotten neither. The summary and extra-judicial execution of large number of Boko Haram members, including their leader was a clear testimony to the madness and brigandage with which the security personnel helped in no small measure in escalating the situation to a level that the nation now is suggestive of a war torn, ravage and savage community. The cold-bloodedness with which the security operatives treat weak, frail and powerless civilians makes the likes of Pol Pot, Peter Botha, Natenyahu, Olmert, Begin and Bengurion turn blue with envy.
All the vibrant states in most of the northern parts of the country were systematically reduced to combat zone which perpetually robbed them of their respective enviable leading positions in diverse field of accomplishments; Maiduguri known for its leading position in formal and non-formal scholarly disposition, Kano: trade, commerce and industry, Kaduna: liberal and intellectual power house and many more were systematically brought to their knees with clearly no end to this occupation in sight.
Having undoubtedly run out of steam as per how to improve the lot of the citizenry, in Plateau state the agents of destruction have long succeeded in getting an ethnic jingoist (with mediocre past military career) ever ready to do the bidding of his imperialist masters using the potent weapons of insular and parochial mores. Unquestioning conformity and limitless capacity to accept all forms of cruelty and mortification from any of the state apparatus is what we came to know as the government’s definition and understanding of peaceful and law abiding citizens. That explains why the so called community and religious leaders, with the exception of the leadership of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria, observe unanimously pin drop criminal silence in the face of citizen’s nightmare. Well…soon this shall go off the flair.
The Nigerian system of governance was said to be copied from that of the United State, yet this is what its declaration of independence says, amongst others: “Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness…”
Babu shakka zaluncin azzaluman mahukuntan kasar nan ya nuna ligif babu abinda yake jira illa a yi masa diban amaryar buzuzu.