By Sunny Awhefeada
The lynching of sixteen persons, whether they were hunters, kidnappers, terrorists or bandits depending on who is talking about the incident, starkly speaks to the evolving tragedy that is Nigeria. Some commentators have blamed the tragic incident on the perpetrators, while others think the sixteen men deserved what they got. However, what has become a consensus among most people, except those in government, is that the Uromi tragedy is a reflection of the consequences of a failed system.
Nigeria has failed its citizens and it must be said that it was the citizens that first failed Nigeria. The citizens, the leaders and the led, failed in their duty to tend Nigeria and now the later has grown wild and unleashed a maelstrom on us all. The Uromi bloodbath is just one of the more than many consequences of how we all failed Nigeria. The hackneyed narrative is that some Fulani men, twenty-five in number, were travelling from Port-Harcourt to Kano to celebrate Salah. They were intercepted in Uromi by the community vigilante and were found to be carrying guns. The vigilante took them for the kidnappers, terrorists and bandits that laid siege on Uromi and environs for over ten years now. They burnt them to death as punishment for terrorizing the community. Nine of them survived the lynching. Only in a failed state would this scenario happen. But those who rule us say that Nigeria is not a failed state. They also tell us daily that the security situation was under control and that there was no cause for alarm. But we know that government is lying!
The Uromi incident speaks to a number of factors: fear, insecurity, revenge, loss of humanity and, quite significantly, loss of confidence in the state. Nigeria is enveloped by fear arising from insecurity. Those who have for long been victims of insecurity have rightly or wrongly profiled those they consider as marauders and enemies and the first thought that occurs to them whenever they see the latter is revenge. In all, the loss of humanity speaks to how pervasive the avoidable loss of lives has become. There is hardly a day passing without the tragic news of gruesome deaths across Nigeria. It has become the norm. And the citizens who are at the receiving end of these catastrophes have lost confidence in the state. So, like W. B. Yeats’ memorable lines from which Chinua Achebe took the title of his novel, Things Fall Apart, “the centre cannot hold/mere anarchy is loosed upon” Nigeria. If not for the loss of confidence in the system which in this instance is the state, shouldn’t the Uromi vigilante have handed the twenty-five suspects over to the police? If the system was working, why would twenty-five men who were neither soldiers nor police travel from Port-Harcourt to Kano carrying guns like AK-47? Why, why, why? These are questions that indict the Nigerian state.
While the act is condemnable and strongly so, the point must be made that the Nigerian state has pushed the citizens into a cul-de-sac that only through self-defence can they survive. It now appears as if the government does absolutely nothing for the citizens. If you want water, you sink a borehole. If you want power, you buy a generator. If you want medicare, you get your own private doctor. If you want your children to go to school, you send them to a private school. If you want security, you set up your own private security outfit. Right now we have lost count of non-state actors posing as security networks in Nigeria. Hunters, vigilantes and such other funny contraptions now bear arms and bestride our roads and neighborhoods. At times it is difficult to differentiate between these gun-wielding fellows and the kidnappers. And it has been said again and again that some of them pose as security enablers, but in reality are criminals who aid kidnappings. These fellows sprang up across Nigeria because the state failed and the people turned to them for protection. A soldier of the rank of major and a Divisional Police Officer advised us to set up an armed vigilante group in my neighborhood eleven years ago. The area was under siege by men of the underworld and whenever we were attacked we would call the police and the army who would come many hours after the robbers had left. So, they advised us to set up our own security. Many streets and areas were to do the same thing and we had respite. The import of this experience is that the state can no longer protect you. Protect yourself. In protecting ourselves, we are ultimately bound to take laws into our hands and enact jungle justice.
What happened at Uromi was jungle justice and there was no justification for it. But the state which is now crying blue murder abandoned its responsibility to the people who have now turned against one another. In a video postdating the denial of travelling visas to some Nigerian military officers by the Canadian embassy, the Director-General of the Department of State Services lavishly spoke of how and why citizens should defend themselves instead of waiting for government to do so. He didn’t know that he was unwittingly laying the foundation for the Uromi tragedy. Apart from the DG, many other security personnel are fond of saying that security is everybody’s business. This is of course a lie as the Uromi incident has shown. Security cannot be everybody’s business because some people are specifically employed, trained and paid by the state, using tax payers’ money, to provide security. The vigilante took laws into their hands because they felt and rightly so that handing the men over to the police would yield nothing once money exchanged hands. The truth must be told. And since the community had been under siege for years now the vigilante were overwhelmed with anger thinking that they had got their tormentors.
Nigeria, and not the Uromi vigilante, killed the sixteen men. Nigeria enabled the creed of self-help and jungle justice. People are daily kidnapped and the security agencies appear clueless and helpless, but they claim credit for “ghost” successes. Our military chiefs daily thump their chests and bamboozle us with their capacity to eradicate insecurity, but the menace continues to bourgeon. When a retired general and former Director-General of the National Youth Service Corps was abducted from his home he spent fifty-four days in the abductors’ custody. A general of all persons! After his release the nation’s security apparatus made it sound as if it was responsible for the general’s freedom. Days after taking credit for the deed, the general’s friend himself also a general wrote a letter of gratitude thanking those who contributed to the ransom money paid to the abductors to secure his release. Unfazed the Nigerian way, the National Security Adviser who should quietly be drinking kunu or fura denono and whistling in idleness came out a few days later to caution Nigerians against the payment of ransom to kidnappers. It was so annoying.
Nigeria happened to Uromi and what happened there happens daily without making the headlines. We could not have forgotten the “Aluu Four” lynching involving four students of the University of Port-Harcourt in 2012. Others abound. These things are happening because there are no consequences for criminality in Nigeria. Those who should enforce law and order have largely been compromised and they have themselves become the embodiment of lawlessness. Can we forget in a hurry the story of kidnapper Wadume who had an army captain on his payroll and how the later led soldiers to kill policemen who had come to arrest the kidnapper? In the last one week, as always, killings took place in many parts of the country; Benue, Plateau, Katsina can tell of the gruesome killings. Only the rich and power are protected by the law in Nigeria. The ordinary people have been taught to protect themselves and in doing so Nigeria happened to the Uromi sixteen. Sad and condemnable as the act is, the tragedy did happen and it happened here and we are the more diminished by it.
