Media Organization in Indianapolis, IN

When matters have reached the head, when a problem is seen from every angle with no unaffected area of the life of humans or nations, the only way out of the rots will be resurrection, and as we all know there is no resurrection without death or dying. What goes on in Nigeria in the area of insecurity is, to say the least, unprecedented. This is not the rumors of war. What people have in their hands right now is a real war situation. The worst part of it is that the enemies have taken the war beyond the borders of the country to the cities, a situation which puts the overall security of the country in jeopardy.

The causes of what is known and experienced today in the country in the form of insecurity, especially banditry and kidnapping, leave much to be desired and with relevant and important questions to be answered. Enough of propagandas and rhetorics about banditry and all sorts of criminality that has pervaded the nooks and crannies of the country, especially the Northern part, with Kaduna as the most affected. The truth that needs to be told is that what is seen in the ways by which the bandits carry out their activities leave no one in doubt that the power that be in Nigeria is complicit. There is no way on earth by which bandits can operate and carry out dastardly acts with impunity without strong support systems. Having established this foundation, the pertinent question of concern should be who are the beneficiaries of this war that is being waged against the country Nigeria.

The common sense of political science will not be enough to unravel the mysteries behind the aims and objectives of the sponsors of these bandits. Having said this, insight drawn from the wealth of international diplomacies will help to setting on the stage that takes us to the roots of this problem.

A wise saying from the Hausas of Northern Nigeria says that the mat of shame is rolled up with the pretext of madness. Governments who have failed in the delivery of the dividends of democracy to their people will have no choice but to cover up with crazy acts such as what he have in our hands as the man-made insecurity. These acts are designed to compensate for their inability to hold on to powers beyond the agreed tenure as provided for by the Constitution.

They find it easier to wreck where they cannot repair, and one way of doing so is to mastermind criminality and pretend not to know anything about it. How you know when the government is involved in acts of criminality is by the appearance that such criminality puts up which makes it look intractable. With regard to the insurgency and banditry, which is the bane of peaceful coexistence in Nigeria today, failure on the part of the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari to persecute those who already have been identified as the sponsors of Boko Haram, who are more than a thousand in number, is an illusion to the fact that the government is complicit and therefore cannot be excused from being part of the criminality that is going on.

This volatile situation in Nigeria is instructive to the superpowers, especially America who is the beacon of light as well as the custodian of democracy, that Nigeria is a country that America is always proud of as the largest democracy in Africa, is now at the verge of extinction. If nothing is done, and as soon as possible, as a preventive measure, this present administration of President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressive Congress Party having failed woefully in leading the people out of poverty into fortune and prosperity, and with the country in a state of political quagmire, might have no choice than to use staging a military coup as a way of escape from the mess that they have plunged Nigeria into. If this is allowed to happen, democracy in Africa might soon become a commodity whose value has been lost and is good for nothing. Just like the analogy of the salt and the light, which believers are expected to exemplify, when a system of government is no longer serving as a channel through which hope, prosperity, and peace is delivered to the people, it becomes useless and good for nothing.

The psychology of the insecurity that Nigeria as a country is bedeviled with today will reveal in parts causes which are deep as well as those that are immediate. The Northerners, from as far back as 1960, when Nigeria gained her independence, have been digging the grave of the country in ignorance by building an army of the Almagiris who are children released by their parents to be schooled in the islamic way, under an Islamic teacher.

These children, from their time of release at ages like five and six, will be living with the Islamic teacher with other children with no more inputs from their biological parents. The Islamic teacher typically will send his kids out in numbers, in groups of 20s, 30s, 40s and so on to the streets on a daily basis to fend for themselves and bring back supplies to the Islamic teacher. They are expected to bear arms, food, and other things needed to make a living. This situation had continued for years, decades, not realizing with little attention paid to the fact that those kids were not acquiring the kind of education that will guarantee for them gainful employment in the society within the context of the country called Nigeria. This group of unskilled, uneducated youths have been produced and nurtured in the society with little or no consideration about their future. This is one of the deep causes of what you have today in the forms of Boko Haram and bandits within Nigeria.

The irony of this problem is that the Northerners have ruled Nigeria more than any other part of the country. Ordinarily, one would have expected that development should be greater in the North than in any other parts of the country called Nigeria. Since this is not the case, and with the handful of problems that the North has created for the country over a period of time, especially in the Almagiris, who are now a nuisance, the North should decide on what options will be the best at this point.

Lastly, permit me to say this from experience that the problem of insecurity that Nigeria is confronted with also can be traceable to the choice of the style of leadership. From what we have seen so far as the problem of insecurity, especially in the northern part of the country, which has to do with the choice of the style of leadership, is also strongly connected to what the leaders have involved themselves in before coming into power as a means of securing their place in power.

Buhari needs to be understood as a person. This is a civilian president who also was a military head of state between 1979 and 1983. He was overthrown by his then military Chief of Army Staff, Ibrahim Babangide. Buhari, going by his bitter experience of the past as a leader who was ousted through a military coup, his main priority coming into power again, was first and foremost to protect himself. It does not matter if achieving that will be at the expense of the entire country.

This is what is at play right now. It does not matter if the country remains in agony for as long as the president will remain in power. Some of the spiritual supports that people in power go for requires the constant and regular loss of lives of the citizenry, for bloodletting is one of the requirements of such spiritual covenants. This is not new and is definitely what is going on also among many other things. Why Kaduna of all the states in Nigeria? Although other states in the North too have been victims of the Boko Haram insurgency as well as banditry. But Kaduna is notorious for the incidents of killings of innocent citizens.

Nigeria is not having problems to solve but the country itself is the problem to solve. How to go about it cannot but require that the country must die in one way or the other. It could be by destroying completely the 1999 Constitution, which is already recognized as a fraud, for a new Constitution that will be born out of a national conference, or that the ethnic groups agitating for self-determination be given the right to choose the path to go.

Let me say this in conclusion and for the record. There is no political party, presidential aspirants or anyone in the guise of a prophet or imam that can salvage the country Nigeria from going into extinction. Something serious has to be done as a deliberate action by the people to deliver the soul of the country. If nothing is done, the precarious and fragile situation of the country called Nigeria will move from the impossible to the inevitable without giving any room for the probable. Let all hands be put on deck. Without dying, there is no resurrection.

God bless you all!

Samuel ‘Tunji Adeyanju