By Emeka Alex Duru (08054103327)
The debate, among Historians, is that the lesson men learn from history, is that they do not learn from it. Some agree with the assertion. Others disagree.
But that seems the case in Nigeria. Here, for some inexplicable reasons, we hardly attend to issues at infancy stage. We do not make hay while the sun shines, as they counsel.
We rather incubate or nurture ordinarily, minor issues, into major crisis before we embark on panicky measures to address the situation, in most cases, without success.
It was this poor attitude to major issues that saw the country turning against itself in the crisis of the 1960s that eventually developed to a civil war that consumed over three million citizens.
By the time reason was allowed to prevail at the cessation of field hostilities in 1970, much harm had been done on the corporate existence of the nation in terms of personal and inter group relations. Till date, the scars remain and may linger.
Even the ravaging Boko Haram insurgency that has left on its trail, destruction and desolation, took off in small measure and was not nipped at the early stages. It was rather allowed to fester and blossom to the present monster it has become.
This is my fear at the poor handling of the agitation by members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), the Shiites, over the continued detention of their leader, Ibrahim El-Zakzaky.
Members of the group have been staging protests and processions in Abuja and other major cities in the North, to draw attention to the continuous detention of their leader, whose health, reports say, has not been in good shape, lately.
At the last outing of the Shiites in Abuja on Monday, April 16, 2018, it was apparent that the agitation was gradually getting out of hand.
Watching the group confronting the Police, literally with stones, sticks and broken bottles, spoke volume on the level of suicide tendency that has crept into their psyche.
Even with the Nigerian authorities feigning ignorance or choosing to look the other way while the situation degenerates, it has become certain that the Shiite issue is gradually tilting to the edge.
As in most sects and religions, the members are beginning to see their participation in the protests and the outcome, indications of their commitment to their faith and worthy price for life hereafter.
In such situation, death does no longer count. And if it ever comes, it is warmly embraced as a convenient escape from oppression and injustice.
Whenever a group or an individual begins to think along this line, reason becomes the first casualty. Applying force to whip him into line, becomes futile.
When, therefore, the Nigeria Police, in a release, tried to humour the government and downplay the seriousness of the protest, while admitting that 115 members of the IMN had been arrested for their involvement in the exercise, it was obvious that the Force had not learnt from the past.
In 2009 when Mohammed Yusuf and his followers embarked on a movement that later resulted to the present murderous Boko Haram sect, the Police and other law enforcement agencies, did not give them any chance.
They rather dismissed them as mere rabble rousers that could be cowed, easily. It took the Police killing Yusuf after his arrest by the Army for the worst of the group to be unleashed on the nation. We are yet to get out of the confusion.
For a system that is already acutely weighed down by Boko Haram insurgency, Fulani herdsmen menace, occasional resurgence of Niger Delta militancy and Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) self-determination struggle, attracting the Shiite factor to its burden, would certainly amount to an overkill.
El-Zakzaky, who leads the group and his wife, have been in detention in the last three years. They were arrested on December 14, 2015 in Zaria following a clampdown on Shiites by the Nigerian Army.
At the showdown that culminated in their arrest, reports claimed that least 347 members of the group, were killed and secretly buried in mass graves by the army.
Curiously, a Federal High Court in Abuja, in December 2016, had ordered the release of Zakzaky and his wife. But the government refused to obey the order.
Minister of Information, had, in explaining the reason for holding them, claimed that it was safer for the couple to remain in custody.
Whatever safety the minister thinks the government is affording the Shiite leader and his wife in detention, may not make meaning to his followers and believers of the rule of law.
If the explanation is based on the allegation of unruliness by followers of the cleric in their area of operation, it rather amounts to throwing up hands in the face of challenges. It simply flies in the face.
If anything, continuous detention of Zakzaky, in disregard to an order by a competent court, will continue to portray Nigeria in bad shape, among civilised nations.
While President Muhammadu Buhari shuttles within and between countries in Europe and America, seeking audience and offering explanations on the efforts of his administration in repositioning Nigeria, such ugly incidences as the Zakzaky saga, will continue to count against us.
Coming also on the heels of possible charges of war crimes against the country by the International Criminal Court (ICC), on account of the conduct of the military against civilians in the north east, Nigeria’s image gets further sullied.
This is aside several reports from the Amnesty International (AI), that accuse Nigerian security forces of widespread abuses in such areas as extra-judicial killings, arbitrary arrests, mass detention in sub-human facilities, attacks on the media and journalists, violent crackdown on peaceful protesters, and forced evictions.
Further detention of Ibrahim El-Zakzaky and his wife, against court order, will therefore amount to subtle confirmation of these allegations of impunity against the Federal Government.