By Oguwike Nwachuku
My initial take when I read the statement from the Presidency on Thursday, June 28 that more than 22,077 Nigerians were killed during the 16 years the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) ruled was that the country is jinxed.
I had told myself that President Muhammadu Buhari’s spokesman, Femi Adesina, a man I have great respect for, and who issued the statement comparing those massacred during the PDP administration and the current All Progressive Congress (APC), needs everybody’s prayers.
I was so pained while reading Femi’s statement that I concluded that he is not the man we know, and that party politics in Nigeria does not matter whether you are a career politician or not.
I was still ruminating over Femi’s rebuttal to PDP’s statement calling for seven days’ mourning because of the recent Plateau killings when June 28 reared its head in a fuel tanker explosion on Otedola bridge in Lagos.
Nine persons were burnt alive according to official reports, many in different degrees, and 54 vehicles charred in the inferno that bellowed for hours after the tanker exploded.
Nigerians, both the leadership and the led, have as usual sympathised with the victims and their families.
Comments have been made on the right thing to do by the government to prevent a recurrence, particularly as tankers are the major means of moving petroleum products from one part of the country to another.
As usual, the government has promised to protect lives and property and sought public support. And that will be the end of the story until another disaster beckons. God forbid!
Yes, if you look around, particularly in Lagos, you will see potential danger signs that threaten lives and property, yet the government pretends as if such sites do not exist.
Those in doubt should visit Apapa through Oshodi or Ikorodu Road. Also visit Badagry through Mile 2 or Orile-Iganmu and see the danger fuel tankers pose to road users. It takes the grace of God to be alive if you work or live in these areas.
Government officials, federal and state, should have known that disasters are waiting to happen in those very vital economic arteries in Lagos.
Ours is a system where governments and the opposition are used to reacting to issues instead of being proactive.
The tendency to react to issues has set the PDP on edge with the APC, causing them to remind Nigerians about how many of them have been killed in a particular administration as if competing to win medals on the number of deaths.
When Buhari visited Plateau on Tuesday over the Saturday, June 23 massacre of more than 150 villagers, many thought he would help soothe aching nerves and assuage hurting feelings.
On Sunday, June 24, Nigerians woke up to be treated with the nauseating sight of villagers massacred in Plateau, most of them women and children.
No fewer than 11 communities in Barkin-Ladi and Riyom Local Government Areas were affected by the carnage that brought back to mind the harrowing experience Nigerians thought they had forgotten about the elusive Boko Haram insurgents.
As usual, condemnation poured in like a river from within and outside the country over the killings.
But many APC governors and their newly-elected National Working Committee (NWC) members enjoying their “exploits” a day earlier were seen on social media partying as dead bodies littered the Plateau.
The visit of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Monday, June 25 to commiserate with the people of Plateau State and that of Buhari on Tuesday, June 26 brought to the fore the role of government to the people as regards welfare and security.
But can we say we are satisfied with the outcome of the visits? I shall return to this shortly.
The fundamental obligation of government to the people is enunciated in Chapter II, Section 14 (2) b of the Constitution, which says: “The security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.”
Any government that fails to guarantee its populace this basic obligation is deemed to have failed and disappointed them, and does not deserve to be trusted by them.
Unfortunately, we have reduced everything in Nigeria to politics, blurring our sense of reason about basic rights and obligations of the leadership guaranteed under the Constitution in a contract between the leaders and the led.
Back to the role of government to the governed, it beats the imagination that Buhari said when he visited Plateau that there is nothing he can do about the killings.
“There is nothing I can do to help the situation except to pray to God to help us out of the security challenges. What has happened is a very bad thing, the bottom line is that justice must be allowed to take its course.
“Fulani herdsmen are used to carrying sticks during grazing but the herders of these days carry AK47, anybody caught with a weapon should be arrested,” Buhari reportedly told Plateau leaders of thought.
He also went spiritual, urging Nigerians to pray to God if they want the security challenges to abate.
Many had waited patiently for Buhari to make a policy statement to show how committed the leadership was to public welfare and security other than the recourse to pray that the killings stop.
By saying that, Buhari for the first time admitted that his administration lacks the capacity to protect lives and property.
He also made nonsense of government sloganeering and self-glorification of degrading insurgents.
Since Buhari acknowledges that today’s herdsmen go about with AK47 riffles instead of sticks which their predecessors carried with them, why is it difficult for him to rein in their criminal activities?
What happens to the executive order to the military and the police to deal decisively with members of the Independent Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) as well as the Niger Delta Avengers when they agitated, howbeit peacefully?
Take it or leave it, the new Sherriff in town in Nigeria is called Fulani herdsmen. They are the new Boko Haram the APC government claimed had been degraded.
The question is: Why is it difficult to degrade the criminal herdsmen since their activities are inimical to the aims and objectives of the government in power with regard to the welfare and security of citizens?
How then will the Federal Government ensure justice over those killed in Plateau and other parts of the country as Buhari promised when his government treats the perpetrators with kid gloves?
What happened in Benue and other states sent enough danger warning to the leadership yet it did not take it seriously.
Now that the new merchants of death are more emboldened, a president who ought to wield the big stick is being diplomatic about it, asking Nigerians to pray.
Mr. President, Nigerians have been praying but there is actually something you are not telling them about the Fulani herdsmen.
The more Nigerians pray, the more it is revealed to them that the confidence the Fulani herdsmen have is that regardless of what they do, nothing will happen to them. So, the ball is still in your court, Mr. President.
Nigerians cannot feel the impact of whatever your publicists put out about the economy, corruption fight or even security as gains if citizens cannot sleep at night with their two eyes closed, and if they cannot go to their farms in the day without being molested or killed.
The decapitation and wastage of lives by Fulani herdsmen goes beyond community existence or co-habitation to control security challenges.
It goes beyond the sermon for Nigerians to imbibe the spirit of tolerance and living together. They have been living together for God knows how long.
To say the least, Nigerians are also tired of presidential visits to places where herdsmen attacks leave blood behind only for our president to say the usual “I will bring the perpetrators to book”.
Given Nigerians’ criminal exeperiences with the herdsmen in Enugu, Delta, Kogi, Ekiti, Kaduna, Nasarawa, Adamawa, Taraba, Benue and now Plateau, the book the president may have opened for the so-called perpetrators must be full by now.
Mr. President, for your information, before you left for Plateau for that crucial meeting with the state’s leaders of thought, what you were going to say, “I will bring the perpetrators to book”, was already common knowledge, and to many Nigerians, you did not disappoint after the meeting.
Even the children know what their president will say whenever there is killing in any part of the country and he visits.
Is it therefore surprising that while protesting at Plateau State Government House in Jos on Wednesday, June 27, after Buhari’s visit, many indigenes expressed concern that Governor Simon Lalong has disappointed them.
They expressed even more concern that Lalong does not show that he is in charge of affairs in his state. Many, including yours sincerely agree with them.
Lalong first shot himself in the foot when he thought he was on the side of the Fulani herdsmen against the Benue State government over the passage of Grazing Bill.
Now, “the chicken has come home to roost,” as the saying goes. Lalong cannot find his voice to lament what has befallen him not withstanding that it was from him that people got to know that the herdsmen killed over 200 people and displaced several communities.
Lalong said: “This current attack … Mr. President is very disturbing and alarming because it has left behind in its ugly trail the painful loss of over 200 people, besides the humanitarian challenges confronting thousands of displaced persons whose houses and crops have been burnt and completely destroyed.
“Mr. President, our government has made it clear and you have eloquently stated that you will continue to protect and preserve the sanctity of life.
“Agents of de-stabilisation are, however, hell bent on making nonsense of the success you have achieved in dealing with internal security threats to our corporate existence as a nation.
“Mr. President, given the number of villages that have been completely ravaged, I wish to re-echo the earlier request we made as a state for the Emergency Special Intervention Fund to help us reconstruct our ravaged communities.”
Lalong lamented that burning places of worship was worrisome and urged every Nigerian to condemn actions that can throw the country into a religious war. Really?
With leaders like Lalong, the killings in Plateau cannot stop. He has amply demonstrated in body, spirit and soul that he is subservient to his Fulani masters of which Mr. President is one.
It did not start with Lalong anyway. It is an age-long tradition. That is why when his kinsmen are killed by Fulani herdsmen he is the first to say sorry to the killers.
What a country!