Abduction of our children from school has to stop

By Jide Osuntokun

Our children are our future and it seems to me that our future is being gradually threatened by what is happening to our children, particularly our female children who are regularly abducted from their schools particularly in the northern part of our country with our governments and everyone who should do something totally prostrate before the agents of evil who are doing this to our country. Recently, these evil people, call them what you will – terrorists,  bandits, kidnappers, herders, cattle rustlers, ethnic supremacists – I refuse to call them jihadists, because that is what they are not. Islam does not hold these kinds of people as worthy in the presence of Almighty God.  It seems these people doing this nefarious business of kidnapping school children have embraced the doctrine of Boko Haram that sees western education as haram (forbidden). It seems for convenience sake that these bandits are just using the Boko Haram credo as a way of camouflaging their thievery and paedophilia.

Or is it that the criminals in the Northeast and the north-central and northwest and all over the country are simply one and the same and should be treated as such? These are simply criminals and paedophiles that should be visited with the full weight of the law when they are caught. In a serious country, these types of criminals would be hanged by the neck until they are dead. But alas since this madness began in Nigeria, no one has been taken to court and speedily dealt with. Sometimes I wonder what our overpaid and over pampered legislators are doing at state and federal levels of government that they cannot legislate for special courts to  be set up to treat the cases of these criminals.

We are witnessing a whole generation of our youth particularly in the north being wasted. Can anyone imagine a worse humiliation than terrorists telling governments at state and federal levels of administrations not to worry about kidnapped underage girls of 12 to 15 years that they have been married off? This was the cold message these people sent to the government of Kebbi over the kidnapping of school children some two weeks ago. The international media is giving prominence to this horrible news in order to present us as savages just to underscore the western racist impression that blacks are not truly human like the rest of humanity. In this kind of environment, one wonders who will want to associate with us or invest in our country unless the rate of return on investment is so huge as to justify dealing with people who are still evolving in the last stage before becoming Homo sapiens.  This humiliation is what is at stake at this moment of our lives.

In his recent interview on ARISE Television, President Muhammadu Buhari wondered what the local governments, state governments and traditional institutions are doing while children in their areas are being kidnapped while they are all shouting about the failure of his government to protect the people of Nigeria. Earlier in the year while commiserating with the people of Niger State where hundreds of school children were simply marched into the forests, General Bashir Magashi, the defence minister said the people should protect themselves and not wait for soldiers and police alone to do the job. One may dismiss the plea of the minister and the president as coming from desperation. But their thinking probably has merit if we the ordinary people and our local, state and traditional governments draw the right conclusion from what the president and his minister said. The president has thrown down the gauntlet; it is ours to pick. The traditional institutions draw five per cent to 10% of the federal vote going to the LGA (local government administrations). Certainly, they should be able to fortify their immediate neighbourhood and protect their institutions. Obas and emirs are being kidnapped right from their palaces with little or no resistance. What chance has the ordinary citizen got if their homes are invaded and members are taken for ransom?

The president’s challenge is worth taking with some seriousness before it is too late. If the traditional rulers become easy targets, then perhaps they should not exist! God forbid! I hold the traditional institutions in high esteem. I am a chief of the Alaafin of Oyo and I certainly will want the traditional institutions to survive like in other advanced countries in Europe and Asia as links between the past, the present, and the future. The challenge has been thrown to them and these traditional institutions should raise defensive and well-armed forces as existed in the past to take care of themselves and their kingdoms.

Responding to the defence minister’s challenge that we should all defend ourselves reminds me about the stories of valour of my grandfather and great grandfather my father used to tell us his children. My father himself was no pushover when it came to valour and courage.  In Yoruba culture, a strong man cannot  be easily overcome by just anybody! We should all take the minister’s challenge seriously by each adult of means, applying for permit to carry firearms for hunting and protection. We have this right as citizens as long as we get police licence. If herders can carry openly AK-47, so should we. We are also armed by the minister’s call for citizens to defend themselves, a call like a levee en masse, some sort of a citizen army.

Will it not make sense to any man to defend himself rather than watch ones’ girls and wives raped by some stinking herder? There was the story of a man who was kidnapped along Akure -Ilesha road with his wife and nine-year old daughter who were both raped and when he pleaded for his young daughter, one of the herders threatened to rape him also!  What an abomination? The situation has gotten so bad that I think what my friend Honourable Eddie Mbadiwe said some years ago about licensing people to carry concealed weapons need further consideration and elaboration.

As for the LGAs and states, the president has thrown down a challenge to them and it is left to them to react. There is nothing strange in state and LGA police. This is what happens everywhere in the world even in smaller countries like Switzerland and Belgium which are federal states like Nigeria. In the USA, there are not only state, county and city police, there are also state police. Even universities have police in the United States. It is simply inconceivable for anyone to imagine only federal police say in Canada and the USA. Even in relatively small United Kingdom, there are layers of police from city to county to the four nations of England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland apart from Scotland Yard. I mention all these places not to give the impression of suggesting over militarization of our country. The point is that without peace, there can be no development and without development, there can be no peace.

Serious countries invest in their security unlike what is happening here in Nigeria. We have to face the issue of our security squarely. Our state governments that can afford state police should go ahead and establish their well-armed police forces and present the federal government with a fait accompli of their police forces and ask the federal government to go to court to challenge them using the president’s challenge as a call to action. There is no point all states waiting for united action. This is a waste of time; after all, we are still a federation, if in words only, and not a unitary state where all actions must conform to some order of uniformity.

Some critics of my formula which is actually Buhari’s formula may pose the question: where will the state get the money to pay their police? The answer is police tax and through fiscal restructuring eventually. The other question is – what will the federal police and the military be doing if LGAs, state and traditional institutions are involved in security? The answer is that the federal police will take care of interstate crimes while the military will secure the state from external enemies as is done elsewhere. Of course they will also be available to help secure peace internally when law and order break down as they have in Nigeria.

There can be no complaints about too much security especially now that we are being told that our security institutions are under manned. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. If we want to be safe, we must secure our country and our homes by every and all means possible. It is as simple as that.