What impunity would lead the rustic to come to town clad only in his skimpy, smudged loin clothes? This is a Yoruba wise word roughly translated. The Yoruba language of the people of southwest Nigeria is rich and pithy. You are bound to lose some grains and granules upon its translation.
This is what has happened as Hardball grapples with this case. But imagine a fellow right from the depths of the thickets; clad in his grimy one-piece historical artifact and with some red earth still stuck to his hardback. Imagine this anachronism strutting about your town in jocular abandon! This is the scenario wise people of old had viewed as unmitigated affront, nay assault on modern civilization.
Why would Hardball worry about the ways of the uppity, adventurous bushman? Simple: it reminds one of the hordes of bandits holding the northwest of Nigeria hostage for nearly two years.
The states of Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina and Kaduna have been besieged since last year by armed rustics officially described as bandits.
Last week, Abdulaziz Yari, governor of Zamfara State after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, in the Presidential villa, Aso Rock, Abuja, told State House correspondents that the bandits in Zamfara were better equipped than the Nigeria military.
“They are in control of the kind of weapons that the command in Zamfara does not have.
“In one armoury alone, they have over 500 AK47s; we saw it, our people were given the chance to take pictures,” says governor Yari.
Early to mid last year, the scourge of so-called bandits began to manifest and escalate rapidly in the northwest of Nigeria. They were recording fatalities almost more than the Boko Haram terrorists of the Northeast. In July last year, villages around Gandi in Rabah Local Government Area of Sokoto State were stormed and over 50 dwellers killed and houses razed.
Gwaska village in Birnin Gwari Local Government of Kaduna State and a few other local governments in Kaduna, Katsina, down to Nasarawa states have been infested with flashes of mass killings by a mass of killer rustics. Their tactic is simple. They would swoop upon a defenseless settlement, shoot, slaughter and raze the place. Then they vanish into the forest and hills.
Pervasive graft and poor governance over the years have left vast territories ungoverned and vulnerable. Local government administration has long become moribund in many of these states, leaving swathes of unmanned spaces.
It is, therefore, a vast jungle out there where a mixture of self-protection from rustlers, ethno-religious conflicts and political intrigues has converted a hitherto peaceful northwest to a killing field.
Even the world’s best military will fail in a jungle. Let’s return to local governance first.
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