By Festus Eriye
The capture of Independent Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) leader, Nnamdi Kanu, by Nigeria’s intelligence agencies was a massive coup for an administration that has been reeling under the siege of insecurity across the land.
The dramatic announcement of the “interception” of Kanu at some unnamed location came out of the blues. It was the stuff of spy movies, something you associate with Americans, Russians or Israelis; not Nigerian security agents who are more adept at cracking down on demonstrators and activists than hardboiled enemies of state.
Perhaps inspired by that success, the Department of State Services (DSS) stormed the Ibadan lair of Yoruba nation promoter, Chief Sunday Adeyemo aka Sunday Igboho – leaving in their wake two dead bodies, dead cats and a slew of damaged cars.
Amidst the shooting the agitator who legend says is endowed with magical powers, and has reinforced the myth by parading in public with a juju bulletproof vest as sartorial accessory, went underground.
In just one week President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration had put two troublesome individuals out of circulation. You could tell how much it meant to the government when the president praised the military for saving Nigeria from disintegration.
His supporters were over the moon. They hailed Buhari as a professor of linguistics who had spoken to the secessionists and agitators in a language they understood. This referenced his throwaway threat to deal with IPOB and their like “in a language they understand.”
True, the geographical expression called Nigeria remains whole, but are its different peoples still committed to the one nation ideal? Never before has there been so much division and hate along ethnic and regional lines. It’s one thing to keep an entity united at gunpoint, quite a different proposition securing their commitment to a union by choice. At this point in our history I shudder to think what a referendum will reveal about our true feelings.
History is replete with countries that were once held together by the force of arms or the iron will of a strongman. Who remembers the once mighty Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) under the vice grip of a succession of communist dictators, or Yugoslavia as one country for as long as Josip Broz Tito had breath in him?
But a time came when guns, tanks and secret police couldn’t stop things falling apart and they crumbled under the weight of their inner contradictions.
Now, whether the events of the last two weeks were so perfectly choreographed such that threat morphed into action which produced dramatic result in the form of Kanu’s return to the “zoo”, remains a matter of conjecture. But that’s academic; we’ll assume it was part of some genius plan.
There’s no doubt that the military crackdown and arrest of the IPOB leader has brought a level of quietude to the Southeast. The daily assaults on police stations and soldiers have virtually stopped and armed militants have gone to ground.
In the Southwest the picture is quite different. Despite the din generated by Igboho’s activities there’s really no appetite for secession here.
The separatists and ethnic nationalists are thriving because an enabling environment has been created through the years. What we see with the Kanus and Igbohos are outward manifestations of an inner malaise.
Those conditions have not disappeared with the legal troubles of two arrowheads, neither does taking the advantage in a shooting war translate into prevailing in the battle for minds.
If anything, analysing reactions in the Southeast especially since the decommissioning of Kanu, you get the sense that bitterness and a sense of alienation have only increased within the ranks of his supporters.
Among the elite there may have been sighs of relief, but the younger demographic retain sufficient resentment regarding which those in authority should be concerned. This, after all, is the majority segment of our population.
Matters are not helped by tone-deaf dialogue between sections of the country and government. Driving the agitations down south are frustrations over inequalities, injustices and sense of exclusion which current leaders are loath to address.
One of more interesting aspects of the ongoing national exchanges is that those most disturbed by the activities of Kanu and Igboho are majorly from the north. Even those in Zamfara, Kaduna or Borno feel more threatened by the activities of agitators in Imo and Oyo, than the depredations of bandits and insurgents who have turned life upside down across their region.
We’ve heard rhetoric that suggests bandits are actually very shy and sensitive people that deserve to be treated specially. We’ve been told by Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, that they can’t be compared to Kanu and Igboho because they are lone rangers!
Well, in the last six months these independent criminals have abducted hundreds and killed scores across the north. Last weekend they murdered 50 people in attacks in Kaduna and Zamfara. A few days ago they upped their game by snatching the Emir of Kajuru.
As I write 121 students of Bethel Baptist Secondary School remain in captivity. Following their abduction, El-Rufai hurriedly shut a number of schools for security reasons. Even before then many parents had been mulling the wisdom of putting their children in harm’s way by sending them to school! So, slowly but surely Boko Haram’s assault on Western education is being actualised in the north.
It was perhaps against this back drop the largely reticent former Military Governor of Kaduna State, Abubakar Umar, advised Buhari to focus on the bandits and insurgents, arguing that secessionists were exaggerated threats.
It wasn’t what the president’s cocky supporters wanted to hear. He was dismissed as an irritant who was frustrated because Buhari wasn’t sharing public funds with prominent Nigerians.
But truth is the troubled North remains Nigeria’s greatest headache at this point. The insurgency in the Northeast continues to drain valuable resources that could have been deployed to national development.
The Northwest lies prostrate before bloodthirsty bandits with no viable economic alternative to wean them from their deadly trade.
In the North-Central zone the unending conflict between herders and farmers continues to leave death and misery in its wake. The telling effect on food production is being felt right across the land.
So rather than embarking on a premature victory lap, Buhari needs to realise that at the point when he took over, Nigeria was in crisis and that drove the hunger for change. Six years after, that sense of crisis hasn’t disappeared, it has only deepened.
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