Last Tuesday was the third time in one year that bandits State governor Aminu Masari would be asking indigenes of the state to take up arms against bandits and other terrorists making life unbearable for them. He had first made the call in June last year, reiterated it again in August, and then asserted it last December, perhaps to erase all doubts. He of course didn’t begin his forays into rebel and bandit territory with the resolve to fight them to the death. Like Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai, but a little more measured, refined and less apocalyptic, he had begun very optimistically by negotiating with the bandits, taking photographs with them, and paying them stipends, all measures interpreted by some analysts as ransom payment. At the time, this column thought his efforts amounted to appeasement. Spurned and left with egg on his face, Mallam Masari had gently gravitated into a hard line posture, denouncing negotiations and threatening dire consequences. Over months, he had oscillated between tough stance and negotiations, until he could do no other.
Finally, by the middle of last year, he had come to the conclusion, again like Mallam el-Rufai, that carrot and stick policy was meaningless. He had nothing else left for the bandits, he growled, but guns and bullets. Then began his dilemma. First, he egged on the military and the police to take the battle to the bandits in their redoubts, promising to back the security agents with all the resources the state could muster. And when the security agencies seemed to falter, he praised them nonetheless, and swore to devote more resources and moral support. Second, soon after he realised that the country’s security agencies were overstretched and unable to deliver on the promises their oaths asked of them, he gradually drifted into the epiphanic reaction which pushed him into the gross pessimism that has kept him permanently flustered. This is probably one of the reasons he called for self-defence.
However, six months of calling for a measure that is troublingly unconstitutional, which he defends on the grounds of Islamic jurisprudence, has yielded very little but more massacres and horrifying violations of the sanctity of life by bandits. Many northern intellectuals, including some discerning political leaders, have argued that the crisis and the unending killings are clearly existential between Hausa and Fulani, and between farmers and pastoralists. That the crisis has morphed into banal anomie replete with all manner of crimes may increase the outrage, but it does not hide the fact that it is existential. By all accounts, the crisis in the north-western part of Nigeria is a mini civil war. The bandits are well armed, but the so-called self-defence forces designed to counter them, who are categorised as vigilantes, are poorly armed, when they are armed at all. Some of them, as recent reports indicate, are armed with nothing more than catapults.
When Mallam Masari made his call for self-defence on Tuesday in Katsina, newspapers reported that some jeered him. If they did, it is not clear why they did, whether it has anything to do with the nigh impossibility of procuring weapons, or whether they thought the governor’s promise to back them was misplaced. Perhaps they had expected the state government to procure the weapons and distribute to the locals. He could of course not contemplate that measure because it would be clearly illegal. And would the locals procuring weapons not be embracing a measure that is clearly illegal, despite the tenuous jurisprudential support Islamic canon allegedly confers on self-defence? Of course, it would be, though the governor attempts to circumvent that lacuna by admonishing them to register the arms with the police. This is obviously a legal and societal cul de sac.
Analysts have reminded the public that last February, Defence minister Bashir Magashi had also urged north-westerners buffeted by bandit attacks to embark on self-defence. He had sneered at how cowardly they turned and ran when bandits who were probably not armed with more than a few bullets intimidated them. The public had been stupefied by the minister’s panacea. In any case, video after video, not to talk of reports by victims of banditry, have shown that the bandits are well armed, not with a few bullets but also in some cases machine guns, RPGs and anti-aircraft guns. To urge locals to confront such men with nothing more than hunting guns, machetes and catapults, despite their vaunted bravery, would be utterly suicidal. Naturally, after being repeatedly worsted, such feats of derring-do have petered off.
Except on some few occasions, Mallam Masari’s admonition to the locals to form themselves into self-defence forces will go largely unheeded. There will be some activities in that direction, and angry and exasperated locals will be ready to take on the bandits with bare hands, but such efforts will be futile, sporadic and insignificant. The crisis, it is clear, is deeper than what bare hands and great resolve can handle. Nay, it is even more than what a state can handle on its own. The crisis is cultural, ethnic, economic, and to a little extent political. The federal government has responsibility for the security of the people. It cannot casually devolve that responsibility to the people or self-defence forces without amending the constitution. Should the constitution be amended to enable everyone bear arms, banditry would reduce considerably, and a group of bandits would think twice and arm themselves much more before taking on a determined people.
Bandits have their grouses, which they have incompetently and criminally expressed. States must acknowledge these grouses and proffer the right and relevant solutions. The federal government dithered for years in responding to and addressing the crisis, and even now has strangely not responded adequately and competently. It must eschew sentiments and respond firmly. No state can administer any panacea until some measure of pacification has been achieved in the Northwest. Mallam Masari was desperate to urge self-defence; but there are too many legal and constitutional strictures to enable whatever other measures he might adumbrate to work. Worse, despite the urgency of the problem, and how quickly it had festered, self-defence will only complicate the crisis. This is why the first meaningful step can only be taken by the federal government, assuming it understands what to do beyond deploying troops and fighter jets.
COVID-19 variants battle booster jabs
Tentative reports from the scientific community in Europe and America as well as the World Health Organisation (WHO) have suggested that the recent spike in Covid-19 infections globally could be fuelled by a combination of Delta and Omicron variants acting in synergy. They label the recombinant variant Delmicron. They, however, insist that no definitive studies exist yet on the new variant. But last week, another report suggests that WHO fears that worse news about Covid-19 infection could still be lurking around the corner. According to the report, a variant quite distinct from any existing variant, and which appears capable of evading existing vaccination, might manifest soon. Israel is thought to have already discovered another variant.
Existing vaccination protocols indicate that two jabs plus a booster jab should do the trick of mitigating the effects of Covid-19. No one is sure, however, that after the recommended two jabs and a booster, other booster jabs would not be indicated soon. But to now add the suspicion that a new and probably intractable variant could soon come that would defy existing vaccinations, regardless of booster jabs, is, to put it mildly, truly nightmarish. If Delmicron would soon be a child’s play, then the world should brace for heavy impact. Arguments about suspicious motives behind Covid-19 jabs will become pointless in the face of new, vaccination-resistant variants, whatever its futuristic name might be.
