The Nation Newspaper

Tag: descent

  • Nigeria’s descent into state of nature

    No one is in doubt that Nigeria is a great country, specially blessed with abundant human and natural resources. It is also not untrue that the country has experienced growth and development since her political independence in 1960. However, Nigerians are divided as regards whether the development recorded tallies with the available resources. In my opinion, the greatest development that a nation can boast of is the peace and security of its citizenry. Has Nigeria done much on this since her independence?

    The human person is a development-oriented being; we have developed from the Stone Age to the Jet Age. Man has conquered nature, but he needs to do more in order to conquer himself. Man still remains the worst enemy of man. No wonder Martin Luther King Jnr said: “… modern man suffers from a kind of poverty of the spirit, which stands in glaring contrast to his scientific and technological abundance; we have learned to fly the air like birds, we have learned to swim the seas like fish, and yet we have not learned to walk the Earth as brothers and sisters”.

    The Hobessian State of Nature is a conceptual description of the political life of man before the emergence of democracy. It was given by Thomas Hobbes, an English Philosopher (1588-1679). The Hobbessian State of Nature is “a time of war where every man is enemy to every man” and a “time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal”.

    Though this state of nature need not have even existed, rather it describes Hobbes’ assumption of what life would be like without government. In Hobbessian State of Nature, the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

    What is life for ordinary Nigerians today? Nigeria’s political terminology is in chaos, because the authority is not pronouncing the correct definitions. While survival and self-satisfaction are beginning to define our existence as a people, good and evil are painfully being defined in relative terms. The fear of violent death dominated Hobbes’ life and work. He wrote: “Fear and I were born twins”. In spite of this, he made great contributions to politics and law during his time through his writings.

    The good people Nigeria must rise up to save this country or risk its disintegration. I love Nigeria, I believe in her unity but unity built on structural justice. Recent happenings in our beloved country are symptoms of a sick country touring the path of anarchy. To save this nation from reversing into Hobbesian State of Nature, governments at all levels must be sincere or more honest in carrying out their constitutional duties, primarily ensuring a trustworthy security of lives and property.

    Though democracy may be practised differently by different countries, the key elements of a democratic government are universal. These are found in Thomas Jefferson’s definition; democracy is the government of the people, by the people and for the people. To save the Nigerian state from collapsing, men and women of goodwill – Nigerians who believe in Nigeria – must use every legitimate means politically to call the “drivers” of this nation to order, since constitutional power belongs to the people.

    Why the increasing ethnicism, nepotism, sectionalism, religious supremacy and political rascality among our leaders? “I belong to everybody, and I belong to nobody”. If only our leaders had truly put 50 percent of this into practice, a more just, peaceful and prosperous Nigeria should have been running, and not just standing, by now.

    Our democratic institutions are weakening by day. The ordinary citizens are losing hope in the present political leadership of our country. In fact, the credibility of the government of the day is at stake. Does the political class believe in Nigeria? Do they know that they are leaders or rulers of Nigeria because there is a Nigeria and Nigerians? Our president and the government must work harder to avoid the emergence of rebel groups in any part of this country. Killers of innocent civilians must be named appropriately without fear or favour; and dealt with in accordance with the laws of our country. Nigerians need a Nigerian President. We need a father who sees the entire country as his constituency regardless of tribe or religion. Justice is the primary solution. What legacy is the government of the day going to leave at the end of its tenure in office? A wounded and heart-broken citizenry? Mass graves of innocent citizens or citizens with lifetime disabilities caused by government failure provide adequate security? If the killers of the defenceless Nigerians are called mere criminals, then who is responsible for ending their criminality?

    I am afraid of a revolution in this country if the people’s hope is finally and permanently crushed! Unfortunately some of the causes of the 1776 American Revolution and the 1917 Russian Revolution are right here with us namely: insecurity, suppression of freedom of expression, nepotism, despotism, selective justice, abysmal silence on serious national issues, economic hardship, corruption, breakdown of law and order and managerial inefficiency.

    Is ethnic and religious pluralism a blessing or a curse?  The U.S.A is a good example of an orderly and progressive pluralistic nation. Ethnic and religious homogeneity is not a yardstick for national cohesion and political stability in a country; Somalia offers an example in this regard. Good leadership founded on justice is the key thing. Before the 1917 Russian Revolution, Russia was described as a prison house of nations. Is the federal government aware that the country is unsafe? Many have become refugees in our country and some held captives, worse than prisoners, in the hands of gunmen.  Many lives have been wasted by unknown gunmen, sometimes by unknown soldiers or unknown policemen under the watch of a known government we elected to protect us. The politicization of religion and ethnic superiority or racism must be properly and objectively dealt with or these may lead our beautiful country into chaos. Nigerian leaders ought to learn from the U.S.A as regards religious liberty. After the 1776 American Revolution (War of Independence), Thomas Jefferson said: “The state would tolerate all religions but give formal favour to none”. All the citizens of this country must bear in mind that until every ethnic group, followers of every religion, every section and every individual in this country is safe, we all are not safe.

    The philosophy of first class and second class citizens must give way to mutual respect and equality before the law of the land. Are some citizens more Nigerian than others? The collective silence of the good people of Nigeria in this challenging time is not healthy for our national survival. Unless we speak responsibly and fearlessly against the wrong management of our common heritage – Nigeria – we all will pay the price. The prominent Protestant Pastor, Martin NiemEller, who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler wrote: “First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak, because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak, because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me”.

    Government is a basic necessity for civil peace, but when personal security is threatened due to government failure to maintain peace, it is by nature that people will resort to individual capacity for self-defence. Self-defence, either personal or national is a natural right, but it is necessary that government provides adequate security in order to prevent the citizens from reversing back into the nasty and brutish state. We need an active, alert, informed and thoughtful government to do this. Nigerians are peace-loving and hardworking people, always ready to support their leaders in nation building. As a matter of urgency, the federal government under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari must end the violence in the land through justice and dialogue, create an enabling environment for economic prosperity and let us again rise as the giant of Africa.

     

    • Rev’d Father Gimba is of St. Dominic’s Catholic Church, Yelwa-Yauri, Kebbi State.

  • Of descent into mob justice

    SIR: There is something sinister about the way we think and about our collective definition and understanding of the word ‘justice’ as a country. When a patriot with some modicum of common sense, takes a critical look into the scope by which different interpretations are being read into justice, you conclude that your country is sick, or perhaps mad, and nothing else.

    From the pedestrian purview, justice is synonymous with words like lynching, ‘jungle justice’, a mob attack, while from the elitist viewpoint it’s an avenue for subduing the commoners into a damnable quietude of class submission. Quite miserable enough, from the legal point of view, justice is a partially corrupt judge donning the wig of bias.

    Or what definition can you give to a country that grants widely-known Machiavellian political looters and betrayers of public trust a presidential or national pardon, but can dock and jail hunger-ridden and hapless commoners with hard labour for a pardonable deviance? What is the difference between a law that sends a poor man to a 10-year imprisonment upon a theft of N1000, triggered by frustrated living, and that of some ignorantly emotional entities among us who lynch someone to an early grave because of a tin of rice?

    We may say there is a difference. But to me, if I would make one, the only difference is that the former gives the offenders an opportunity to live an unfortunate life in prison which, in some cases, is more brutal than being given a mob lynch. The fact is clear that those who find themselves in prison today because of a hunger-prone theft are good human beings far better than those luxury-obsessed and selfish opportunists representing us the National Assembly. They’re people who, when given a proper societal concern, can also contribute their quota towards putting the country on the lane of the progressive shift. But your country is bad. They are condemned to jail, some even without trial. What a country!

    You may be wondering why this illustration. Well it’s because of the video of a 7-year old boy allegedly set ablaze in Badagry area of Lagos State, for attempting stealing garri. If this narrative is true as being told, then for the late innocent urchin death is rest, for he is no more a victim of a callous and clueless state. But for us, that horrible incident has portrayed our society as being nonchalant, malfunctioning, backwards and highly bereft of human sympathy. Irrespective of our epochal exposure, we are still the same hysteric country –a land of many misplaced priorities; a country that acts before reasoning.

    Because you will wonder what joy was being derived by those bystanders at the terrible scene of that gory incident? What was the joy of those taking pictures without human feeling? And what step has our government taken to bring the culprits of that deliberate attack into the black book?

    Is it not the same country that killed four University of Port Harcourt students – the Aluu four?

     

    • Rahaman Abiola Toheeb,

    Kano.

  • This desperate descent into chaos

    That Monday, as the constitution was again suspended by the state … Mount Olympus bent its knees so that the country could slide easily into the sea; and it did

    Along the way, Nigeria’s various governments appear to have had only one thing on their minds: just surviving, even if at the expense of the people. It seems they have always existed just not to be booted out by any of the waiting predatory groups of adventurers making forays into just any territory that promises wealth, fame and power without borders. On account of this preoccupation, dear reader, your average governments have never had your or my past, present and future on their minds. I think they have left all that to you and I to plot out in the best way we can. This is why most of us have now taken to providing all our own amenities like water, electricity, roads, hospitals… Right now, I am trying to see how to apply for a licence to declare my house a local government HQ. You ask if I can do that? Yes, but wait a minute now; let me just check the country’s constitution which we do not seem to understand nor care much for.

    In truth, not many of us have paid much attention to that constitution. The blessed thing is supposed to guide our thoughts, words and deeds as a nation, keep us within the bounds and borders of reasonable stupidity and careful abandonment of sense, and assist us not to wander, somnambulant style, into the territory of our insane neighbours. In truth, all our neighbours are always insane and we are always sensible, right? Anyway, the constitution is supposed to guarantee that even though we belong to a small microcosm of defined monkeys, we are housed within well-defined walls of human authority.

    Strangely though, our successive governments always swear to uphold it yet they make light of the strength of the constitution to transmute us into something reasonably resembling human beings. In short, they do not let the thing make us human. They thwart it, manipulate it, mishandle it and bandy it around as if it were some weightless tome. Indeed, they seem to have turned its weighty matters into chaff so weightless it is blown around by nothing heavier than breeze.

    If the blessed constitution were to go around with a cane, nearly every one of us would have been thwacked in our behinds with great gusto. There are enough evidences and then some to show how we as individuals and governments have defied due processes of instituting and removing people into and from offices, blocked others’ roads, and made life miserable for others. There are enough evidences and then some to show inappropriate appropriations, misappropriations, financial misgivings, governmental recklessness, and so on. Now, to top up all these inappropriate behaviours, the state is actively engaged in encouraging the growth and sustenance of sectional militias.

    States as a unit normally flee from situations that bring about the disintegration of the law. This means that the state normally comes down heavy on any unauthorised group of people who arm themselves and behave in a military fashion such as fighting an individual or the rest of the country. This is why the rest of the country has ostensibly been up in arms against the boko haram. I say ostensibly because there are many things we the people do not seem to understand regarding the state’s response to that group. It would appear that, rather than quash the group, the state has been doing some abracadabra with it (the group, that is) for reasons best known to it (the state, that is).

    Lately though, Nigeria has been showing some hard-to-understand sleights of hand with the other militias resident within the walls of the country. To begin with, that militias exist within the country is bad, very bad. It is worse that, rather than go all out to exterminate them with the force of the law by hurling the constitution at them, the state appears now to be doing business with them; it is giving them contracts! Seriously?!

    There was first the Niger Delta militant force which constituted itself into a fighting force. True, the region had its legitimate grievances of utter and callous neglect by the country, especially as it produces the nation’s resources at great cost to it. I would be equally aggrieved if I were that region. This column has reiterated that the response of the government was not well thought out or thought through. That region had legions of grievances, many of which could be replicated in other regions of the country. The thing to have done was to spread the resources round the country in an even way such that no one would feel left out. Any mathematician would tell you that whatever you do to one side of an equation must be replicated on the other side to achieve balance at the end. So please don’t think I’m the bright one here; it’s the mathematicians.

    By giving people pay-outs in the name of amnesty, the country is only breeding a set of louts not primed for self-sustaining work, a result that time only will reveal in all its immensity. As it is now, youths from that region are not being taught to regard integrity as a necessary aspect of personality development. They are being taught to look down on work as something others do to keep their (i.e. the youths) souls together. In short, the country is corrupting the souls of these youths. How do I know this? From my little corner of the country, I hear that there are specific hotels in Abuja which house these youths doing nothing from morn till eve but ‘just spending money.’

    As if that were not enough, this government has gone ahead to give them ‘pipeline protection contracts’; another name for another set of pay-outs. Alarmed, the rest of us have looked on. Then the government has gone on to not only recognise a hitherto banned militia, the OPC, but has also given it its own share of the national contract to also ‘protect pipelines’. Seriously, where are we going with all these state dole-outs?

    It seems that Nigeria is running into chaos with ‘automatic alacrity’ and gusto. It became obvious last week Monday when a part of the city of Lagos was seized hey presto by a collection of overpaid, overindulged and state-pampered groups in the name of a protest. The constitution is clear on the conduct of assemblies and groups. That Monday, that constitution was again suspended by the state as the group not only brandished weapons but shot randomly in the glare of the police who not only did nothing but escorted them around. In the name of the law, there should have been some arrests; but that day, Mount Olympus bent its knees so that the country could slide easily into the sea; and it did.

    As I have always maintained on this column, an election is only an election. God willing, this country will outlive many elections yet. The prayer is that the country will still serve many generations. Yet, many of us will lie on our death beds in old age wondering what all the fuss was about, what all the desperation was about. At that time, we will wish for a return of time to correct things but time would not grant us that wish.

    There is still time to rescue the country and the time is now. It starts by honouring the contents of the constitution, not throwing it to the dogs on account of one person’s ambition or desperation. Let us be officials and gentlemen in the matter of the elections and in all else. All that make for eye-sores and ear-sores should be done away with. Remember, there is God o, even in elections.

  • It’s a descent into anarchy, says NLC

    The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) yesterday said the Presidency cannot absolve itself from the travails of Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Ameachi.

    In a statement titled: “Descent to anarchy,” NLC President Comrade Abdulwahed Omar called on President Goodluck Jonathan “to look beyond the narrow prism of power and partisan politics and ensure that peace and harmony returns to Rivers State by redeploying the Commissioner of police and displaying exemplary statesmanship by discouraging all attempts to frustrate the governor in his duties.”

    According to him, the threat to withdraw security to the Governor, which is guaranteed by the Constitution, and the sour relationship between Mr. Amaechi and the Commissioner of Police, whom he has called for redeployment and the request turned down, are clear pointers to the complicity of the Federal Government in the catastrophe in Rivers State.

    The statement added that “it is inconceivable for the Chief Security officer, which is the governor, not to enjoy respect and be so helpless in the hands of a Commissioner of Police.

    “Adequate security to the Governor and good relationship with the Police Commissioner is fundamental to peace in the state, and anything contrary is encouraging a descent to anarchy and chaos, which may well conflagrate beyond the confines of the state.”

    The congress urged the National Assembly to look beyond rushing to take over the affairs of the Rivers State House of Assembly, which by law it has the mandate, but be more creative in finding sustainable ways of ensuring that the prevailing disgrace and descent to anomy in the state is mutually resolved for the sake of peace and security of the people.

    The statement said: “The show of shame going on in the Rivers State House of Assembly calls for the condemnation of all well-meaning Nigerians. The Congress condemns this perfidy in the strongest terms as its implication questions not just the eligibility of some legislators, but the commitment of the political class to the sustainability of democracy in the country.

    “While it is inconceivable and ridiculous in a democracy that five members of the House of Assembly would contemplate impeaching a Speaker who enjoys the support of twenty six other members, more shameful are the tactics employed by the combatants in their desperation for power.

    “ Further disturbing, if not disgusting was a pliant and sheepish police that ostensibly acted helplessly rather than intervene decisively as their duty demands to maintain order and peace by carting away or arresting trouble makers at the scene of the mayhem.

    “For their lack of professionalism at the spot, the victims of this irrational and insane act of legislators and hooligans are lying in hospital with various degrees of injury, and the state soon enough could be caught in an orgy of violence and bloodletting.”