Weekend Arena - Nigerians Play Too Much With Serious Issues

If there is something Nigerians have gotten better at, over the years, it is mastering the art of insulating their misery as a people. 

In the course of our daily lives, somehow, very serious issues are surprisingly brushed aside for inanities. When they are even paid any attention, be sure that something else (oftentimes less weighty) would soon happen to displace their interest. This leaves everyone pointing fingers at corruption as the devil behind all our woes; as if corruption is not an indulgence of humans, Nigerians.

In the past couple of years, the country has literally been overtaken by banditry of all sorts. Aside the more sophisticated and organised terrorism, ravaging the Northeast region of the country, there are rising cases of gun attacks in the Northwest and herder-farmer skirmishes in the Northcentral.

 The southern part of the country has not fared any better with cases of kidnapping, armed robbery and cultism, which are taking the lives of innocent Nigerians on a daily basis. These have made the entire country a theatre of lawlessness, prompting some to imagine us as a failed nation, though I fail to subscribe to this, because things are still redeemable with the ideal leadership.



In the midst of all these, nothing is as disheartening as the horror that exemplifies the daily living for Nigerians, using the highway from Kogi state, through Abuja to Kaduna state. That stretch of the country could be termed: ‘the axis of brazen banditry’. Unhindered, or so it seems, gunmen (of both sexes o) constitute themselves into gangs to lay siege on their preferred spots on the highway. Their victims (which often include members of our security agencies) are robbed and in special cases, marched several kilometres into the forest, where they are held hostage until they are able to negotiate their freedom. Status does not save anyone. Ransoms are imposed according to perceived degree of affluence. And sometimes, the gangs misjudge personalities based on looks; and victims who look rich but fail to ‘act’ so by raising the imposed ransoms are termed recalcitrant and killed!



With killings lately spiking on the Okene-Lokoja-Abuja axis, it is surprising that Nigerians carry on as if it is normal. The media-social and tradition- seems more concerned with less burdensome issues, indulging in them as if lives in the country depended on such. It is obvious that the political class, whom I blame for all these, understands the sensibilities of Nigerians which is why they throw such distractions at us, once in a while to divert our attention.

 Imagine how Godswill Akpabio, the Niger Delta Minister, brushing aside the allegations by Joy Nunieh, the sacked managing director of the Niger Delta Development Commission, currently swimming in colossal fraud to talk about the lady’s private life with her supposed ex-husbands. Imagine how Ned Nwoke’s assertion that he met his young wife, Regina Daniels, an actress, a virgin, has been dominating the discourse amongst Nigerians in a week where issues of fraud in government are in the air, like the harmattan haze.

Perhaps, we play too much as a nation!

The truth is that the worsening security situation between Okene and Abuja should worry everyone. Yes, we can blame the police, but the stark realities in the police system are hardly the making of the policemen but the system that constitutes the country. The security architecture in the country, created by the political class, prefers protecting the powerful at the expense of the vulnerable, which is why despite the abysmally low number of officers (219 police officer to 100,000 Nigerians) one of the lowest in the world, you see the officers clustering around politicians and their family members. 

The ranking by the World Internal Security and Police Index currently rates our police as 127th out of 127 countries, far behind countries like Botswana (47th), Rwanda (50th), Algeria (58th) and Senegal (68th).

Some have suggested that numbers does not matter in policing but technology. Yes, but funds are needed to deploy the right technology. Out of the about N403b allocated to the Nigeria Police Force this year, a fraction of what the South African Police got (R112b), only about N14b is designated by NPF for capital expenditure, not minding that in most cases, budgetary allocations are usually not entirely released to government agencies. In the name of democracy, politicians who contribute far less in the system corner the bulk of our resources as allowances at the expense of everyone.



This same system which has refused to deploy the adequate security system to suppress the hoodlum on Okene-Abuja Road has the manpower to constitute road blocks (500 metres apart, some argue) on the Lagos-Onitsha highway and would probably deploy about 35,000 policemen for the election in Edo State later in the year.

Many of the police bosses we have had in the recent past, apparently know where the problems in our security architecture are, but appear stifled to talk about it or take action against it when they are in office. You will notice this when you read their interviews post-retirement, where they usually propound ideals far at variance from what was obtainable when they were in office. Like a friend, who was kidnapped and released on that route recently said: ‘that road is highway to perdition’. Pray whenever you are there.

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