Two existential issues – security and poverty- that bear great
relevance to the assessment of performance of governments globally reared their
heads back-to-back, last week, in Nigeria . Both issues were so tangible that they could
not escape essential appraisal and indictment.
While the carnage in Bakin Ladi local
government area of Plateau State on June 23, 2018 was so self-evident such that
it could not be denied by the Federal Government, the Brookings report that
Nigeria has overtaken India as the global poverty capital has been rebutted by
government through the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Okechukwu
Enelamah.
The impotence (or was it complacency and collaboration by soldiers with the
bandits as alleged by General T.Y. Danjuma?) of our security architecture and
executing machinery was once again exposed when gun-wielding Fulani herdsmen
attacked Nekan, Kufang and Ruku villages in a coordinated fashion, killing well
over 120 persons.
The characteristic ease with which they have
unleashed terror on the Middle Belt states in recent months, without the
apprehension of the perpetrators, has questioned the non-complicity of
President Muhammadu Buhari in what is largely perceived and interpreted as
ethnic cleansing.
In situations, such as we have consistently
witnessed, where the security organs have failed woefully to protect the lives
of Nigerians and/or moving on to apprehend the perpetrators of the dastardly
acts of massacre, the reasonable conclusion is to lay the blame at the door
step of the president.
The buck stops on his table and he cannot,
therefore, escape vicarious liability.
And, quite unfortunately for him, he is of the
same Fulani stock with the bands of Fulani gunmen that have been killing
innocent Nigerians in the Middle Belt and other parts of Nigeria with
reckless abandon.
In truth, Buhari may have been too passive,
cold and complacent in his disposition to the killings, I am at great pains to
point a finger of guilt at him as having possibly endorsed the madness that has
cast a slur on his government and contributed to the discounting of the
nationwide goodwill that he enjoyed going into the 2015 presidential election.
In the same vein, it is possible that his
perceived nonchalance (read as tacit support) is the stimulant that has
sustained the herdsmen to continue to unleash orgies of violence on the
Christian populations on a grandiose scale in the middle belt and minimally in
other parts of the country.
Indeed, Buhari has a whole of lot of assuring
and reassuring to do to pacify the brutally-assaulted sensibilities of
Nigerians, especially the Christian populations that have been at the receiving
end of the serial massacres.
Of all the reactions that have trailed the
killings on the Plateau, Senator Shehu Sani’s innuendo cannot go
unnoticed.
His suggestion that the dead should be buried
in the Three Arms Zone in Abuja
where the Aso Rock Presidential Villa, the seat of power, is located is his
writ large pointer to Buhari’s blameworthiness.
Also instructive is the United States of America ’s position via a
statement by the spokesperson for the US Department of State, Ms Heather
Nauret, which condemned in the strongest terms the killing of civilians and
destruction of property in Nigeria ’s
middle belt region over the weekend.
We are concerned by the recent increase in
armed violence against civilians and call on political and community leaders to
lend their voices to peace and to work together to find lasting solutions to
these rural conflicts.
It is heartrending that the Federal Government could not stave off this
tragedy: it is tragic to our sense of humanity.
What perhaps could absolve Buhari of
complicity in this danse macabre is that he also faces the risk of a discounted
electoral goodwill in the 2019 presidential election.
He therefore will logically not encourage such
an albatross.
Confidence by a vast majority of people who
committed themselves to his presidential enterprise in 2015 has waned on
account of this preventable tragedy.
A politician who craves national support
should be worried; except if the president is propelled more by a sense of
ethnic than pan-Nigeria nationalism; and, perhaps, if he has a sure-footed
unconventional strategy to garner the critical votes countrywide that will make
certain his re-election.
But then, I have this surreal feeling that the
president and his advisers are not getting some things right in their
calculations.
If ethnic colouration is being read to the
prickly security issue that has been exacerbated by the Fulani herdsmen, what
about the growing hunger in the land?
The number of people that I see these days in
the street of Abuja ,
begging for alms to be able to feed themselves and their children at home has
increased exponentially.
The practice is not anymore restricted to the
Almajiris alone who have been doing that even in the midst of plenty.
And, this is quite instructive in assessing
the performance of the economy in pragmatic terms.
The purchasing power of Nigerians has been
eroded by inflation which, for instance, rose to 11.61 percent year on year for
the month of May 2018 according to the National Bureau of Statistics
(NBS).
The productive base has been constricted as
the sector has consistently witnessed collapse of manufacturing businesses. Millions
of Nigerians have lost their jobs.
The bazaar-canteen economic model that
emphasises price indeterminacy continues to worsen matters.
Those who have plenty money in their pocket
end up buying few things as there is no pricing policy that fixes the marginal
profits that can be made from the sale of products or goods.
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