By Owei Lakemfa
As an aspirant in 2022, the President of the Nigeria Bar Association, NBA, Yakubu Chonoko Maikyau, made a pilgrimage to Keffi, Nasarawa State. He needed the blessings of one of the most consummate and influential law professors the country has ever produced: Onje Gye-Wado. The latter from 1999, was for four years, Deputy Governor of Nasarawa State. He was also former Law Dean of the Nasarawa State University, and Dean, Faculty of Law, Birmingham University.
Gye-Wado is not just full of law and
enthusiasm for the Nigerian people, he is also passionate about football. He
helped develop the sport in the country at various levels, including being at a
time, Member of the Nigeria Football Association, NFA.
What many may not know about the quiet
Professor Gye-Wado is his reach in the Labour Movement. When the Nigeria Labour
Congress, NLC, moved its headquarters from Lagos to Abuja in 2002, my
colleague, Chris Uyot who was in charge of information, and I travelled to see
Gye-Wado in Keffi, not just to inform him we had moved to Abuja, but primarily
to drink from his ever-flowing fountain of knowledge.
When in 2004, the Labour Party, then known as
the Party for Social Democracy, PSD, ran into leadership problems, it was to
Gye-Wado the NLC leadership turned to for assistance. Congress approached him
to become the party chairman and steer it along the pro-masses lines for which
it was established. Although he eventually did not become the chair, but it was
an indication how high the Labour Movement held Gye-Wado.
But Prof is like a rich orange tree many want to pluck from; unfortunately, these included terrorists and bandits who made some attempts to kidnap him. On Good Friday, April 7, 2023 Gye-Wado was in his village, Gwagi, Rinza near Wamba in the Wamba Local Government Area of Nasarawa State to observe the Easter period.
Bandits broke into his home and abducted
him. They are demanding a N70 million ransom. The kidnappers must think his
richness in humanism means he is financially rich. We all should rally round
the family and support all efforts to get this consummate humanist released.
The attack on Gye-Wado is not isolated. It is
part of the lawlessness that pervades the country, especially the
North-Central. A combination of terrorists, bandits, local and foreign armed
militias have turned the region into killing fields.
Three days before Gye-Wado’s kidnap, armed men invaded Umuogidi Village in the Enetekpa Adoka District of Otukpo Local Government Area of Benue State and killed three persons. The next day when the people gathered to bury the dead, it turned out to be a trap. The criminals descended on the mourners and massacred 51 of them.
This case is not just about
the massacres but the cynical way of getting the people to gather for burial
and then opening fire on them. It is the Islamic State, ISIS, template of
triggering off a small bomb, and when a crowd gathers to rescue the victims, a
bigger bomb is set off. This is to ensure maximum casualty.
This same Good Friday Gye-Wado was abducted,
bandits attacked internally displaced persons, IDPs, at their shelter in the
LGEA Primary School, Mgban, Nyiev Council Ward, Guma Local Government of Benue
State killing at least 43 persons, including pregnant women and children, with
scores injured and several people missing. If the goal of the attackers is not
genocide, why after forcing people off their ancestral lands, would they still
massacre them in the IDP camps?
Earlier on Monday in the region, bandits who had abducted 60 persons in the Adunu and Kwagana communities in the Paikoro Local Government Area of Niger State, executed five of the hostages, including a serving police officer, and his retired colleague, Moses Tanko alias Arada System.
They were executed following the two communities inability to meet a
Sunday, April 2, 2023 deadline that they pay N100 million ransom. After the
executions, the bandits sent three women who they had raped for about two
weeks, to take the news back to the communities and warn them against further
delay of the ransom.
In March, 2023 alone, at least 26 violent
crimes were visited on the people of the region. In Benue State in the past 40
days, alleged herders have killed over 157 persons: 41 in Kwande; 8 in Gwer
West; Agatu, 4; Guma 10; Mgban 43 and 51 in Umuogidi. These are mainly
terrorist acts perpetuated, especially by foreign armed groups who seize
villages, settle in, and rename them without any known challenge from the
Nigerian Armed Forces, or order from His Excellency Muhammadu Buhari, the
President and Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces that the invaders
be flushed out.
These acts of genocide have been brought several times to his attention, including by Benue State Governor Samuel Ortom. But he has not ordered the military to take back these dozens of villages and towns, and return the victims who are forced to live in Internally Displaced Peoples camps.
This may stem from President Buhari’s insistence that the
on-going massacres in Benue and Plateau states are not armed invasions by local
and foreign armed militia, but merely “inter-communal conflicts”. This claim,
he repeated in his Saturday April 8, 2023 reaction to the unconscionable
massacres in Umuogidi.
The Vanguard Newspapers in June 30, 2018
reported that as at five years ago, these ethnic militias had invaded, seized
and renamed over 54 communities in Plateau State alone! Are these “communal”
clashes?
Since they have been unchallenged over the
years, these bandits and terrorists have spread their crimes against humanity
to Niger State where towns have been sacked and citizens forced to live in IDP
camps or flee to safer areas, including Abuja. In March, 2023, bandits in the
state killed six and abducted 50 in Rafi and killed 15, including four soldiers
in Munya with 15 held hostage.
A caveat on these serious crimes statistics is
that they are conservative as they reflect only verifiable ones, crimes the
victims report or those that got media attention.
The nation has lost its way. I do not have
faith in the out-going government; the hope is that the in-coming
administration will change the security narrative.
Diya completely underrated Abacha and was
basically incapable of reading the political situation. Even when those of us,
outsiders could read changing situation, he could not. By the time Diya
realised he was riding on a tiger’s back, he had practically ended up in its
stomach.
Abacha had Ibru shot on February 2, 1996; he
survived, but lost an eye and two fingers. He got his killer squad on June 4,
1996 to execute Mrs. Kudirat Abiola, Chief Abiola’s wife, on the streets of
Lagos. Abacha went after Onagoruwa by killing his son, Oluwatoyin, a lawyer, on
December 18, 1996. He then sent Diya to officially commiserate with him. Then,
he went after Diya.
After two assassination attempts on Diya,
including in December 1997, blowing up the aircraft he was to take on official
assignment to Benue State, Abacha manufactured a phantom coup under which Diya
in April, 1998, was sentenced to death. It was the second of such coups. The
first was in 1995 under which men like retired Generals Olusegun Obasanjo and
Shehu Yar’Adua were convicted. The latter was poisoned in Abakali Prisons.
After the sentence, videos emerged of General
Diya kneeling down before Abacha, weeping and begging for his life. His life
might have been spared only because Abacha lost his own on June 8, 1998. That
enabled Diya to live another 25 years in virtual obscurity before he finally
bowed out on March 26, 2023. May we never witness such regimes in Nigeria
again. Amen!
*Lakemfa is a commentator on public issues
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