Nigeria: Homelands Under Siege!

 By Sunny Awhefeada

Homeland holds significance in many ways. It embodies the phys­ical, psychological and spiritual essence of man. Homeland could be a birthplace or an adopted place of origin. Both ways, a homeland has an endearing and enduring impact on people. It has a pull that is difficult to ignore or avoid. Before modernity and globalization came with displacement and tendency to see everywhere as home, the idea of the homeland carried with it a romantic allure that it became a motif in po­etry and music.

 The enduring impact of the homeland magic and mystic finds eternal resonance in Evi Edna Ogholi’s “No Place like Home”. Her scribal brothers, Gabriel Okara, Tanure Ojaide, Ibiwari Ikoriko, Joe Ushie, Ogaga Ifowodo, Ebi Yeibo, Obari Gom­ba, Peter Omoko and Stephen Kekeghe, in their poetry romanticized an idyllic home­land that was lost to capitalist rapacity em­bodied in oil multinationals and insensitive successive governments under the firm grip of comprador bourgeoisie. People had gone to war to defend their homeland. No matter how far people sojourned in the distant past they always made attempt to return to their homeland.

At the turn of the last century many Urhobo families migrated to Ikale in the present Ondo State to participate in palm oil production. Ikale became Ukane a signifi­er for migration among Urhobo people. Many of them returned home after years of living in Ukane. Those who died there and couldn’t return home had parts of their body, hair, finger nails or toe nails, cut off and brought home to be interred in the homeland. And children born by those who returned home were named Tuwere in a reassuring celebra­tion of homecoming.

Our homelands are presently under siege by forces of darkness aided and abetted by the Nigerian state. No matter what government is saying right now the failure of the state to overrun the perpetrators of lawlessness and anarchy is in itself an act of complicity. When more than a decade ago well-meaning Nigerians raised the alarm over acts of an­archic dimensions that would snowball into imminent war those in government called them names and told an apprehensive nation that nothing was amiss.

Those who drew attention to such acts were called “dooms­day prophets”, “nay sayers” and “enemies of progress”. When eventually skirmishes began and it was clear that something was amiss we were told “everything is under con­trol”, and later we heard the verbal malady “technically defeated”. Gradually, the North- East and North-West became theatres of war involving intense military operations. The en­emies of state soon breached peace and order and took the battle in its multidimensionality to other parts of the country.

The marauders swarmed the Middle Belt, invaded the South- West, ruptured the South-South and rattled the South-East. Call them terrorists, bandits, kidnappers or any other unsavory name they are all bent on undoing the state. They are bent on wiping out whole communities and diminishing ethnic nationalities in dimen­sions that are genocidal.

The university town of Abraka is a place where people sought knowledge, but it was also once a paradise manifesting in the beau­tiful Ethiope River and the lush forest which signposted nature’s therapy. Abraka was home to tourists. The town enjoys a unique history reminding its inhabitants of the war that saw to their emancipation from Aka, the land of Igodomigodo.

Today, the town breathes and lives in trepidation because the marauders who loathe civilization have camped there and taken over the once safe and beautiful homeland. The marauders kidnap, rape and rob the populace. When the security forces could not help and when the people felt they were aiding and abetting, they began a peaceful protest to draw the attention of government. And what followed? The very security forces that should protect them, the very security forces that could not apprehend the bandits and kidnappers took on the people as soft targets.

Whether they denied it or not there are video footages of security forces shooting to undermine the protest and van­dalizing a vehicle. In the course of the protests that lasted for some days, the embarrassed security agents for the first time went after the kidnappers, neutralized four and recov­ering weapons. Other kidnappers launched a reprisal attack and killed two innocent men. Words are also out there that some persons have again been kidnapped. Abraka is not an isolated case. Many communities in southern Nigeria have been overrun by the bandits and terrorists. The security forces are increas­ingly becoming more and more helpless if not clueless.

Many Nigerians did not hear of Yelewa­ta until a few days ago. The community just chalked up a spot on the list of communities ravaged by the invaders. The number of men, women and children killed exceeded one hun­dred. Benue State where the community is lo­cated together with Plateau State rank among states that have suffered massive casualties.

Both states, in addition to Taraba State, are symbolic in that they formed the belt of resis­tance that halted the advancing menace of the 19th century Jihad led by Usman Dan Fodio. There are conjectures that overrunning the Middle Belt and dispossessing the people of their land is a sine qua non to conquering southern Nigeria and dipping the Koran in the Atlantic Ocean. 

To think that the ragtag fighters who committed this crime against humanity have no backers in high places is to live in fatal denial. It was once alleged that governors of the northern states were contributing to funding Boko Haram and the late public intellectual, Obadiah Maila­fia, told the nation that a governor was the commander of the insurgents. But nothing was done. Instead, Dr. Mailafia was hounded to an untimely death.

Government’s jejune response is to blame the massacre on herders-farmers’ conflict, set up a reconciliation committee, issue threats and warnings and then go to sleep until the next attack. General T. Y. Danjuma (rtd) in 2018 called on Nigerians to defend themselves. A few months ago the Director of the Depart­ment of State Services (DSS) also made the same call.

In the wake of the Yelewata killings it was a distraught Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Christopher Musa who pro­posed the training of community youths who will fight and protect their homelands from marauders. What then is the role of the secu­rity forces? Is the CDS’s proposal not an abdi­cation of responsibility? All around our cities are soldiers and men of other uniformed ser­vices extorting helpless civilians when they should be combing the forests and flushing out the terrorists, bandits and kidnappers.

The CDS and two other ministers have told us that Nigeria was too large with too many porous borders and that there was the need to build a wall to stop terrorists from entering our country. Well, we now need to pray for the reincarnation of those tireless ancestors who built the ancient walls of Kano and dug the Benin moats to ward off enemies so that they can help us build walls and moats round the nation’s boundaries.

Our homelands are under siege and we do not know for how long this would go on. There is now a multiplicity of terrorists groups bearing funny names. President Bola Tinu­bu has visited Benue State and in the course of his speech asked the Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun why nobody has been arrested. Egbetokun smiled knowing that his men arrest innocent people hourly.

So the president was wrong to have thought that nobody has been arrested. The president also called “Christopher” the CDS and told him that the criminals must be taken out. The CDS acknowledged the order with a smart sa­lute. Some years ago, President Muhammadu Buhari ordered the then Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, of the “transmission” fame to go and take charge of the security situation in the same Benue State only to discover that Idris was relishing burukutu in Abuja.

Since the CDS has given imprima­tur to self-defence our communities should remember Danjuma’s admonition “defend yourselves”. There is hardly no community without its own mechanism for self-defence. But their resolve is often broken by the mil­itary that visit self-defence with reprisals in a manner that emboldens the marauders. Soldiers turned their guns on the youths of Uwheru when they defended themselves against killer-herdsmen. It happened in many other places too.

To save our homeland the time has come to embrace federalism in its full essence by introducing state police. No state governor would sit and wait helplessly for Abuja to help him secure his state when he has control over the police in his state. We must resist the siege on our homeland. Our homelands must not be wiped out.

* Awhefeada is a professor of English and literary studies