Time To Review Nigeria

Alabi Williams

When some concerned intelligence quarters in the U.S advised that 2015 could be ominous for Nigeria, not many people took the concern to heart. Some even jeered at the peep as another meddlesomeness of the West. There was sufficient time between when the alert was issued way back in 2006 and 2015 for some reasonable measures to be put in place to shame the doomsayers, assuming that was all there was to it. There were also no signs that the matter was handed to local intelligence units to interrogate. In the absence of a concerted official position on the prediction, individual politicians swore to high heavens that Nigeria had come too far to disintegrate. Private citizens, as usual, launched into prayers to ward off the forecast from hell, and to possibly return it to those who sent it.

(pix:nigeriancurrents)

Year 2015 has come and gone and the house has not fallen, even though we did not do anything special to reinforce its structures. Glory be to God. But how long can the house continue to stand when there are no deliberate efforts to prolong its lifespan, except to hope and pray? But citizens continue to do a lot of other things to hewn at its foundations and the leadership refusing to hearken to calls to retool for enhanced cohesion and greater performance.

Until three weeks ago, the most disturbing news item was that of herdsmen who prowled communities of Benue, Enugu, Oyo, Delta and everywhere, unleashing terror on armless victims and setting their homes ablaze. Skirmishes between herdsmen and farmers had gone on for decades, but such were settled with sticks, and perhaps bows and arrows. Herdsmen used to carry local guns for hunting animals. In those days, herdsmen travel for kilometers in search of grazing lands and they did not seek to drive local farmers away to inherit their lands. If there were skirmishes, they were isolated and were within the capacity of community leaders to manage.

But as if to hasten the U.S prediction on disintegration, even if not within the 2015 timeline, herdsmen of recent years leave no one in doubt about their notion of a country. They want to operate like doctors with borders, roaming without inhibitions of law and space, trampling on territories and annexing vast swathes, even ancestral lands. They went to Plateau and left behind desolation and deaths. Then they went with temerity to Kaduna, south of the state and inflicted collateral damage on the local population. Then they went to Nasarawa, where prevailing internecine suspicions among local tribes aided their exploits. Then they crossed into Benue, Kogi, Ondo, and Oyo and were unhindered, even though they made front pages when they visited chief Olu Falae. It was in Enugu, and of recent Ekiti that their accomplishments received more than the usual feeble condemnations of the past.