There is a popular adage among the Zulu tribe of South Africa which says that “what kills a king is inside the king’s palace”. This is the ironic nature of human tragedy.
It is the very effort by the individual to save himself that brings about his own death. In an attempt by the authorities to protect victims of attacks displaced from their ancestral land by terrorists and bandits, the innocent villagers are relocated to IDP camps. Right there inside the camps, they are again attacked, raped and killed by the same or other gangs of marauding terrorists. If they are resettled back in their land or in another community, they also stand the risk of being attacked yet again because the enemy has become audacious in their evil venture. How does one explain a situation where bandits brazenly defy 24-hour curfew imposed by government in Plateau State, killing innocent citizens and sacking communities in a country that has a standing army of more than 223,000 active personnel, ranked as one of the largest uniformed combat services in Africa, the fourth-most powerful military in the continent and 35th on the global list? This is a national embarrassment. The gunmen are “coming and going” at will like JP Clark’s Abiku child. This is the dilemma of internally displaced persons in many IDP camps across Northern Nigeria. Cases abound of rape, theft, human rights violations, burglary, banditry, kidnapping and even child marriage in many IDP camps in the North. As the state of insecurity, kidnapping and banditry continues to worsen, the number of displaced persons may rise further in the years ahead if drastic measures are not put in place to deal with the scourge.
According to available data, from 2009 to March 2022, an estimated 350,000 had been killed as a result of Boko Haram insurgency alone, with nearly 3 million displaced around the Lake Chad basin. In Maiduguri alone, the IDP camps sheltered from 120,000 to 130,000 persons while those camped in local governments across Borno State were over 400,000. The total number of IDPs in the state was put at 1.4 million persons, the highest in Northern Nigeria. As at March 2022, Nigeria has a total of 143,110 IDP camps out of which 84 per cent are located in Borno State. Nigeria has the third-highest number of IDPs in Africa after DR Congo and Somalia. The federal authorities in Aso Rock are well aware that IDP camps are only temporary shelters and can never be regarded as substitutes for the ancestral homes of the victims; of course, unlike itinerant, mortal human beings, ancestors don’t roam about from one community to another and they cannot be relocated! The only practical and sustainable way to protect the lives and property of victims of terrorist attacks is for the Nigerian Armed Forces to chase the terrorists away from this country permanently. That particular responsibility, without prejudice to the general belief that security is everybody’s business, rests squarely on the shoulders of no less a personage than the Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces. Truly, the idea that security is everybody’s duty is based on the principle of collective responsibility in defence of the fatherland and nationhood, which is lofty and patriotic. Nevertheless, that principle is academic in the circumstance. As the Aniocha people say in the parable, “The housewife that shakes her waist while pounding yam for her husband is shaking her waist for nothing because at the end of the day, both her waist and the yam she’s pounding belong to the husband.” While the citizens are encouraged to be vigilant, and while soliciting intelligence from traumatized villagers, the primary function of government as spelt out in the Nigerian constitution still remains, first and foremost, to safeguard the security and welfare of the citizens. The federal government must accept the responsibility of securing the people and defending the sovereignty of this country; it would be untenable to abdicate that duty under the notion that it is everybody’s business. Pregnant women, little girls raped in their homes and in IDP camps, newly-born babies and elderly men and women, persons living with disability cannot defend themselves when faced by those blood merchants seeking for whom to devour. It is the armed forces that can confront these evil men ‘bumper to bumper’ and flush them out from every nook and cranny of this country that they are hiding. If the heads of the various security agencies cudgel their brains thoroughly, they would find that they have the capacity to dislodge these bandits, or whatever they are called.
In addition to humanitarian assistance by NGOs and faith-based organizations, corporate organizations and well-meaning Nigerians, the federal and state emergency agencies should rejig their modus operandi to make their approach proactive rather than reactive. Above all, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria, President Ahmed Bola Tinubu, should as a matter of urgency muster the necessary political will to deal with the terrorists once and for all.
Anthony-Spinks writes from Asaba, Delta State.
