By: Favour Bamijoko
We are at ‘war’ and that is what you should know. Every other thing that follows in this piece simply makes up an exegesis to the point that the nation is profusely bleeding out at the sides from a ravaging war. And one must point out that the things that make up this explanation are simply things we have seen, heard, or even closely or remotely experienced, the full implication of which is lost on our understanding because the correct political term, ‘war / genocidal war’, quietly ongoing in most part of Nigeria and seeping further downward, is yet to be appropriately used. For what it is worth, it is necessary to state Nigeria is currently bleeding out to a war that has been burning for decades now, a war which our political elites are either complicit in or too irresponsible to address.
The need to address the politics of the language of the current situation by using the appropriate terms is important. The (deliberate) sidestepping of the appropriate term explains, in part, why Nigerians are in a daze, unable to grasp their current state, and consequently, unable to act, despite the growing atrocities that confront our collective consciousness and existence. The scale of atrocities committed by these terrorists has been on the rise, every year more virulent and alarming than ever. Nevertheless, without the appropriate designation of the situation as the ‘war’ that it is, these atrocities and deaths will merely just remain an exhibition of deaths and casualties that sometimes shock us, and at other times pass as ‘expected’. Susan Sontag brilliantly explains this in her words; “it is still ideology (in the broadest sense) that determines what constitutes an event. There can be no evidence, photographic or otherwise, of an event until the event itself has been named and characterized.”
Ever since Donald Trump’s declaration of Nigeria as a ‘country of particular concern’ ,he Nigerian government and its minions, including political groups who have since seen the opportunity as an avenue to take out political differences with Trump have tried to refute. But, how effectively can anyone deny the realities of a country where the tolls of deaths due from terrorist related activities and ‘banditry’ keep rising every year? In an article by BBC in 2018, titled, ‘Nigeria’s Boko Haram Attacks in Numbers – As Lethal As Ever’ BBC reported how terrorism-related deaths rose in 2017, where more than 900 were killed, from the previous year.
A country is definitely not at peace when citizens are ambushed and gruesomely massacred in their homes and villages by bike-riding terrorists without state repression, justice nor even documentation. A certain Eniola Oluwanimi came online on Twitter to share a video showing how she escaped one such ambush on her school community, in Kwara State, Oke Ode. In the video, a number of dead bodies were seen lying wasted on the floor. The attack would leave 15 dead, and would trigger a “mass exodus” of people from their community or more appropriately, their homes. Several of this calibre of attacks have happened in several places across the middle belt and some parts of the north.
A country is not at peace when armed terror groups are springing up in a neck-and-neck tie against each other in a race to control local government areas in the northeastern parts of Nigeria. In a sovereign state with a ‘democratically elected’ government— so they call it. These groups are holding dissidents captives, establishing parallel taxes in these places, killing, raping and butchering people, while the government of the day simply does nothing but lets them exist, providing an enabling environment for the formation of many other groups.
A country is certainly not at peace when citizens are being kidnapped by marauding fulani terrorists and have to negotiate with terrorists and buy their freedom at heavy prices. People are being kidnapped in their houses, while traveling, on their way from work, anywhere and at any time. In 2024, Organised Crime and Corruption the he Reporting Project documented the surge in guerilla abductions and kidnapping. According to their report, over 7,500 Nigerians were abducted in a year, with paid ransome equaling over $6 million within the same time length.
This is probably not counting the sum that has been possibly paid to them by the government; see here & here. Ours is a country where terrorists and killers get government funding, speak with government officials, carry out heinous crimes without being accosted or apprehended by the security officials. A government is certainly at war and challenged when they feel impotent in the face of anti-state actors. People have now resorted to crowdfunding to pay ransome.
A country is not at peace when students are being abducted in their droves from schools. In the last one month, nothing less than 400 students have been abducted from their learning institutions; 25 in Kebbi; 303 students & 12 teachers from St Mary’s School in Papiri, Niger state; and other cases, with parents of kidnapped kids dying from shock. As of today about 41 schools have been closed over insecurity — 18 in the North West, 10 in the North East and 13 in the North Central. Schools are not closed down in places not experiencing conflicts.
Donald Trump’s statement, hollow as it was, is not the issue. The only issue here is Nigeria is bleeding to a burgeoning insurgency. Thus, there is no doubt about the uprising of a war. Is it a religious or ethnic war? Or a secret third thing? It is hard to say, but what can be easily said is that it has elements of religiously-motivated crisis and ethnic-based crisis and a consume-all crisis.
One cannot deny the many religious-based violence this country has experienced for years. One cannot deny the ethnic based conflict. But the bottomline in this issue is there is a flaming crisis which the government of the day is trying too hard to white-wash, because they are complicit in it, because the terrorists-sympathizers and sponsors who are war-profiteers have found themselves in government; because the government of the day, from the very first day, is clueless about how to exterminate this conflict and maybe unwilling too.
In the crisis that happened in Oke Ode in Kwara State, one of the survivors, speaking to journalists, said: “There is no one left in Ógba Ayo. We don’t know if we will ever return to our homes or what the future holds for us.” No matter how the government tries to euphemize the crisis, we must know that only in war-torn regions do people abandon the very place where they built with love, hard-earned money and hope, due to the fear of being killed and that’s what you should know.
