STRIKER: Rights, Peace And Responsibilities

DURING the Buhari-Idiagbon regime (1983-85), there were reported incidences of people being shot at for as little as urinating in public. That was extreme enforcement of the War Against Indiscipline (WAI) by overzealous and trigger-happy soldiers; instance of the realities of bygone military rule.

With democracy comes freedom. However, democracy is not unlimited, unqualified freedom. If citizens want to enjoy rights, they must obey the Rule of Law and fulfil their civic duties; if they want peace and unity, they must demand justice and equal rights. The democratic deal is that power belongs to the people, and they have the responsibility to hold government that they elect accountable. No politician or government from heaven will come to build a paradise country for them for the asking; it can only be the outcome of their collective struggles (via all their various organisations), which is why it is said that “a people gets the kind of government it deserves.”

Under democracy, personal liberties are suspended in certain small measures in order for the society at large to be free, as government is constituted from amongst the people to see to the pursuit of their happiness. Individuals, as citizens, thereby have huge responsibilities in equal measures as they have rights. It is the failure by majority of Nigerians to properly understand and live up to these responsibilities and exercise those rights that accounted for individuals and groups taking liberty for licence, in the light of near-absent government, leading to today’s grave threat to democracy, law and order and the corporate existence of the nation.

In the particular instance of the suffocating insecurity that is Nigeria’s present reality, let us take a look. Herders have complained for a long time in the North about cattle rustling, especially by terror groups (who needed food supplies and slaves – kidnapped persons – on their jungle farm, and ransom for funding their armoury). Policing and law enforcement ought to come to their rescue and neutralise the menace. Not being the case, self-help came into play with herders arming themselves with sophisticated weapons. This in turn dangerously impacted the age-old herders-farmers crises (particularly in Benue and Plateau), which had always been communally managed somehow without any creative intervention from the state in terms of modernising the cattle rearing profession. Consequently, the order-crime-punishment equation ended up being politicised rather than balanced up!

With the State in self-serving slumber, with the citizens choosing arbitrariness and self-help rather than concerted actions to demand accountability from its elected government, and with the ever resourceful terrorist organisations seeing a loophole for tactical manoeuvre (in exploiting the armed-herdsmen, herders-farmers imbroglio), they moved in. Again, rather than creatively assess and respond, the bungling state continued its drowse and the media (mis)adopted various nomenclatures for a clear, sophisticatedly coordinated terrorist and insurgency attack on the nation: “banditry,” “unknown gunmen,” “suspected herdsmen,” etc.

The majority of Nigerians know the truth: there have been Fulanis in virtually all parts of Yorubaland, and Southern Nigeria, grazing their cattle for decades and whereas it occasions periodic misunderstanding, they have always managed to resolve consequent disputes somehow; same as there are Yoruba and Southerners everywhere in the North doing their businesses and managing to get along with their host communities. The present crises have nothing to do with these common Fulani, Yoruba and Southern people who have little problems in peacefully coexisting. It is the failure of the state, the government and the ruling elite to solve fundamental and clear problems of insecurity that is playing out, straight to the advantage of the terror groups and politicians that senselessly think politicising insecurity will gain them political mileage in upcoming elections.

The truth is clear enough but the truth and the common people will continue to remain the casualty of the collapse of law and order, simply because they are, so far, reluctant to clearly understand and accept their social responsibilities and assert their rights under democracy. It is not too late to wake up as a people and do the needful.