A People Without Souls

Comfort Obi

The stories coming out of Nigeria, as painstakingly reported in the media these past few days, are heart-breaking. President Umaru Yar’Adua should declare a national day of mourning.
Nigeria is a country of a people without souls. Blood flows in our houses and streets everyday. And we are like a people constantly at war. In our hopelessness, we are groping in the dark, asking: 'God, where are you?' He seems to have abandoned us. He should not be blamed. We have hurt Him.
In one of the most cruel and bizarre stories I have read, six children of the same father, aged between seven and three years, were herded by two masked men into the booth of their father’s car and left to suffocate to death. Five of them died. Only one, the seven- year-old survived. It happened in Ekiti State penultimate Saturday. Time was 11.00 a.m. In Akwa Ibom Stae, a 419 pastor had inexplicably tortured scores of children to death, accusing them of being witches and wizards. Armagaddon is here. And as if we have collectively sworn to do away with our children, we woke up one morning to the horrifying news that a teething powder with a funny name, My Pikin, has robbed us of over 40 children aged between three months and three years. While the world watched in disbelief, those who should be explaining to Nigerians why they should not be charged with criminal negligence in their duties bicker to justify their actions and inactions.
To cap the days of sorrow and blood was the sectarian riot, which in the guise of a political crisis, broke out in Jos. Our own answer to the blood flow in Darfur is here. As I read the Jos stories with pictorial details, I felt diminished as a human being. Was the riot spontaneous or premeditated? The gory incident which, at the last count, had snuffed life out of about 400 people, started as a political protest. Local Government elections were held in the state on Thursday, November 27. But that of the usually troublesome Jos North LGA set off the fire which engulfed the state capital. As votes were being collated, the story went out that the ANPP candidate was winning. Later, the story was changed. The PDP candidate was said to be winning.
And that was the beginning of three days of an orgy of blood, tears and sorrow which brought out the worst in us. Youths, allegedly sympathetic to the ANPP candidate, took to the streets to protest what they felt was an election fraud. What was their proof? Initially, they said they were angry with the PDP government of Governor David Jonah Jang which committed the alleged electoral fraud. They said that their protest was against the government and not the people. But the youths soon put a lie to their claims.
In a twinkle of an eye, they cut down the lives of hundreds of innocent people. They burnt places of worship. They burnt down people’s properties and businesses. Thousands of people were reduced to refugees. The lives of people were ruined forever. The manner of killing especially, youths, would haunt us as a people forever. The curfew imposed by the government was of no use. Security agencies were caught napping. When they woke up, they were still so drowsy that the orgy of killings went on for three days. In this madness, the story of how three youth corpers were butchered haunts me the most. They were in the same house. As they saw the hundreds of devils marching to their house with dangerous weapons, one of them phoned his brother in Lagos asking him to pray. “Brother Kayode, pray, pray, they are approaching our gate and I don’t know why.” Before their aunt in-law and their nieces, the scoundrels dragged them out and asked their auntie and nieces to watch while they butchered them. What has the youth corpers, all of southern origin, got to do with politics? Were they PDP members? Were they the electoral officers? As the youths screamed in pain and pleaded for their lives, the barbarians laughed and mocked them. Their children and children’s children, if they will ever have any, will meet the same violent death. The father of one of the youth corpers holds the government responsible for his painful death. He should. What happened was a shameful failure of security intelligence. He requested the government to scrap the NYSC programme or re-design it in such a way that youths serve in their home zones. That would defeat the vision of the founding fathers of the programme. The idea was to use it to forge unity and understanding amongst the different religious and ethnic groups. It is debatable, though, if that has been achieved.
Political crisis? The Plateau State Government revealed that over 1,500 mercenaries were arrested. From where did they come? Who arranged for them? Political crisis? Why were places of worship burnt down and clergymen killed? The fact needs to be made, that no one section of the country, no one religion, has the monopoly, all the time, of violence and killings.
In all these, we should hold the government responsible. Adequate security measures were not made before the elections. Security intelligence failed. That is our lot in Nigeria. Security agencies seem incapable to, excuse this cliché, nip anything in the bud! In more civilised countries, a few people would have resigned. In Mumbai, India, in the wake of the deadly terrorist attack, at least one person in charge of security resigned. Here, it is not possible. In the face of failure and ineptitude, they cling to their positions shamelessly. Yet, there is a lesson to be learnt.
The elections in Jos may have been a cover-up for premeditated actions, but it does show something. Electoral fraud is no longer tolerable in Nigeria. Nigerians are gradually learning to defend their votes. This is not to say that the elections in Plateau State were rigged. I don’t know. But it does seem that soon, it will no longer be business as usual for our politicians. It may not be on the scale of Thailand, for example, where Thais sent their government (and party) packing over electoral fraud. But we’ll get there. The sad thing is that: when it happens, politicians usually go scot-free with members of their families. They don’t go out to riot. They use the children of the poor. Or, can somebody confirm to me whether any members of family of the PDP and the ANPP candidates or any top politician in the state died in the Jos riot. The Plateau State Government would do well not to inaugurate the “new” chairmen and their councillors. It will be obscene. Their elections have been tainted by the blood of the innocent.