Insecurity on the Plateau would make potential tourists frightened and hesitant to travel to the state. Flights in and out of Yakubu Gowon Airport in Jos are anything but regular. That too can be discouraging. The state is currently inaccessible by rail. Travelling by road in Nigeria is a huge risk. Thus, travelling to Jos from any part of Nigeria is a nightmarish venture.
But this is not to single out the Plateau. What is true of Plateau State is true of virtually every part of Nigeria. The Plateau only serves as illustration of our lack of political will to make our country Nigeria livable. This country is a land of incredible beauty. She is blessed with a fertile soil, a clement climate, and in industrious populace. In music and in sports, in academics and in business, Nigerians excel. Jos, the capital city of Plateau State, is the birthplace of some of Nigeria’s finest footballers. But that is a story for another day. For now, focus is on the fact that Nigeria’s potential is stifled by a number of human-made factors, chief among which is political.
As Nigerians prepared for Christmas in 2023, Plateau State, for the umpteenth time, was reluctant host to violent and blood-thirsty guests. According to reports corroborated by the state governor, assailants invaded 15 communities in the Bokkos and Barkin-Ladi Local Government Areas. At the end of their violent incursion, over 130 bodies have been recovered. Many of the living are injured, hundreds of houses burnt to ashes.
But it was not only Plateau State that experienced this recurrence of sacrilege at Christmas. On the night of December 24, gunmen invaded the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State during Christmas Vigil Mass, killed three worshippers, and injured many others. On the same night of December 24, eight persons were killed when a gang of terrorists invaded Jibia Local Government Area of Katsina State. The story is not different in Zamfara State, a state which shares boundaries with Katsina State. Frequent terrorist attacks and abduction of innocent Nigerians occur in the state.
Every now and then, security agencies report that bandits have been “neutralised”. But it is an undeniable fact that banditry is far from neutralised. To compound matters, in the process of “neutralising” bandits, innocent Nigerians have been neutralised, as it happened recently in Tudun Biri, Igabi Local Government of Kaduna State, when Nigerian Army drone strikes killed over a hundred defenceless civilians in a recurrence of errant bombings.
When Governor Caleb Mutfwang of Plateau State appeared on Channels Television and on Arise Television on the morning of December 26, he was commendably armed with a litany of government interventions, of what his administration has been doing for victims of the latest massacre, as he answered questions posed to him by television journalists. But the journalists either forgot or were afraid to ask him a question of crucial importance. That question is not: what has government been doing after the killings? It is not: what is being done to prevent the killings? Surely, these two questions are important. The real question is not the cause of the killings. The question we in Nigeria always forget to raise is: who is responsible for the killings on the Plateau, in Katsina, in Zamfara, and in other places in Nigeria? Related to that question are these: Is it really the case that instigators and co-conspirators, enablers of these killings, are unknown? Are they unknown to the intelligence community in Nigeria? Is the ruling elite in Nigeria not in the best position to answer these and related questions?
The Nigerian ruling elite controls the assortment of security agencies in this country. Huge sums of money are yearly allocated to these agencies in the budget. But operatives of these agencies are trained and deployed to protect state functionaries and not the population. Can these agencies claim ignorance of identity of instigators, enablers, and collaborators of recurrent insecurity in this land?
We cannot put an end to insecurity if we do not raise honest and pertinent questions. We cannot put an end to poverty if we do not address questions whose answers can lead us out of insecurity. With insecurity there will be no investments. Without investments there will be unemployment. With unemployment there will be brain drain of japa syndrome.
But, quite often, at great disservice to Nigerians, Nigerian journalists, probably because they are awed by the very presence of the big men and women they have to interview, or because they lack the intellectual wherewithal to recognise, formulate and pose pertinent questions, or because of awe and ignorance put together, ask their guests in television impertinent and patronising questions. This is not asking them to resort to insolent and belligerent journalism. It is challenging them to a high level of professionalism exhibited in level-headedness.
We in Nigeria live in a combination of collective pretense and collective delusion that we can build a nation devoid of moral values. The political elite are at the vanguard of this train of pretense and delusion. It is a political elite that disables and impoverishes Nigerians by its repeated bad behaviour and by its habitual neglect of duties of state. The need for a new attitude is now, not tomorrow.
In the year 2024, let those in charge of Nigeria stop pretending to take care of Nigerians. Instead, let our ruling elite live up to the responsibility of providing an enabling environment for the Nigerian to flourish. It’s not about posturing as benefactors, as fathers and mothers of the nation. There are no such figures in a veritable democracy. It’s not about distributing palliatives. Such “palliatives” are crumbs falling on those stooping under the dining table of abundance at which the elite dine. It’s about providing and securing an environment that will enable the Nigerian to provide food on his or her own dining table.
Fr. Akinwale, OP, is Professor of Systematic Theology and Thomistic Philosophy and Deputy Vice Chancellor, Augustine University, Ilara-Epe, Lagos State.
