Dr Chidi Amuta

Chidi Amuta

The Nigerian governance road show rolled into Benue State earlier this week. The president and a motley collection of officialdom rolled into the state to see why so many innocent people are dying unnecessary deaths in the hands of nameless killers. As it turns out, the president and his significant lieutenants had to be pressured to go and see the carnage in Benue for themselves. By the time they woke up to go there, over 200 innocent Nigerians had been butchered in repeated waves of mass slaughter.

The political opposition had wondered aloud as to why Mr. Tinubu would go everywhere else other than the forests of Benue where the killing of innocent people in their homes had degenerated into a gruesome sport that was claiming hundreds of innocent lives. People would go to bed and never wake up alive. Those who ventured to their farms hardly came back alive. Some who escorted their livestock to the grazing fields lost both livestock and their own lives. Vengeful reprisals had become a daily feature of life. Herders of cattle would be lucky to survive a trek through the trail of bloody forests.

As is typical in a presidential system, Tinubu’s visit was long overdue. An unstated rule of the system is that the president goes to meet the people where they are in pain. Empathy breeds bonding which yields political capital. The Tinubu visit to Benue was dual in purpose. It would get the president to the root of the executive pitfalls that led to the degeneration of order in Benue. On the more substantive note, it would re-establish the sovereign authority of the Nigerian state by stamping a footprint of force and coercion on those still defying the authority of the federal state. As it were, something bigger and stronger than mere local and state governments was coming to town. Tinubu was coming to Benue with the full weight of Nigeria’s compassionate and coercive heft.

What the public imagination expected was the president as a leader of war coming out to douse the bloodshed with a bigger show of force than the miscreants and killers were used to. We expected to see the commander- in- chief in combat gear, arriving the theatres of trouble aboard a helicopter, accompanied by helicopter gunships and surrounded by his force commanders and field operatives. Tinubu was not going to the killing fields of Benue as a ‘nice man’ or community friend. He was going there to stamp the authority of a commander in chief on an errant,  part of his sovereign territory to hand down a note of warning that unmistakably says to trouble makers” NEVER AGAIN!

While the preparations for the presidential trip were on, the public began to notice some unusual trends. The Benue state government began to take out full page welcome advertisements indicating that Mr. Tinubu was going to Benue on a meet and greet state visit. The usual charade and comedy of Nigerian statehood crawled out. Communities, dance troupes, mobilization of youth groups and other familiar Nigerian fawning were being readied to give the president a befitting welcome. Confusion. Were we going to see an end to the festival of human sacrifice and endless blood letting or yet another comedy of state festivity and governance as a joke?

To worsen the matter, the size of the presidential entourage kept ballooning.  From  all the reports, at first, it was going to be the president and a few aides on a whistle stop field trip. Then the Inspector Genenal of Police was relocating as an advance party to stabilize the situation, preparatory to the presidential arrival. await the arrival of the president. The Chief of Army Staff was doing the same thing, Then a flotilla of ministers, Senators, the NSA and plane loads of sundry minions were all in the sagging boat.

Well, the trip has come and gone with its busload of comedy and tragedy. The president reportedly could not get to the communities worst affected. The road to the place is impassable! Speeches were read by community leaders and government officials. The President was at his predictable platitudinous best. He called on the people of Benue to cooperate with their Governor to bring peace to the state. He also urged the people to live in peace with one another. Business as usual. Dances and claps!

The media was all over the place waiting for the usual ‘handout’ press statements. Both army and police advance parties did not showcase any bandits arrested. Worst of all, the president did not come close to the victims let alone empathizing on camera with those worst affected. The rest of the nation at home was lost for words. What was this all about? That is the giant question mark on most lips. Tinubu carries the dance steps of his repid presidency wherever he goes.

Prior to this visit, repeated appeals to security agencies and those in authority had fallen on deaf ears. Politicians traded in the festival  of death as they recruited and owned their own gangs of killers. Ethnic bigots and religious zealots took turns in aligning with partisans and gangs of killers. A state now ruled by an elected  clergyman had become neither Christian nor Muslim as armed marauders openly wielded weapons of war  in search of easy victims.  Everyone became a victim. Fear ruled the land.  The open question was now whether the mascot of democracy and political competition had become a blood thirsty ogre. Did democracy in Benue now need human sacrifice to thrive? Had it degenerated into a blood thirsty dragon perennially on the prowl for victims. Tinubu hurried off to Kaduna state without finding answers to these troubling questions.

As it were, the institutions of state dedicated to maintaining peace and orderly mutual existence had turned out helpless and incapable of maintaining an order and peace that had never been there in the first place. The police was useless as it was quickly outgunned by rival bands of bandits and roving gun men. And the military? Its involvement in civil security operations had become an open question mark all over the country. In Benue and parts of Plateau and Nasarawa states, the military had become an over dressed joke and money guzzling machine of bloody but undeclared wars.

The quickest and easiest explanation was to see a herdsmen versus settler farmers confrontation as the root of the crisis. That lazy explanation has lingered over the years. But the herders are not new to the Benue communities that were now being attacked by armed militants. Nor did the Benue local communities start being settled farmers just yesterday. Both modes of economic existence had historically co- existed and earned their keeps mutually over the many years past. Though friction between both groups had occasionally occurred. It never degenerated into this free for all bloody festival  of frequent killings.

The Benue tragedy and the attitude of officialdom to it reveals so much about the lingering insecurity that has held Nigeria hostage for over a decade. First, the fight against insecurity has become part of the ritual of state. No speech is complete if it does not accord insecurity a pride of place. Politicians are not complete in their appearance if they do not weaponize insecurity as a cardinal political crisis and a reason for them to be re-elected. People need to be killed to remind us that there is insecurity in the land and to justify a new round of political shenanigans. Our democracy now needs constant blood letting to appease the gods of re-election. Democracy in Nigeria now needs human sacrifice to thrive. Those who two years ago trooped out to vote for these politicians provide the canon fodder for the feasts of human sacrifice.

As if that is not enough, the mercantile part of the insecurity is everywhere on display. These industrial killings now necessitate additional defense and security spending, new weapons, new air platforms, flashy new aircraft and drones of untested capacity manned by ignorant and illiterate soldiers – all  to contain an insurgency of untrained civilians and bandits who are mostly hungry.

Those who listened carefully during the Tinubu stopover may have heard something that I think was disturbing. Many political voices insisted that the new scale of killings in Benue small of ethnic cleansing and genocide. That language is clearly frightening in Nigeria. It is even worse so in a location that is the binding belt of our fractious federation.  It raises questions about our recent political past. Who armed the herders? What is the source of the sophisticated weapons of war with which these Janjaweed -style killings are being executed? When did the herders acquire this lethal capacity? Which politician brought in and armed these herder gunmen and for what end? Since when?

Most importantly, what is the nationality of these gunmen and killers? If indeed they are from outside Nigeria, at what point do we identify their nation of origin? If the killers are non-Nigerians, when will our security authorities switch our insecurity from internal insurgency to an international confrontation between Nigeria and the nation(s) that are the source of these killers?

When are we going to call this war its rightful name in order to wage and end it?