Kaduna: Living In A State Of No Peace, No War

October 24, 2018 Greg Abolo

The Oasis Reporters

October 23, 2018

Living in Kaduna, our Kaduna is hellish and brutish enough for many reasons. Living in a state of no peace and no war is much worse than living in a state of war. If Carl Von Clausewitz’s classification of war as an extension of politics by other means is true, it will also be true to surmise that war could be a means to peace. It is also true that it is the failure of peace that ignites war but war in itself cannot bring about total peace for it is negotiation or diplomacy that could achieve such a feat.

Kaduna which used to be such a pleasant and peaceful place to live in has in recent times become a shadow of its former self given the frequent breakdown of peace encountered. The conflict has almost always pitched adherents of our two major faiths, Islam and Christianity against each other and the battle fields have always been the slum areas where those passionate about religion have their dwellings. These impoverished slum dwellers very quickly turn themselves into an army of ready soldiers, prepared to defend their faith. The confrontation is always bloody, leading to loss of lives and property.
When it happens gangs of impoverished people move around burning and looting almost anything along their path. Fellow humans are usually put to death in the most heinous of ways and in many instances burnt beyond recognition. You need the grace of God Almighty to escape death if caught along their path and you are identified not to belong to their faith. The security forces have always been caught unawares and as the reaction time takes long due to logistical issues, they always arrive too late to stop the violence.

The population in Kaduna State is caught between two evils, fragile security in the build up areas and the complete takeover of the unoccupied spaces outside. Informing this situation is the failure of governance over time. The gangs of hoodlums on either side of the divide responsible for orchestrating the mayhem are as it is, the creation of government to the extent that governments have failed to provide any programmes that will engage the teeming youths.

Back in 2015, the dictatorship in Kaduna did promised to reorganize the Almajiri schools such that western education could be included into the curriculum if any but nothing has been done since then. There can be no doubting the fact that products of these schools provide the manpower to the hordes of hoodlums visible in almost every part of Kaduna. Sadly and regrettably so, the present Kaduna State government occasionally deploys members from these gangs to disrupt political gatherings by perceived opponents. There are many parts of Kaduna almost completely under the control of the hoodlums. Passing through such areas constitutes grave danger as one stands the risk of being mugged and valuables taken away. Hard drugs are openly sold even along major streets with the security forces looking on. The moment there is a crises such as just happened in Kasuwan Magani and Kujama and extended to the metropolis, these waiting gangs of hoodlums seize the opportunity to enter nearby markets, attack people while also looting and burning their property. To the extent that government is not interested in dealing with the menace which these gangs of hoodlums constitute, peace will continue to be shattered at the slightest provocation.

Consistently one side of the conflict has always been the aggressor which translates to the fact that they are always prepared for what they are intended on doing.
How else can an attack on villagers who brought their produce and wares be so viciously and violently attacked as has just happened in Kasuwan Magani?
After having achieved their goal it is then that the security forces will arrive and mostly innocent victims of the violence arrested after the attackers must have withdrawn to safe areas. The usual 24 hour curfew is imposed some level of calm restored and then a return to near normalcy. The very important task of fishing out those responsible for the violence is left completely unattended to until another crisis erupts.

Kasuwan Magani has remained a flash point in peace management in Kaduna State for a long time. The first violent clash took place here if my record is correct sometime in the 1980s and since then violent clashes have become a recurring decimal defying solutions. I thought that the focal point of investigation as to the violence should be on why it is always one side initiating the attacks against the other. Government to my mind appears not interested in getting to the root cause of the violence otherwise for all this while a solution could have been arrived at.
For how long will people’s lives be shattered repeatedly without a solution being found?
For how long shall we continue to bury the dead, and rebuild shattered lives?
Where is the future for our children and grandchildren in the face of such uncertainty about life?

There has been this gross misunderstanding of the purpose of imposing a curfew, it is not meant to be punitive but ameliorative. Within the curfew hours, the security forces while engaging in patrols ought also to be engaged in gathering intelligence regarding those who may have been involved in orchestrating violence. One issue is certain and it is the almost complete breakdown of family values. Children hardly listen to parental advice mostly on account of the fact that only few parents actually have played vital roles in the upbringing of their children. On either side of the divide the children hardly have time for religious instructions. Whenever there was a breakdown of law and order, they see opportunities to loot other people’s property. Religious differences is therefore only a veil behind which the hoodlums operate.

A brother gave a vivid account of the incident which ended up in the hostages taking of the Agwom Adara somewhere along the Kaduna to Kachia highway not far from the settlement of Makyalli. He narrated how a band of about 50 fierce possibly Chadian looking AK 47 gun totting bandits emerged from the nearby bushes firing at vehicles and forcing them to stop. He also narrated how the police orderly to the Monarch was shot at close range and his service pistol removed . Of the passengers in the Monarch’s vehicle only the Monarch and his wife were spared and subsequently marched into the bush to commence their captivity.

Questions arising from this episode include how the bandits knew that the monarch was plying the highway at that point and time. It would appear that there must have been some kind of communication between the bandits and some other people out there. If as many as about 50 bandits can be under arms at a time anywhere in this nation, it tells the sorry state of our security nationwide. The empty spaces around our settlements have for long been taken over by mostly foreign terrorists gangs and their local collaborators while those who should be concerned about our security are busy investing ridiculous sums of our collective patrimony seeking election or re-election.

For how long will this state of no peace no war’ continue to plague us in Kaduna State? As things stand, the curfew imposed a sequel to the crisis has brought all activities to a halt. Our kids cannot go to school while food reserves for those who had them are running out. No matter how brutish any curfew could be, a window is usually provided for people to stock on basic necessities of life as well as to attend to medical cases. This requirement is the main reason for curfew violations as people must find food one way or the other.
Such a window was said to have been provided for between the hours of 1300 to 1700 but only in some selected areas. The areas of Maraban Rido, Sabon Tasha and Narayi are to remain under lockdown for 24 hours. This exception to me is not only punitive but the very height of insensitivity. The fact remains that the mostly poor people living in these areas will almost certainly go out to look for food rather than- dying in their homes. Yet another dimension has been added to the orgy of violence in the Narayi general area when some so-called Civilian Joint Task force members from Barnawa allegedly murdered 3 young men and depositing their bodies at a road intersection. Soldiers on security patrols were said to have attempted burying the bodies but youths from the area opted to bury their dead. The burial took place early on Monday morning.

Arising from this madness, who authorized the so-called Civilian JTF to take life summarily?
What are the guidelines under which the Civilian JTF are operating?
Who deployed them to Narayi and under what mandate?
Why did they not remain in Barnawa to perform their assigned roles if any? Someone somewhere must provide answers to these pertinent questions.