Nigerian Nationality : Under The Thatched Roof Of Horror, Uncertainty And Death
The Oasis Reporters
May 2, 2018
By Deji Adesoye
Nigerians are now bond in one thing — they all live in a precarious situation. They live under uncertainty.
But this is not the news — Nigerians have always lived under economic and political uncertainty. But uncertainty has reached the height of horror. Uncertainty has become the certainty of death. Now, Nigerians have become so certain about death that they now live under the thatched roof of horror. All humans are certain of death—to be human is to be a mortal, and to be a mortal is to eventually die.
But this is not the Nigerian path. The Nigerian situation does not promise old age; it promises carnage, genocide, ethnic cleansing, whatever name a gory venture in the earth of men can be called; the bestial inhumanity of man to man; the barbarity of a race, the complicity of a government; the regime of vampires and the abandonment of the weak…
Aristotle, the Ancient Greek naturalist philosopher, said a citizen is someone who has the right, time, and leisure to participate in the decision making of the state. Aristotle’s idea of citizenship excluded slaves and servants from citizenship. In modern times, citizenship has often been defined as the full membership in a state; which goes with the possession of fundamental rights of individual citizens and obligations from citizens to government.
In Nigeria, under the government of Buhari, citizenship takes a different path from any of the foregoing. First, the basic right of people, the right to life has suffered greatly in this regime that one is forced to think that this right is not granted by the constitution in the first place. The beginning of the erasure of the fundamental right to life of citizens by Buhari’s government was the killing of hundreds of Shiite members in Kaduna in 2016, by officials of government.
But this assault of humankind seems very little compared to the ongoing mortal rampage by criminal Fulani herdsmen militia and the effeminacy or complicity of the government in the gory business.
Today, to be a citizen of Nigeria is to be under the likelihood of death. Citizenship means the likelihood of death; nationality is the knock of death on the door. To be a Nigerian is to be assured of the lack of government’s protection from Fulani herdsmen. To remember one’s nationality, as a Nigerian, is to remember that one is not safe.
So in Taraba, Yobe and Benue, the people paste their own obituary in advance, and sing valediction in their lyrical dirges ahead, perpetually, perpetually. So when in the evening a man in Benue says ‘good night’ to a neighbour, he does not mean ‘good night’ in the English way; he means ‘good night’ in the Christian way, the one that has to do with the morning of resurrection. This is not because the other person is already dead; it is because death is around. It is because they are not sure. It is because they are not sure.
Ah to be human is to be prone to death, but to be Nigerian is to be uniquely prone. This is the policy of government that was hidden in the manifesto of the ruling party. It was a plan that the people were too excited to see when they trooped behind the chairman of the killing squad in a phenomenal election. For how do we explain a criminal inability of government to arrest and prosecute killer herdsmen? How do we explain the criminal justification of the crimes of the herdsmen by top security officials of government…a government that swore to protect the people of Nigeria?
How do we explain the vacuous statements the commander-in-chief made on several occasions regarding the killings, such as ‘the killings in Benue is not up to the killing in Plateau’, and that he didn’t know that his Inspector-General of Police disobeyed him?
What sense are we to make of the various excuses of the president of a dying nation, which attempts rather ridiculously to link killings in Benue to incursion by foreign forces, especially as a remnant of Libya’s armed uprising against Muammar Gaddafi?
This is the dastard reality—to live in Nigeria under Buhari is to live unto death. This dastard reality will continue until the Fulani herdsmen have achieved their aim; which is to claim more lands. And in claiming more lands through bloodshed, the vampire government of the dying nation will support the herdsmen, or at least, it will be carried along.
*Our heart goes out to the victims of the deadly attacks on Adamawa. May this government receive the Grace to fight insurgency and protect the people in truth and all honesty.
Written by Deji Adesoye.
