Vital yet futile task of naming murderers

Ola Rotimi’s cerebral play, Holding Talks, opens with two men bickering. A barber’s hand trembles. He would not admit this to his garrulous customer, simply named MAN, who insists he saw the barber’s hand quiver. In the midst of this dispute, the barber slumps and lies dying. The man and the barber’s apprentice agree that the best thing to do is to take the man to a hospital. However, instead of doing this, they spend time discussing how to get him to the hospital, the merits and demerits of taking such an action and other inanities. When the man eventually dies at their feet, they argue if he was dead or not.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the summary of life in Nigeria today. If the saying that the world is a stage holds, then Nigeria is the absurdist corner of this stage, aptly captured in Rotimi’s play.

In the last week, in the political sphere, there have been ferocious debates about what to call the criminals who have held the country to ransom. Are they bandits or terrorists? Fulani herdsmen, or just herdsmen? Nigerians, Nigeriens or some other foreigners? Northerners or Southerners? Existential questions were asked and postulations made about the reason and motives of calling them by certain names and why some people favoured calling them by one name and not the other.

While these debates raged, another group of students and a busload of passengers were abducted in Niger State, a man who had murdered several people and embarrassed an entire country when he abducted 344 students from Kankara in the name of banditry had surrendered his arms and was being feted, a “repentant bandit” he was branded. While these debates lasted, Boko Haram was taking over Marte, killing soldiers and slaughtering IDPs in the North East, even bombarding Maiduguri. And amid these debates, Hausa and Yoruba people, both of whom were neither bandits nor terrorists, mass murdered each other in Sasha.

More debates have followed. After all, this is a country built on words, on false promises and poorly packaged propaganda. A giant of Africa, it says, yet smaller countries on smaller continents have achieved more, have treated their citizens better and have not wasted time debating what is devouring their citizens but tackled them head-on.

Whether we brand bandits as terrorist or proscribe the Fulani or herdsmen, as was done to both the Igbo separatists and the Shi’ites, it doesn’t change the fact that the country is still firmly in the shackles of these criminals. Neither does it change the fact that the proscription of the Shi’ites, Boko Haram or IPOB has had little impact on the way their situation has played out.

While it is important to name things just so you know how exactly to address and treat them, naming them should not take precedence over dealing with them, especially when lives are being lost.

Our morbid fascination with big words that translate to nothing, such as proscribe, disband, denounce, heinous crimes and other variants the authorities love to use, will be the death of us.

These words do not translate into actionable decisions or tangible solutions. I suppose it is a product of our obsession with titles–the His Excellency, Chief, Dr, Alhaji or Pastor so and so. That is all fine and good if the bearer of such titles actually has lifechanging impacts in the lives of people or the sorry trajectory of this country’s journey to nationhood.

Here, while the debates rage and newspaper pages are filled with rhetoric of what to do with the herdsmen and their herds, the criminal elements in their midst and the criminal elements who have risen to fight them, or what name to give them, it should not be forgotten that, as Shakespeare would have Juliet say to Romeo, ‘a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ Calling a corpse flower jasmine will not stop it from smelling like a dead, putrid thing.

Boko Haram or bandits, killer herdsmen or terrorists, are all people who kill people. No country should suffer their lot. But the trajectory of Nigeria’s recent history, especially in relations to the state subjecting itself to a hostage situation, is that we always find a narrative justifying criminality, or portraying the people who take up arms against the state and private citizens as victims of some grave injustice or the other. And so, they transform overnight from criminals to be feared, arrested and subjected to the law, to cute and cuddly victims of state oppression to be romanticised, irrespective of what their victims think.

Those five majors, who truncated Nigeria’s democracy in 1966, were branded revolutionaries. Yet, we are still labouring to correct the mistakes they made while trying to correct the mistake that we were (are) as a country. The criminal Lawrence Anini was romanticised as Nigeria’s Robin Hood who stole from the state and shared the loot with other poor, suffering Nigerians. Today, the Nigerian media is grappling with calling Igboho ‘an activist’ or ‘agitator’ while suddenly, narrations are emerging trying to portray bandits who have pillaged villages, committed mass murder of innocent citizens as people (not revolutionaries yet) pushing back against oppression and injustice. The question here is which form of injustice have they suffered that other Nigerians, their victims, have not experienced? On no account should suffering injustice be used as a justification for the killing or displacement of others.

While these fires burn, with innocent citizens as cannon fodder, and because we are on a stage set by Ola Rotimi in his absurdist theatre, it wouldn’t at all come as a surprise if someone calls for a national conference to address these issues. After all, we do love holding talks. And we like chasing rats that ruined our soup while an inferno ravages our homes.

How many times have such conferences been held? When has any of the recommendations from these conferences ever been implemented?

Like those in that barber’s shop who talked as that poor man died at their feet, we may pontificate and propose but just so this column is not another contribution to a meaningless discourse: Nigerians are being killed by people of whatever names we decide to give them. These killings and criminalities need to stop. Those responsible for bringing this to an end are the government. They need to stop dithering, stop looking on with clueless abandon, stop the ball watching, and simply do what governments are meant to do—stop the madness. And that is all there is to the matter.

NB: From next week, this column will move to the back page of Daily Trust every Thursday. Hope you keep reading and keep the feedback, good or otherwise, coming. Thank you all for the support and feedback over the months.