A stone throw from the villa

There are some peculiar features relating to the bombing of Nyanya Garage in Abuja, on the 14th of April 2014. One is that this is the first time an innocuous and heavily-crowded place will be targeted in the capital, without warning (or was there warning?). And man, are we afraid! Who knows where next! Let me quickly state that, like I and a few friends unanimously agreed today, we are at these people’s mercy. Yes. They just pity us. Let’s look at it this way; these guys seem to have enough intelligence to strike anywhere they want. But it is clear that their target is poor people. Simple. I wrote and wrote about the patterns that are clear to me about their operations. No one listened. Today, Nigeria has sunk deeper into this problem whereby hundreds die daily. It is apparent that we are yet unprepared for the new challenges of our time. And we live in a time that mercilessly punishes the ignorant - be they persons, companies or even nations and races.

Almost a week later, as if roused from a ‘well-deserved’ vacation, the rabble-rousing Shekau came out to claim such a ‘ successful’ outing for his group, Boko Haram, that amoeboid group whose clear aims and objectives are unknown, except to those who proceed from a position of prejudice. Again, I say we should stop calling this people BokoHaram as this war has nothing to do with English schools, and everything to do with the psychological traumatization of Nigerians, especially the poor.

Patterns are reinforced along several lines with this 14/4/14 event. The pattern of targeting poor areas and poor people, to perhaps increase hatred and confusion, among the people, and also create an atmosphere, and prepare thr grounds, for backlash and blind ‘revenge’. When you detonate a bomb at Nyanya Bus Stop at 7am in the morning, when very low-income earners are hustling to work, you know exactly what you are doing. This is seeming like a class war, because everywhere else these same guys have gone, shows to be poor areas. And poor Nigerians have been dying by the droves. By now, anyone who thinks his religion or tribe is targeted should just be ignored. If we love ourselves we should be more objective and at least pressurize our government to do the right thing.

The second pattern is that these guys can appear and reappear, do and undo. It’s as if we have no intelligence on ground whatsoever. I was on my way to Kaduna early on 14/04/2014 for a meeting when I got to know of this incidence through a colleague. From Kaduna, we had to head for Saminaka, on the border between Kaduna and Plateau States, another 2 hours journey. Driving in this region is always fascinating, not because all the road is good - there are bad areas - but because the interaction with the villagers always reveal something else. If you ask them for direction, they are so eager to help, and will even offer a prayer for your safe sojourn. “Are these people Nigerians? How come they have kept their innocence?”, I thought. In some places in this country, the villagers will deliberately mislead you, just to get some revenge over your ‘foreign’ snout! Anyway, on the way back from Saminaka, we drove past at least three convoys of our soldiers heading north, complete with armored tanks. I thought ‘ha, these guys are going north, but their enemies have already struck behind them!’. Do they know the enemy when they see him? Is it not ironic that now Shekau is telling our president that he is now living in the same town as him?

So what animal are we fighting exactly? In fact, the camouflage paint pattern on the soldiers’ truck and tank were exactly the same as those used by the BH guys in that viral video of their attack on a barracks in Borno. Hmmmm.

Back to Abuja. The other bombings we have had are those of a newspaper house, UN Building, Mogadishu Barracks and the Eagle Square. All these were clearly targeted. And I suspect all of them were forewarned. Eagle Square was clearly forewarned, hence some dignitaries - local and foreign - kept away. Thisday ‘luckily’ had all their officers out of the way. For UN Building, of all the casualties, there was one Norwegian, the rest Nigerians. Should we say that right in this capital, we have now entered the era of a guerilla war, with faceless people? Sporadic, senseless bombings? What stops them from getting more frequent? And what do we make of the uncanny-ness, of detonating a bomb in a densely populated garage for poor people, just 3 kilometres from the seat of government, or one kilometer from plush palaces of many a corrupt official and wheeler-dealer? Who is this war for and against? Who is behind our travails? Who are these who bathe with the blood of the

I’m not very sure we can pray our ways out of this. The people behind are closer than we think. Imagine striking within a stone throw of the seat of power? Are we to declare emergency

nationwide?

innocent?

Another pattern. “Throw the bodies behind open vans, mash them up, they’re dead anyway! Jumble them together”. The way we treat the dead is appalling. Dead cows and goats are treated with more dignity, yet we demand dignity from foreigners. Also, no one bothers about identification here. In all that has happened in this country, perhaps it is only the incidences in Eagle Square and UN Building where the authorities bothered to identify the victims. Since then no one bothers. Families are busy gnashing their teeth as we speak. Hopes have been dashed. Imagine the trauma of picking up your loved one, blown to smithereens! Why whywhy? What did we do to deserve this? The catalogue of our woes is endless. We employed the best and spent the heaviest. We recalled some people from retirement because only them could fix our problems. But the cancer only metastasized. The incidence in Kano in December 2012, where 242 were killed after Friday prayers, pales into insignificance. In the last month or two, 59 children were murdered in a Federal School, 210 children on their way to JAMB exam. Every day, a different sad story.

I am fairly liberal. I make excuse for government and try to be constructive in my criticism. But as much as I can preach that governance is tough, I cannot preach that poor people provide their own security themselves. When human beings decided to surrender their right to protect themselves to the state (according to Thomas Hobbes), this was the kind of moment they had in mind. It was the time humanity departed from barbarism. How did we find our own ways as Nigerians back inside barbarism? There is no excuse under the sun for the government to keep passing the buck, or offering meaningless platitudes.The principal role of government is SECURITY, and it must be obtained BY ALL MEANS NECESSARY. Otherwise such a government invalidates itself.

And to those who feel the solution to Nigeria’s problem is to ‘arm everybody’ - including Prof Femi Mimiko at the national conference, who has so much reservoir of respect from me that his otherwise ill-thought-out contribution (that Nigerians should be allowed to carry arms) has not fully eroded - I want you to imagine what would happen, if after those bombs exploded, every Nigerian pulled out their Gluck pistol and start to shoot at each other. The problems confronting us, demand honest analysis, calmness, strategy, not kneejerk reactions. I’m not very sure we can pray our ways out of this. The people behind are closer than we think. Imagine striking within a stone throw of the seat of power? Are we to declare emergency nationwide?