The Road to Anarchy
On Tuesday, as the two priests and 17 worshippers murdered in Benue State on 24th April were being buried, the Catholic Mission in Nigeria held a nationwide peaceful protest against incessant killings and the violence that defines this season in the country. On that same day, unknown gunmen killed scores of people in a fresh attack on Egbura communities in Umaisha, the headquarters of Opanda chiefdom in Toto Local Government Area of Nasarawa State while armed bandits that are also terrorising and killing people in Birnin Gwari axis of Kaduna State, invaded Maganda village and abducted three housewives.
Given Max Weber’s definition of the state as the entity that “upholds the claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order,” it is rather ominous that such coercive power seems to have been lost to sundry criminal cartels that daily prowl our country as we gradually sink into an abyss of chaos and anarchy. What makes the situation even more worrisome is the growing number of private militia and gangsters in possession of lethal weapons who now operate freely in many corners of the country. That has also led to a situation in which many governors are establishing their own armed security outfits, including those with dubious mandates, despite the fact that security is within the exclusive preserve of the federal government.
From Governor Rochas Okorocha who has since established the ‘Imo Security Network’ to Kogi State where Governor Yahaya Bello early this year created his own ‘Vigilante Service Group’ to Rivers State where the bill creating the ‘Neighbourhood Watch Corps’ was signed into law in March this year by Governor Nyesom Wike to Taraba State where the ‘Tabital Pulaaku Njode Jam vigilante group’ has been in operation for years to Kaduna State where the ”Vigilante Service” was established two years ago to tackle cattle rustling and associated crimes, there is hardly a state today that does not have one form of security outfit or another. And since practically all of them bear arms, with extrajudicial execution as their modus operandi, anarchy is not too far away from Nigeria.
What the foregoing says very clearly is that the conception of the state as an entity with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force is being eroded in our country, given a preponderance of violent actors who prey upon the weakness of the official law enforcement apparatus to impose their own order. I hope President Buhari and his men will begin to address the situation before it is too late.