Robberies and murders the norm on Nigeria’s streets

Feb 02, 2006

I HAVE spent a lot of time in Nigeria, but life there is a series of obstacles on many fronts. Just when you think things can never get worse, Nigeria and Nigerians have a unique capacity to find ways of digging deeper and sinking lower.

Dr. Tajudeen

I HAVE spent a lot of time in Nigeria, but life there is a series of obstacles on many fronts. Just when you think things can never get worse, Nigeria and Nigerians have a unique capacity to find ways of digging deeper and sinking lower.

Take the matter of generalised public insecurity across the country. It has proven so insurmountable that Nigerians seem to have resigned themselves to it and put themselves on a permanent state of alert, hoping lady luck, miracle prayers and a dose of voodoo and witchcraft will see them through.

Those who can afford it hire private militia. Armed robberies, political killings and other forms of gratuitous violence are perpetrated both privately between citizens and officially by the Police and other security agencies charged with public safety.

The Inspector General of Police recently publicly apologised and promised to take action on a number of serving policemen accused of ‘hiring’ their guns out to gangs of armed robbers.

I had a brush with this recently while travelling home to Funtua, 75 kilometres north of the university town of Samaru, Zaria, in the north west of the country. At a small town called Giwa, we saw a crowd and a row of vehicles parked at the roadside. Everybody was shouting that we should stop.

We did and were told that “there was an operation” ahead of us. This operation was not a security sweep or road check; armed robbers had mounted a road block and were taking whatever they could find on their victims.

We were told the “operation” would be over in about an hour. We were advised that if we saw cars coming from the opposite direction it would mean the road was clear. Within an hour we were advised that “the road had been opened” and we drove home safely.

You will be forgiven if you ask a few obvious questions like, where were the Police? If everybody knows where the robbers operate, the time and days (usually market days in surrounding trading towns) why are the Police and security services not doing anything about it?

Very legitimate questions but only asked by a stranger in Nigeria. Everybody knows that if they are not carrying out the ‘operations’ themselves, the Police and Army are aiding and abetting the crimes because they share the booty. It is not only their guns that they rent out but they also regularly block sections of the highway so that these nefarious ‘operations’ can take place with impunity.

Once they are done, you will see siren-blaring Police vehicles rushing to the scene after their comrades in crime have bolted with their loot!

Yet this is a country in which Obasanjo and his acolytes delude themselves into believing that people have never had it so good. That is why they are orchestrating a constitutional reform that will make it possible for him to stand for a third term.

Obasanjo does not seem to have learnt anything from his previous experience as a military head of state – his stint in civil society as founder of Africa Leadership Forum and his horrible prison term under Abacha.

A friend who was present at a meeting between General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida when he was head of state and General Obasanjo as a coup-plotter-turned-CSO-activist narrated an interesting exchange that is relevant to this matter. Obasanjo had been ambushed by armed robbers on his way to a meeting with Babangida.

Being the cautious general that he was, he did not play hero. He knew he was outdone and saw no rationale in resisting, so he surrendered the money he had and they let him go. They did not know and could not have cared who he was. He was just a victim like any other innocent Nigerian whose only crime was driving on the road when ‘operations’ were on.

Obasanjo told Babangida that he knew there was no political motivation to the crime, but if it had leaked out, many people would have jumped to the conclusion that the government had had a hand in the incident because Obasanjo had openly criticised Babangida’s Structural Adjustment Policies.

Therefore, Obasanjo asked Babangida to take the issues of public safety and security seriously. It is a shame Obasanjo cannot allow himself similar advice.
As the tussles for power intensify at all levels of government, a spate of killings and fear of more violence has gripped the country.

By no means would all of the violence be politically motivated but things are so bad and polarised that everything that happens is blamed on Obasanjo and his government.

The recent slaughter of the wife of the former radical governor of Kano State, Alhaji Muhammadu Abubakar Rimi, was immediately suspected to have been politically motivated because Rimi is one of the most brutal critics of Obasanjo’s third-term bid.

It may turn out that to the extent that politics was involved in the murder, it had local dynamics rather than anything to do with Aso Rock.

It is not only killings that are blamed on Aso Rock. Anybody investigated for corruption now claims that it is because they are opposed to Obasanjo’s third-term bid or because they are supporters of Obasanjo’s estranged deputy, Atiku Abubakar.

The whole governance system is grinding to a halt to an extent that even the good things Obasanjo’s regime is doing are lost in the controversies. He is losing control of the machinery of the state and on his way to becoming a rogue president with no respect for law and order, the Constitution and elected institutions in a precipitate slide that will see Nigeria becoming not just an incompetent government, but a failed state.

Yet he can retreat from the abyss and leave a more positive legacy by making a broadcast to the nation renouncing any intention of amending the Constitution to facilitate his self-succession in 2007.

This will drastically reduce the over-charged political atmosphere of the country. It will also destabilise his many enemies who have built a coalition of convenience around anti-third term campaigns.

More than that, it will give him the opportunity to regain credibility for a lasting legacy in the areas of public safety, economic reform, the war against corruption and leverage in deciding who succeeds him. This failing, he will just be a lame-duck president with everything imploding around him.

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