Post Election Violence In The North (II)

Fourth, the other issue that is very connected to the recurring violence in the north is the porous nature of the nation’s borders, particularly in the north. The borders are not well guarded, and people just stroll in and out of the country, whenever they so pleased or whenever the need arises; citizens of neighbouring Muslim countries of Niger Republic and Chad Republic troop in at will through our northern borders, and it has been proven that in several violent crisis or conflict in the north, some of the perpetrators used to unleash terror are Chad and Niger citizens.

That is not all that there is to it. These Chad and Niger citizens are often the armed bandits in the north constituting a huge headache to peaceful northerners. It is because of our insecure borders that people from neighbouring countries find it very easy to get our passports and other means of identification as we have no standardised way in this country for genuine citizens to get the Nigerian Passport or the Nigerian National ID Card; no Birth Registration System, No Archiving System and virtually no Database.

Having stated the root causes of the intermittent violence in the north, we would like to quickly address the recent presidential elections and the ensuing violence. Prior to the presidential elections, we did a special analysis on the top five presidential candidates and we equally conducted a pre-election poll on these candidates across key states in the nation; following which we released the results of the polls. One issue which we considered inconsequential during the poll which we didn’t mention in the results of the pre-election poll is the religious views of Nigerians towards the two top candidates – incumbent President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and General Muhammadu Buhari (retd). While most Christians, particularly those in the South considered General Buhari as “Darkness” and an “Islamic Fundamentalist”, the majority of Muslims regarded President Jonathan as “Harne” or one who does not know God. The interesting thing is that a cross-section of these Christians and Muslims are the so-called educated.

Furthermore, General Buhari and the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) didn’t lose the presidential elections due to rigging as have been widely alleged by the CPC. While we are not ruling out any form of rigging, and while we will leave that to the CPC to prove and for the courts to decide, we want to say here that Buhari and the CPC lost the elections largely due to voters’ sentiments towards President Jonathan borne out of the circumstances that threw him up and not necessarily on his capacity to perform; and partly due to the paucity of funds that made the CPC not to be able to campaign effectively. The CPC has virtually no structure and campaign base in the south. In the whole of the southeast, the CPC was only able to campaign in Aba, Abia State. How then could the party have won in these regions? On the other hand, President Jonathan not only had voters’ sheer sentiments, he also had the power of incumbency and state resources; he flew to all the 36 States in 37 days on Presidential fleet campaigning effectively. President Jonathan also had the endorsement of a cross-section of Civil Society, Organised Labour, the Business Community and over 25 political parties that did not field presidential candidates. These in our views are the real reasons why the CPC lost the presidential elections.

Concerning the violence, however, while the distinguished General and the CPC may not have had anything to do with it, their failure to speak up immediately when the crisis started was their greatest undoing and it eventually marred their chances in the subsequent governorship and State Houses of Assembly elections in which voters turned against the party. Why the General never seized the moment to distance himself and his party from the barbaric violence when it started is still a surprise to many. Even when he had the golden opportunity of speaking to the Aljazeera cable network few hours after the eruption of violence, he failed to address it; instead he chose to talk about how he has been robbed of electoral victory. Meanwhile, his party leaders weren’t helping the situation as they kept on accusing even other opposition parties and shouting epithets capable of precipitating further violence. It took the General another 36 hours after the outbreak of the violence before he finally addressed it and distanced himself and the CPC from it. It was really an unwise political calculation that cost the party a lot! The dignified General could have addressed the violence in the nick of time, for it was a rare opportunity for him to silence those detractors of his who see him as an Islamic fundamentalist.

In order to end this recurring nightmare in the north; we would like to suggest five concrete things that government must do:

Number one: government must swing immediately into positive action to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, injustice, sectarian violence arising from Islamic fundamentalism, and extremism in northern Nigeria, religious bigotry, racism and tribalism which are the fertile soil on which terrorism and extreme hatred for fellow human beings thrive. Northern leaders, especially the governors, local council chairmen and councillors must begin to connect with their people, listen to them and take adequate steps to feel and heal their pains and sufferings. True compassion, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has said, is more than flinging a coin at a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. Northern leaders must begin to do all in their power to stem this ugly trend. They must begin to teach their people that Islam is not a violent religion as some would have us believe. As the Holy Koran teaches, “Whosoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind.” Again, it teaches, “Whosoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind.”

Our strength can only come by the unity we make of our diversity.

Number two: government must look critically into how the Islamiyyas are setup and run in the north by the Mallams with a view to restructuring and accrediting them, and regularising how they are run and who runs them. Government must take serious steps to standardise, revamp and re-equip them as normal schools so that they no longer serve as breeding ground for raising juvenile and dissatisfied kids that turn on society at any given opportunity. Government must equally call the Mallams that run these Islamiyyas and let them know that henceforth, they will be held responsible for any form of violence perpetrated by the Almajiris within their precinct. Government must do this because since the Almajiris reverence their Mallams, the Mallams should be able to control and call them to order.

Number three: government must review the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Scheme, so that it can become viable again. The NYSC Scheme was set up to foster unity and bridge our diverse cultures following the end of the civil war. In recent times however, the NYSC scheme has lost its relevance. A situation where a parent or guardian sends his child or ward to school only for the child or ward to die in the hands of violent extremists in the north can no longer be tolerated. These days, aside from the killings, the NYSC scheme has become so corrupt that the corps members can influence their own posting if they know people or if they have the money. Sometimes, they even arrange with the officials and places of their primary assignments, and then they can either travel out or engage in their own businesses; and at the end of the service year, they return to collect their discharge certificate(s) for what they really didn’t partake in. It is either the government reviews the scheme, and re-educate and re-orientate citizens, particularly northerners on its usefulness, or the government should stop posting southerners to serve in the north.

If the government cannot review the scheme effectively to prevent corps members from being wantonly killed, then it should allow students from the south serve in the south, and students from the north serve in the north. Students from the south can serve in the southeast, southsouth or southwest, while those from the north can serve in the northeast, northwest or northcentral. At the worst, government should scrap the entire scheme, if it can no longer serve its purpose. But we believe that it will be better for the government to effectively review the NYSC scheme so that students can continue serving in whichever regions they are posted to.

Number four: government must look into how our borders are patrolled and guarded by the security agencies, customs and immigration. Government must strengthen the security of the nation’s borders and prevent illegal immigrants, so that such illegal immigrants cannot come in here and start perpetrating all forms of vices, crimes and violence.

Number five: government must look seriously into past incidences of violence and investigate them thoroughly, especially the recent post-electoral violence, and fish out the perpetrators. Government must stop looking the other way and start holding people accountable for their actions if we must move beyond these issues, and if we want our nation to be taken seriously in the comity of nations. People must be made to know that they will pay the consequences if they break the law, and that there are no sacred cows. The nation’s laws must be strengthened and enforced across board; selective application of the laws can no longer be accepted.

In the final analysis, our loyalties as a people must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every Nigerian must develop an overriding loyalty to the nation and indeed mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in our individual societies and nationalities; declaring eternal hostility against all forms of poverty, racism, tribalism, injustices and man’s inhumanity to man. We have tried in this report to be as fair as possible and to speak the truth as we see it in line with the Scriptures. As the Holy Koran tells us, “Be conscious of God and speak always the truth,” and as the Holy Bible teaches us, “Speak the truth…and bear no false witness” and “Do not follow the majority when they do wrong or when they give testimony that perverts justice.” This is what we have tried to do in this report; to painstakingly tell the truth as we know it, trusting that if the content of this report is duly considered and implemented by the government and policy makers, it will go a long way in resolving most of the issues that not only beset the north, but also confront most parts of our beloved nation.

•Source: Conscience Report