Many people in the country generate their own electricity, pump their own water, arrange private education for their children and so on.
They would also gladly defend themselves against armed attackers.
But, under Nigeria’s laws, it is now impossible to purchase a firearm. No matter how determined an individual might be, they cannot defend themselves with just bare hands and bravery.
Nwaubani, Adaobi Tricia. “Viewpoint: Self-defence not the answer to Nigeria’s kidnap crisis.” BBC News, February 25, 2021.
When, therefore, government proves incapable or unwilling to protect everyone equally, communities must exercise a duty of collective self-defence. The alternative is to suffer voluntary liquidation. In the first six months of 2021, over 6,000 people were reported killed in atrocity violence across Nigeria.
Odinkalu, Chidi Anselm. “Nigerian law protects right to self-defence: Communities have duty to exercise it.” Vanguard, September 3, 2021.
Nigeria’s bandits and gangs, Fulani Land Raiders, and assorted whatnot bear arms (also explosive and petrol) for their barbaric and tawdry businesses. Nigeria’s Christian communities and others lay bare before them while President Buhari’s government works on rising to the challenge of defending Nigerian communities in their totality, and while it seems corruption must arm the evil — how does so much firepower get through to the worst of the worst? — one may wonder about the complicity — the “voluntary liquidation” — of the victims and their communities and relations.
Possibilities for the Good
Alarms and Barriers: advanced separate-system security communications; spotters; tripwires.
Arms, Bombs, and Edges: warn; repulse; surprise.
Community and State Security Co-Location: On-site partnership between state security and community leaders with zero-time response to assault; secondary government-controlled ready-secret community volunteer units.
Internal Intelligence & State Issues
When it comes to arms and most everything else that has to be smuggled to get where it needs to be, someone knows who’s sellin’ — and someone also knows who’s buy’n.
How is that knowledge come by?
Find an analyst in Nigeria’s State Security Service and ask.
The escapades of bandits, kidnappers, and raiders have not been subtle in the least, nor has their provisioning gone unnoticed.
$$$ & Nigeria’s National Coherence and Cohesion
Although partisan presses emphasize religious aspects of Nigerian conflict, especially involving the Muslim Fulani and Christian villages, one might suggest a more modern world, deeply corrupt and not very religious at all, has come to Nigeria and for bad good reasons ferries (and launders) The Money out to and through “rule-of-law” locations amenable to, well, doing business with not too much of conscience (or law) getting in the way. Whatever the motives may be for moving money offshore and through “shells” developed to hide owner identity, Nigerians would seem shorted as regards both domestic re-capitalization and spending, not that receiving foreign banks, businesses, and states would object to their own good fortune.
One might ask why Nigerians, among others, insist on either fighting archaic medieval wars in 2021 or on experiencing and framing conflicts as such when, in fact, the common denominator from field raids to high office would seem that so-called “root of all evil”, ne, money.
Who is fighting over such an immense thing as the character or nature of God?
While medieval belief sustain absolute power, modern leaders have seen an abyss before them created by demystification and the promotion of reason and by disappointment and the raising of questions that power has never been able to answer or resolve. Before reason and science and now 21st Century technology breakthrough, history’s medieval and primitive inertia would seem to decay and leadership lose its luster especially where it preys on the populations looking to it for improved Qualities and Living, financial and personal security foremost and equally distributed and distributed by merit.
Absence of governance, impoverishment, the presence of interests gaming for the control and plundering of resources in the name of self, clan, family, and tribe may better account for violence welling up from the base between ambition and desperation.
Nigerian National Identity
My own nation, the United States of America, has been riven by agitprop, foreign (e.g., Russian “Active Measures”) and domestic (Partisan drum beaters Far Out Left and Far Strident Right), the unworkable politics of ethnic, gender, and racial identity as cause, and breathtaking disparities in national lifestyle–the gutter (say, Kensington Avenue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) looks awfully low while the priciest of mansions and penthouses sail off in the clouds fully immune, so it seems, to more earthy surrounds. However, should one ask a moderately educated American adult, “What is an American?” most, so one might hope, would define an American as dedicated to upholding the principles and values laid out in the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the full body of compiled – and compiling – national law. Cognizance of and devotion, and respect for essential American ethics, law, principles, and values remain in the heart. Most often, America’s domestic fighting revolves around injustices perceived in light of the country’s essential humanist and secular legal and social ideals and practical political and social ends.
Americans will not fight en masse over religion (which and whose? For all are here) at this time.
Americans will fight — and prove so every day — for their interests, private and public, in light of founding principles and rights.
Nigerians?
Who is Nigerian?
What is a Nigerian?
Who aspiring to power or in power is building a just and modern Nigeria far above parochial business, clan, and tribal interests?
Is there an ideal Nigeria waiting for Nigerians to achieve and secure it?
Last year at about this time (October 20, 2020), Nigerian forces turned their guns on protesters at Lekki Toll Gate. For whom did they kill a dozen Nigerian youth? And for what? Feudal honor? Their jobs? Money?
I believe Nigerians decent but it appears some in business and in power at high levels abuse ideals, their own privileges, and, ultimately, trust of a nation.
Related Online
AFP. “At least 40 killed in attacks in Nigeria’s Kaduna state.” Africa News, September 28, 2021.
Amnesty International. “#EndSars Movement: From Twitter to Nigerian Streets.” n.d.
Asadu, Chinedu. “Dozens killed and abducted in Nigeria’s north.” AP News, September 30, 2021 .
Campbell, John. “The U.S. Justice Department and Kleptocracy in Nigeria.” CFR, July 19, 2017.
Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999. WIPO Lex.
Jones, Mayeni. “Nigeria’s #EndSars protests: What happened next.” BBC News, October 7, 2021.
Panchal, Krishna. “The Poverty Capital of the World: NIGERIA.” Borgen Magazine, August 28, 2020.
Tanko, Aliyu. “Nigeria’s security crises – five different threats.” BBC News, July 19, 2021.
Wikipedia. “Constitution of Nigeria”.
Wikipedia. “Informal economy”.
Wikipedia. “Poverty in Nigeria”.
While it is not a crime for private individuals to set up offshore companies, Nigeria’s law forbids public officials from doing so. According to Transparency International, the failure of the President, Major General Buhari (retd.), to act over past disclosures like the Panama Papers has deepened the culture of impunity. Auwal Rafsanjani, Executive Director, Nigeria’s TI chapter, says the regime needs to investigate the Pandora Papers revelations irrespective of the political affiliation of the individuals. He adds that the government should equip the Code of Conduct Bureau with staff and resources to adequately scrutinise officials’ asset declarations.
TI’s observation of Buhari’s inaction is not surprising as his avowed anti-corruption war is gradually becoming a charade. \
Punch Editorial Board. “Pandora Papers and Nigeria’s hidden wealth.” Punch, October 12, 2021.
It is not against the law to secretly buy British properties using anonymous offshore companies. Finance Uncovered has seen no evidence in the Pandora Papers that money used to buy houses or apartments in the UK represents the proceeds of corruption or other criminality.
Indeed, many specialist advisers have routinely recommended clients invest in this manner to legally avoid tax.
Bowers, Simon, Lionel Faull, Purity Mukami. “Pandora Papers: The secret London properties of Nigeria’s elite.” Finance Uncovered, October 6, 2021.
–33–
I asked a source about police not answering what must have been a distress or emergency call: “Bribed? Scared? Sabotaged?” — “Order from above,” he said.
BackChannels 