“In the face of prevalent banditry and terrorism, the most potent solution is the empowerment of the Nigerian mass for self-defence. This will enable us to defend our homes, farms, schools, roads and work places.” — Owei Lakemfa
This is definitely not a well thought-out solution to the existential problems facing the suffering indigenous peoples of Nigeria. How do you empower the Nigerian mass for self defence when the extant laws on firearms are extremely strict on ownership of arms and ammunition for the mass of the citizens?
This type of piecemeal or a fire-brigade approach to security issues is merely sidestepping the fundamental issue of facing the reality of Nigeria as a totally failed state. If Nigeria is not a totally failed state, how is it possible to accept as a normal situation, in a country with a myriad of governmental institutions, “that in the first year of the Tinubu administration ending April 2024, Nigerians paid N 2.2 trillion or $1.41 billion as ransom to bandits”?
In a country decorated with multilayered security agencies, how do we reconcile the ease with which bandits, kidnappers and other murderous operators collect ransoms openly and unchallenged from both individual citizens and government institutions since 2010?
Let’s call a spade a spade, Nigeria has no functioning government. What is in place as the Nigeria State is composed of a Cabal of Fools or a criminal band of self-serving political gangsters. If this be the case, how can the highly intelligent and scholastic Mr Owei Lakemfa claim ignorance of the existential threats in the country? If not, Why is he offering a shallow, tame suggestion when only a deep revolutionary idea is required?
In the past few weeks, shameless and exceptionally notorious politicians have been heard spilling the beans on their covert and nefarious contributions to the prevailing regime of insecurity in the country. From the indicting statements oozing out of their mouths, it is obvious that the country, as presently constituted, structured and administered, is not working for the good of the whole people.
It is unbelievable yet it is true that these prominent and notorious political personalities in our midst are openly confessing to the traitorous crimes they have committed against the nation by giving financial and logistical supports to the hoodlums threatening the country. Unfortunately, we have no state apparatus that are morally capable or ethically sound or technically equipped to call them to account and to face justice. What else do we have in place that is worthy to be called a working government besides a comprehensively Failed State?
It is under this anarchical social and political conditions that Mr Owei Lakemfa is asking a nonexistent ‘government’ to empower the Nigerian masses to defend themselves against entrenched and well equipped armed and political bandits. This half-baked suggestion will end up like what happens when petrol is poured on a raging fire. Nigeria and everyone and everything in her will surely end up in a heap of ashes.
I will strenuously appeal to every thinking Nigerian that it is high time we took the bull by the horn for once. The awakened Nigerians need to agree that work must begin in earnest to attend to the serious mental task of seeking understanding about the dangerous depth of the existential challenges facing the country. And that we urgently need to work deliberately and purposefully hard towards disbanding the present political and socioeconomic structures. And most importantly, to undertake the Herculean task of shredding the fraudulent 1999 Constitution of Nigeria that continues to give the ruinous constitutional and judicial support to the ongoing madness in the country.
Therefore, any suggestion from the Nigerian intellectual elites that is short of the above revolutionary acts should be seen as highly irresponsible contribution. It should be unmistakably condemned as an unconscionable negligence and an unforgivable refusal to heed the SOS wailing cries that are ringing out across the length and breadth of the country.
The Nigerian elites can do better if only they can decide from now on to seek healing for their crippled mind and for their spiritual blindness, deafness and dumbness. It is not too late to try.
In The Spirit of Truth
SAM ABBD ISRAEL
Link Banditry, Its Politics And Practitioners, By Owei Lakemfa
ITSOT 