It's Dictators' World, Stupid
By
Garba Deen Muhammad

His insatiable quest for cheap publicity must have compelled Governor Babangida Aliyu of Niger State to commit his biggest, ugliest and most tragic blunder yet. While the nation was still reeling from the clumsy and brutal handling of the Boko Haram violence which occurred in Bauchi, Yobe and Borno States; trying to decide who was more dangerous between a weird religious sect that opposes a dysfunctional system, and the system which allows the summery execution of dissenters; Governor Aliyu rushed into a decision that makes nonsense of his intellect and years of experience as a public servant.

One hundred kilometers to the west of his state capital of Minna, there lived a group of Muslim men, women, their children and livestock which had had been living in that settlement for the past 16 years. This was more than a decade before Governor Aliyu ever dreamt of becoming the governor of Niger State. 

The group had named their settlement Darus-Islam, which simply means city of Islam or city of Peace (this was probably how the Tanzanian capital Dar es Salaam evolved).


Without subjecting his thoughts—if he gave the problem any thoughts at all—to critical appraisal, Aliyu wrote to the federal government and virtually invited it to come in and help him flush out what he assumed, incorrectly as it turned out, another Boko Haram enclave; an action that he assumed—again incorrectly— would make him an instant hero. Naturally the federal government obliged; and in what a ‘son of the soil’ and a columnist with the Daily Trust, Mohammed Haruna, described as a Gestapo-like style, the group’s settlement was raided by government troops and its members corralled into a transit camp that was ill equipped to receive the 4000 new refugees that were dumped there.


If this tragic blunder had been committed by some other governor with less appetite for melodrama, he could plead human error and get away with it. After all at its peak, the Boko Haram rebellion which was the precursor to the invasion of Darus-Islam was enough to rattle any one. But Governor Aliyu’s decision was not taken in the heat of the moment; his decision to invite the federal government and to collaborate with them in the reckless and extra-judicial invasion of Darus-Islam was taken well after the Boko Haram uprising in the north eastern part of the country had been crushed, and after the brutal and suspicious execution of its leader.

Indeed Aliyu’s decision came at a time when the Nigerian public was just realizing the horrendous conduct of the government troops in their handling of the Boko Haram saga. Plus Governor Aliyu is not your usual run-of-the-mill governor: he is articulate, well educated (a PhD) and a seasoned administrator with
vast experience in the nuances of the exercise of power. Put together this makes his own rebellion against common sense, restraint and decorum totally inexcusable.


Not surprisingly, the victims of this official act of terror are already living through the consequences of their misfortune. “We are Treated like Animals” was the way they summed up their ordeal to the Weekly Trust when the paper’s reporter visited their camp two weeks ago. Camp? A penal colony is a more appropriate term for where those hapless idealists are kept. According to the Weekly Trust report of Saturday August 22, those forced refugees were given no mattresses, their women and children sleep on bare floor; when they and their women needed to relieve themselves they go into a nearby bush; no water to drink or perform ablution, to say nothing of having a bath.

But that is only a small part of their misery. The bigger and most crucial issue is about justice, or injustice if you like by the state against its own citizens. From conception to execution, the Daru-Islam misadventure is a sad story of one injustice over another. 

Here was a group that had lived peacefully with itself and with its neighbours for almost two decades; yet when the Niger state government decided to invade it, it did so without due regard to this track record of good conduct; apparently the Chief Servant ( as he calls himself) of the state came to his decision arbitrarily and because he is the Chief Servant, no lesser servant could caution him.


Second and equally indisputable evidence of civility and peace among the Darul-Islam brotherhood was the fact that when the rampaging government troops ran over the settlement, they found not a single dangerous weapon other than normal household utensils. There were no bombs, no guns and no swords or machetes; rather, incredible as it would seem, they found a social setting that was well advanced in its quest towards a 21st century version of a utopia. And then destroyed it.


Thirdly there was the economic dimension to the invasion. When the inhabitants of Darul-Islam were sacked from their homes, in itself a major breach of their fundamental Human Rights, no inventory was taken to determine who possessed what; their lifetime savings were simply plundered, and if the troops that carried out the operation included our normal policemen, you can be sure that not a few useful items were whisked away in the process. Now we hear tales that they wee given compensation of between N15,000 to N50,000 and dumped in a school compound without the most basic of all basic necessities of life: a toilet where they could s—t! And somebody whose election was barely confirmed on some legal technicality is beating his chest like some ancient warrior in a victory dance.


From this multiple layers of injustice, certain conclusions are inevitable. At the state level governors rule their states like tyrants; they do not invite, they do not admit; and they do not even give room for alternative views or advice once their minds are made up over anything. So if a chief servant, or a chief serpent or whatever he calls himself starts off on a wrong footing, there is nobody in the state who would dare call him to order. To everything his mind conjures up, every body around him kneels before him and answers yes, looking down. To behave otherwise is to invite the wrath of the king, and like all tyrants big and small, the governors normally do not take kindly to any one questioning their judgment.

A second conclusion, albeit a paradoxical one is that when it does decide to act, the state at the federal and state level can bark and bite with deadly efficiency. You then have to wonder what would happen if our state governors in Bauchi, Borno, Yobe, Niger and of course everywhere else should decide to confront the problem of poverty, begging and illiteracy with the same zeal, the same overwhelming force and awe with which they confronted Boko Haram and Darul-Islam.
Ergo, if you wish to see good governance in your lifetime, pick up a form from the Boko Haram or Darul-Islam centre nearest to you. Eventually, it may come to that.