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.