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Executive Plane Crashes & Roadblocks By Babayola M. Toungo
My heart goes out to Dame Amina Elizabeth Yakowa on her irreplaceable lost – a lost felt by all and sundry in Kaduna State in particular and the country in general. But no one will feel this lost more than the Dame for she lost a husband, companion and possibly a father. I pray God will give you the fortitude to bear the loss and the forbearance to forge ahead. Sir Patrick Yakowa’s death was a lost to all, but while the state lost a bridge-builder, the family lost a patriarch. We can all take solace in knowing that he did his best and wasn’t found wanting wherever he served throughout his public service career. Mrs. Yakowa should be well assured that the encomiums pouring in after his tragic death are not the usual political crocodile tears which easily flow eyes that are touched with handkerchiefs soaked in Mentholatum. The tears were genuine and the encomiums authentic. May Sir Patrick Yakowa be with his Lord.
Tragic as the chopper crash that snuff the late governor’s life, we may as well interrogate ourselves on the methods taken by the various states and the federal government as a means of safeguarding the lives and properties of the high and mighty. Today most cities in the north look like conquered territories because of the high concentration of gun totting military personnel wherever one turns. Our society has been militarised, and if I can borrow Jerry Rawlings cliché, “violence have been democratised”, with a human life costing less than the cost of the bullet used to kill him. The soldiers deployed to our cities and highways have turned out to be worse than the Boko Haram fighters it is meant to protect the people from. The number of souls lost to the bullets of the soldiers may be higher than the number of those killed by the sect members. Much as the people have been calling on the authorities for the withdrawal of the soldiers, the authorities have turned deaf ears because they believe the people are their enemies and must therefore be shielded from by force of arms. All this may be a direct consequence of how our leaders emerged through fraudulent means.
Apart from the daily lost of lives caused by the military, the humiliation our people suffer from the hands of these uncouth goons both in the cities and the highways are terrible, to say the least. I had the misfortune of travelling to Yola by road from Kaduna and the way commuters in public vehicles are humiliated and intimidated made me hate being a Nigerian. The military men manning the roadblocks behaves no different from occupation forces we see on our television sets in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine. Passengers are asked to come down from their vehicles and open their luggage for a public display of their most personal items. At some roadblocks, passengers are ordered to face away from the vehicle while searches are conducted. I saw a woman forced to mow grasses for daring to look at a soldier while he was searching their bus. The ‘rule’ is that all passengers are to turn their backs to their luggage while it being searched. Can’t be worse for Palestinians crossing into Israel. We ended up making a trip of eight hours in ten.
For those in the towns, the experiences are far worse for those using motorcycles. You are forced to dismount at the pain of being flogged by the soldiers at the roadblocks. The harassments and humiliations apart, the stupendous amount of money that goes into maintaining these roadblocks are mind-boggling. The monies should have made a lot of difference in the lives of our long-suffering compatriots. With all the ubiquity of the roadblocks, the bombers – what they are purportedly created to stop – are continuing to have a field day. With the twin bombings in the heart of the military’s elitist Cantonment – Jaji – the uselessness of these roadblocks have been exposed. They are just useless money guzzlers and a tool for the humiliation of the poor who find it difficult to navigate the various fierce looking, gun-totting soldiers, to go looking what to eat.
My point in this piece is for us to use Yakowa’s death to rethink our security strategies. Our government houses have been turned into fortresses and most government institutions and structures are looking like mini military cantonments all in an effort to protect our governors, lawmakers and other public functionaries. But the architect of this draconian security policy – the late Owoye Azazi – died in a chopper crash. He was “attacked” by death where you can’t erect a roadblock. I do not claim to know much about the man Azazi but I know him from reputation as the man indicted for the crime of unprecedented movement of military hardware to Niger Delta militants when he was the General Officer Commanding (GOC) 1 Mechanised Division, Kaduna. He went on to head the Army and retire as Chief of Defence Staff. He reinvented himself during the Goodluck Jonathan’s administration as the National Security Adviser (NSA) with enormous powers and influence. He is no more but his legacies of roadblocks live with us. The continued attacks by faceless terror groups who, for all we know, are hiding behind the mask of Boko Haram to perpetrate mayhem in the north, is a testament to the failure of these death traps. They are there simply to degrade and intimidate poor daily road users who cannot afford sirens.
Kaduna state has lost a rare gem. A man who overcame his prejudices to lead an ethnically and religiously fragmented state. It was universally agreed that Yakowa was a good man and tried his best for Kaduna and its people. I hope he is in the bosom of his Lord. As to Azazi, I am sure he was also eulogised by those he did his best to impress while alive; those he assisted in life even at the expense of others. Though I may disagree with him and his worldview, he did his level best to make sure his people are visible in all spheres of our polity. Despite his concerted efforts to have the northern part of Nigeria labelled a ‘terrorists territory’ and despite failing to do so, the man served the country in his own ways.
But the death of these two and the pilots and other passengers in the helicopter crash should ideally wake us up from the folly of thinking that we can mount roadblocks to ward off death. Injustice begets injustice and disenchantment that leads to frustrations, which in turn leads to the destructive spree we are witnessing. Living behind sandbags, high fences, attack dogs and fierce looking security operatives hasn’t solved the problem but actually exacerbated it. Governor Danbaba Danfulani of Taraba State is still in the hospital in Germany (I pray for his full recovery). No ‘terrorists’ attacked the plane he was piloting; Governor Idris Wada, a pilot, ironically was involved in fatal road accident, which claimed the life of his ADC.
The best way to immortalise these gentlemen who lost their lives needlessly, is to find a lasting solution to the incessant insecurity in the country; to ensure that every Nigerian sleeps with both eyes and not this ad-hoc arrangement through which the authorities create more enemies than friends. |