{"id":24361,"date":"2014-03-17T20:42:11","date_gmt":"2014-03-17T19:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/?p=24361"},"modified":"2014-03-17T20:42:11","modified_gmt":"2014-03-17T19:42:11","slug":"boko-haram-state-haram-and-the-death-of-the-wretched","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/articles-opinions\/boko-haram-state-haram-and-the-death-of-the-wretched\/","title":{"rendered":"Boko Haram, \u2018State Haram\u2019 and The Death of the Wretched !"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Gbenro Olajuyigbe.<\/b><\/p>\n

\u2018The greatest danger to a civilised nation is a man who has no stake in it, and nothing to lose by rejecting all that civilisation stands for\u2019- Henry Ford<\/i><\/p>\n

One of the indicators of War time i have come to accept as a fact is that, \u2018In peace time, children bury their parents. In war time, parents bury their children\u2019. If you are still doubting \u00a0that we are in war – time, ask the parents of the students killed in Buni \u2013Yadi, Yobe State; ask the mothers and fathers of those killed across the Country at Stadia, where they have innocently gone to struggle for survival in a country that thrive on \u2018survival of rogues\u2019! They have the most harrowing duty of burying their children. This has also become ubiquitous tragic duty of many Nigerians in the recent time.<\/p>\n

The suspension of common sense by the Nigeria Immigration Service has once again driven home breathtaking severity of unemployment in Nigeria and the kinetic impotence of the Nigerian Government to secure, protect and preserve its people, especially the youth. After ripping off\u00a0 hundreds of thousands of\u00a0 unemployed Nigerian youth of One thousand Naira each in a nauseating allusion to service failure\u00a0 by a government Agency via a deception of\u00a0 job opening, it has now vicariously killed at least twenty(20) of them in a stampede caused by indiscretion.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Just in this last one week, close to one thousand \u00a0Nigerians and residents lost their lives; 20 vicariously killed by the Nigeria Immigration Service at the Stadia across the Country , 100 Killed in Southern Kaduna, 106 killed in Katsina, over 200 Boko Haram members allegedly killed by the Soldiers. Blood continue to flow in Benue\/Nassarawa Axis, it is worse in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States. Yet, this bunch of irredeemably failed leaders do not know that Nigeria is at war. Nigeria is at war with her youth. Nigeria is at war with her women and even with her men, who hope to get decent burial from the children they are now succeeding. Instead of sitting straightly to face the questions that drove us into society, they are theorizing and politicking. To them, excuse has become tool for governance; imaginary political opponents are\u00a0 \u00a0sacrificial lambs for gross incompetence. \u00a0If you compare Nigeria with UK, they will tell you that it has taken UK Centuries to develop. If with India, they will tell you that it is because of population advantage. The quantum of electricity we need to live like human beings in Nigeria is not up to what Calcuta in India, a fragment will need. \u00a0Imagine what a twenty thousand megawatt of electricity could have done to the lives of over five hundred thousand youth that gather at the \u2018 open grave\u2019 prepared for them by the Nigeria Immigration Service in term of self – employment?<\/p>\n

I can not blame the youth that died while seeking to live; in a society where nothing is left again to tincture the conscience of \u2018rulers\u2019. Those who are no longer moved by spilling of human blood can never be moved by the sight of morbid unemployment that have been afflicting our youth. \u00a0Oil Spillage in Ogoni or UNEP Report did and does not move them. Over 40,000 Nigerian Refugees in Niger\u00a0 and displacement of over 500,000 Nigerians are to them mere figure.Those who declared that corruption is not a prime problem in Nigeria will never understand your problem with the alleged missing of $20 Million in NNPC. They will never see the nexus between deprivation and disenchantments. The connection between oppression and resistance is beyond their mental comprehension.\u00a0 The relationship between humongous poverty in the midst of plenty and violence is far beyond a man who keeps on beating his chest from Davos to Washinton that the policy of his government has produced the richest man in Africa, not minding critical concern of \u00a0the other \u00a0500,000 unemployed citizens struggling to fill 1000 Job Vacancies.<\/p>\n

A President that continues to say that Nigeria will not disintegrate without working toward that is living in \u2018Crusoe Island\u2019 or \u2018Disney Land\u2019! Nigeria has not physically broken into pieces; mentally. She has! Ethnicity, religiosity and nepotism have re-defined loyalty. Ethnicity and nepotism have shrunk spaces of opportunity and by extension, stifle development. The fratricidal\u00a0 badges of Hausa, Igbo, Fulani, Ijaw, Yoruba, Itsekiri among others are the burden we have unleashed on ourselves through political greed, economic gluttony\u00a0 and power profiteering. We have no more space for humanity! These are yokes we can not break until we return to the cubicle of our conscience to locate the purposes of leadership and citizenship. A ruler who keeps on moving from one church to the other like Pharisee without learning \u00a0how Jesus Christ\u00a0 chased Marauders (thieves or\u00a0 robbers) out of Church, telling them that\u00a0 \u2018 my\u00a0 father\u2019s house shall be called the House of Prayer, not the Den of Robbers\u2019 can never build a just state.<\/p>\n

The race into society from Thomas Hobbes\u2019 State of Nature, where life was \u2018short, brutish and nasty\u2019 envisaged that society\/state must take up some responsibilities if life must become safe, secure and pleasant. Hobbes anchored his postulation on Social Contract, the thread that ties state to duty and open vista of security to people who have necessarily sundered their rights in exchange for expected welfare and security. Hence, having conceded \u00a0the limitless \u2018rights\u2019 or might in the state of nature to the\u00a0 state, the state can no longer discharge itself of this onerous responsibility on which the faith of people in it is built. Social Contract shifts society away from Covenant of Blood!\u00a0 It protect people against bloodletting and ensure that those who attempt it gets due sanctions. It replaced \u2018Might\u2019 with \u2018Right\u2019, Persecution with Protection and Cruelty with Humanity! Wherever through state carelessness or negligence a group or sect assumes and asserts the right to kill, citizens automatically lose the privilege to live! I say, \u2018privilege to live, not right to live.\u2019 The \u2018right\u2019 is already gone with the wind that ends state\u2019s capacity for protection.<\/p>\n

\u00a0A country where tomorrow has become a nightmare has lost the capacity to regenerate herself. Until the youth, who are the future of that country stop singing\u00a0 God\u2019s song in \u00a0strange land; hope is far. \u00a0The youth must take active interest in the affairs of Nigeria if we must end \u2018Boko Haram\u2019 and \u2018State Haram\u2019. If the impunity that have taken liberty away from Nigerians must be defeated, the youth must be the frontline soldiers. I sympathise with the killed, the dead and the wounded. I will never pity the living because like George Sutherland, \u2018the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time\u2019! Arise, o \u2018compatriots, Nigeria call, obey!<\/p>\n