Democracy With Growing Violence

The authorities must face the hard task of containing the booming violence

The violence that defines this season speaks to a national psychology that has devalued human life to the lowest level. From North to South and East, hundreds of people are being killed almost daily either by criminal cartels or lone wolves who seem to have overpowered the capacity of the state. In his ‘Democracy Day’ address to Nigerians yesterday, President Muhammadu Buhari admitted the challenges of insecurity and made the usual promises. But to check these killings and restore peace to the country, there is an urgent need for a state that subscribes to a higher value on life and livelihood.

Unfortunately, the Nigerian state is itself providing leadership in all manner of bad behaviour that often leads to extra-judicial killings. With the wave of disenchantment by young citizens, fuelled largely by unemployment, alienation and general social and economic discontent, government ought to see peaceful protests as legitimate expressions of democratic rights. But as usual, the police yesterday betrayed a clear deficit of creative solutions to respond to civil protests without resorting to force. In Lagos, Abuja and some other cities, many of our young citizens who chose to exercise their democratic rights were brutally put down.

What we need to interrogate therefore is a democracy that can neither defend itself without resorting to military tactics nor protect citizens from dying cheaply and needlessly in the hands of a cocktail of violent vagrants. We are particularly worried that the incessant attacks by insurgents, bandits, kidnappers, and others across the country can only worsen the general feeling of insecurity with dire implications for our democracy. As we had cause to point out recently, perhaps aside the 30-month civil war, Nigeria has never been so threatened by security challenges as it is today. But this culture of impunity persists because the relevant security agencies have not succeeded in apprehending the entrepreneurs of violence to bring them to justice in accordance to law. A regime of ‘neutralising’ suspects who have not been tried in any court of law for alleged offenses is counterproductive under the current situation.

The authorities must see the growing violence in different theatres across Nigeria as a challenge not only to our corporate existence and our imperfect democracy, but also to the future of a country that is fast becoming a killing field. The greater danger lies in the fact that as many get killed, as we have witnessed in recent weeks, Nigerians move on unperturbed. That is fast depicting us as a people who place little premiums on human lives. Yet when such bestiality becomes a way of life, those who kill would want to recreate the scenes again and again.

Ordinarily, death ought to be an extreme penalty for crimes involving loss of lives. Where death becomes an unscheduled consequence of living a normal life, something is fatally wrong with government as the only human invention meant to separate men from beasts. Anarchy or the state of nature is the only other name for a situation in which casual killers compete to take the lives of innocent people almost as a sport. We therefore insist on bringing killers of all hues to justice in an open and transparent manner. This will require a complete retraining of our police and security agents to protect lives. The present adversarial orientation is a colonial and military legacy which has nothing to do with democracy.

In his national broadcast yesterday, President Buhari said that the change of ‘Democracy Day’ from May 29 to June 12 was effected by his administration not only to honour the sacrifices of the men and women who fought for the return to civil rule but also to create an environment for democracy to be an accepted way of life. As commendable as that may be, the inescapable conclusion remains that an official celebration of Democracy Day on top of a reality of total insecurity, misery and cheapened human lives is what it is: a sad hollow ritual!

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The authorities must see the growing violence in different theatres across Nigeria as a challenge not only to our corporate existence and our imperfect democracy, but also to the future of a country that is fast becoming a killing field