ON A TRAIN TO NOWHERE
Nigeria is under siege, writes Kene Obiezu
In Nigeria`s lavish banquet of snakes and scorpions, it has become popular to dish out iron ironies as favourite fixtures in the menu of maladies the Giant of Africa has to choose from. From the east to the west through the north and south, ironies stretch themselves like snakes bathing in the sun. Examples abound.
In a certain and so-called ruling party paying glamorous lip service to change, practically every member of the executive body once sheltered under the umbrella of the opposition party which it routinely accuses of decimating Nigeria over a 16-year period marked by depredations.
In a state that disproportionately plays host to many of Nigeria`s premier and preeminent defence institutions, terrorists have not only set up shop but school too. In Africa`s largest oil producer, while illegal refineries work a treat to line greedily bottomless private pockets, national refineries lie comatose while citizens have to pay through the nose for that which their soil gives in abundance.
In a country strangled by insecurity, a top cop whose cough once rattled master criminals is in court on accusations of having been found in bed with fraudsters and drug dealers.
In the ailing Giant of Africa, under the glare of the midday sun, ironies are running riot, and now, residents and visitors to Nigeria`s ‘center of learning’ are being forced to learn the hard way the brutal audacity of the insecurity that is both appetizer and dessert on Nigeria`s table of trauma.
With many of the roads leading to Kaduna and passing through Kaduna State having become bridges of blood due to the audacious activities of ferocious criminals, the lot fell on the Kaduna International Airport to be attacked on March 26, 2022. The attack perpetrated by attackers numbering about 200 was not just disruptive but deadly as a staff of the airport was shot dead and activities grounded.
With the stage having been set at the airport, the murderous force found its way to the railway on March 28, 2021.The attackers daringly immobilized a train travelling from Abuja to Kaduna, killed eight passengers and abducted many others to give already pounding Nigerian hearts palpitations.
It begs the question of what is happening in Nigeria and in Kaduna State; of why the venue of vultures is stridently hovering over the skies of one of Nigeria`s most iconic states, even as the clan of hyenas work the grounds.
When in August 2021, criminals fell upon the Nigeria Defence Academy in Kaduna, killed two soldiers and made away with another, the alarm bells tolled across the country at the ease with which the defenders of the Giant of Africa had been ambushed.
Even that attack and since then, the menace that banditry is has found a productive laboratory in Kaduna State where the liberty of experimenting with terror is matched with lavish resources for the experiments. Both higher institutions and secondary schools in the state have been turned upside down and students carried away like slaves for ransom. Roads in and around the state have become death traps even as entire communities face the prospect of annihilation.
The grim reality is that one of Nigeria`s most iconic states has taken over from Borno State, another iconic state, as Nigeria`s epicentre of terror. The dark clouds that were gathering for a long time have now let loose and everything and everybody in Nigeria is getting drenched.
Nigeria`s security situation has been unravelling since the 2009 when Boko Haram`s attacks against the country suddenly grew more audacious, pulling people and their livelihoods from pillar to post while sending many to their early graves.
While the attacks raged, those who had sown terror in other countries watched from the sidelines and planned their own interventions. Having witnessed just how feebly the Giant of Africa responded, they have since pounced with devastating consequences.
Nigeria is hastening to the day when there will no longer be any hiding place for those who deny the gravity of the country`s insecurity or do nothing serious to put to flight those who are wreaking havoc on Africa`s largest economy.
That people can no longer move about freely without fear of attacks speak to a government that has become grounded in incompetent grandstanding; that terrorists increasingly have nothing to fear from Nigeria`s defense apparatus speaks to a country`s itinerary to impotence; that the lives of innocent Nigerians are snuffed out when terrorists nonchalantly snap their fingers speaks to a country teetering on the edge of disaster.
At the moment, it is not just that Nigeria`s compass is not working well, there is no compass at all. Thus, in a blindness foisted by the thick darkness enveloping a giant country, nothing is found and nothing is felt.
2023 is breathing down upon Nigerian necks and perhaps, with their voter cards as tickets, Nigerians can storm the high places where their wool is exchanged for woe and wheat for weed. Just maybe, they can ring long lasting changes.
