LIVING IN AN ENVIRONMENT OF FEAR

It is doubtful that there is any country on earth serious about its development that does not work assiduously to ensure the safety of lives and property of its citizens. This is always to demonstrate that the welfare of the citizens is of utmost importance.

When the citizens of a country are content and safe in the knowledge that the state is always looking out for their good, life becomes a lot easier. But not, and perhaps never, in an atmosphere of fear and insecurity. Never in an environment where life is cheap and practically worthless.

Unfortunately, the Nigerian experience in the last decade has been one of riotous uncertainty and fragility. This experience is as disturbing as it has been lived under a vicious kind of insecurity that has been almost impossible to manage.

With the explosion of terrorism has come the twin evils of insurgency and banditry that have threatened to rip out the heart of the country. While the shocks have rippled across the entire country, the attacks have especially resonated in rural areas.

When heavily armed and ruthless criminals have marched across rural communities, it has been with an almost unimaginable blood lust. Nigeria may still be dubious with statistics, yet, there is everything to agree with in the data that say 133 million Nigerians are poor. Usually, poverty extracts a crushing cost. Rural communities which have long made peace with poverty have been crushed for such a long time.

Countless people have been eviscerated, their means of livelihood obliterated by the chilling ruthlessness of criminals.

Yet, the country has trudged on. People have kept going even when it is more than obvious that there is no end in sight. Only recently, criminals armed with AK-47 rifles stormed a train station at Igueben in Edo State and kidnapped dozens of passengers. According to reports, the gunmen who shot sporadically into the air injured some passengers who were waiting to board the train to Warri in Delta State. If a country yet to recover from the wounds inflicted by a similar attack last year needed any reminder, this was it. On March 28, 2022, daredevil criminals had attacked a passenger train travelling from Abuja to Kaduna State. The attack led to the death of about nine passengers with dozens other abducted. Some of the victims went on to spend six months in horrifying captivity as Nigerians were forced to learn just how much threat insecurity poses. In a country where many no longer know what it is like to feel safe, the latest attacks are a brutal reminder of how much work remains to be done.

In Nigeria today, people stay in their homes and are abducted. They go to their farms and are abducted. When they hit the road on necessary journeys, they are not safe. Different forms of terrorism have been baring their fangs in Nigeria for a while now and they are not all faceless.

The suspicion is strong that those who do these things are not unknown to the authorities in Nigeria. The seeming reluctance to apprehend, interrogate, prosecute and incarcerate them speaks volumes. Critical elections are upon Nigeria. There are fears that insecurity may compromise the elections.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has expressed its morbid fears. Fear will remain for a long time and would continue to define the Nigerian experience if nothing is urgently done to check the menace.

Kene Obiezu, @kenobiezu