Governor Murtala Nyako, Boko Haram and Rest of us ~ Part 1

I just read Gov. Murtala Nyako’s (Adamawa state) letter to the Northern Governor’s forum. As a principle of life, I have come to realize that there are usually several sides to any discussion. For simplicity’s sake, I would classify these as good, bad and ugly. This first piece is about the good side of the letter.

Part 1 – The Good

The Governor highlights the fact that the current situation in the North East is a Nigerian problem, not primarily a northern problem as some of us (myself included) have been seduced into thinking. While those of us in some other parts of the country may think of the crisis as being faraway, it only needs our collective silence to gain grounds and turn on us full circle.

In this regard, I will share my Port Harcourt experience. I moved to PH in 1998 for my NYSC and lived there for 7 years. It must have been around 1999 or 2000 that kidnapping incidences began occurring in the city. The targets were always and ONLY expatriates who worked for the oil and gas companies, made large sums of money and had access to all the girls in town! It was, therefore, with a lot of glee that we received the news of the kidnappings and ransom demands every other day. I used to view the kidnappers (usually boys in the ‘hood) as some sort of urban/contemporary Robin Hoods who were robbing the rich to give to the poor, after all, that never hurt anyone, right? Dead wrong!! It wasn’t long before the oil companies tightened the security apparatus around their staff making them inaccessible and the boys who had had a foretaste of easy money now had to find a way to keep the money rolling in. Shortly afterwards, the kidnap targets became the wealthy Nigerians in the city and before you could figure out where it all went wrong, kidnapping became an allcomers affair. I since left the city in 2005 but I’ve heard of ridiculous stories like a ransom demand of NGN5,000 (USD 30) for someone who could barely eke out a living from his road side trade. Apart from the trauma visited on the kidnap victims and their kith and kin, there is also the ugly development of loss of life either when the ransom is not paid on time or the police got involved or a rescue attempt went bad. Needless to say, the news of a kidnap now elicits nothing but pain and regret.

The next thing is now that kidnapping has spread like cancer to other parts of the country, a hydra-headed monster. It is almost like product development in business where you test a product on a target audience in a controlled environment and then release it to the general public after getting satisfactory results from the tests. Only in this case, the product is the art of successful kidnapping.

The essence of this story is that those in Lagos, Akwa Ibom, Benin Asaba, Abakaliki should not think themselves immune from this situation. All that is required for the bombing/Boko Haram menace to visit itself on us is continued apathy, silence and “”siddon-look””.

What is the prescribed solution – Let every governor from my own Ekiti to Abia to Kwara to Enugu raise their voices and finances to combat this menace with ALL the venom and anger that can possibly be mustered. And this is not a Governors’ Forum issue, where Jonah Jang and Rotimi Amaechi will square off in front of the cameras. I mean each state governor must openly come out and condemn the actions and lend NOT ONLY humanitarian assistance but full fledged security assistance just like Nigeria has done to other West African states using ECOMOG. Let our ECOMOG start from within. Since the states do not have their own police forces, they should send this assistance in the form of money or pay for foreign intervention from tested and proven agencies such as the Israeli MOSSAD.

In this first piece, I will conclude by reminding us all of the story of the mouse trap which goes thus:

A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package. “What food might this contain?” the mouse wondered. He was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.

Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning: “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!” The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, “Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it.”

The mouse turned to the pig and told him, “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!” The pig sympathized, but said, “I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers.” The mouse turned to the cow and said, “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!” The cow said, “Wow, Mr. Mouse. I’m sorry for you, but it’s no skin off my nose.”

So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer’s mousetrap alone.
That very night a sound was heard throughout the house – like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey. The farmer’s wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer’s wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital and she returned home with a fever.

Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup’s main ingredient. But his wife’s sickness continued, so friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig. The farmer’s wife did not get well; she died. So many people came for her funeral, the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them.

The mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness. So, the next time you hear someone is facing a problem and think it doesn’t concern you, remember, when one of us is threatened, we are all at risk. We are all involved in this journey called life. We must keep an eye out for one another and make an extra effort to encourage one another. Each of us is a vital thread in another person’s tapestry. Enough said… a word is enough for the wise!!

 

This article was written by Akintayo Ayo-Bamisaye. He lives in Abuja.