The new bride was inside the hut, waiting for her man to unwrap what he paid for. But the groom chose to stay with his friends, cracking jokes and drinking palm wine. By the time the third gourd of wine lay on its side, even the friends of the groom became worried. They reminded him of the serious assignment waiting for him on the other side of the door. You know what this groom said? “I can thread 200 needles in the dark.” His friends laughed mockingly and told him he had only one needle to thread that night, and this needle was waiting for him in his chambers.
That was the scene that came to my mind when I heard that the Nigerian Senate had once again approved that we hold another security summit to talk about why our land is flowing with blood and gore. Unless we talk about it one more time, according to almost all the Senators who agreed to the summit – save for Adamu Aliero (Kebbi) and Enyinnaya Abaribe (Abia).
Now, here’s what the convocation of blood will discover, like Mungo Park.
Herders are grabbing farmers’ land.
That farmers are killing herders.
Heads of children are being split open.
Bellies of pregnant women are being cut open with marauder’s knives.
Helpless old men are being shot in the presence of their grandchildren.
Nigerians are afraid to travel by road.
Commercial buses are being hijacked and passengers are abducted for ransom.
The kidnap-for-ransom trade is now a thriving billionaire sector of the economy.
Boko Haram now has a sibling called Lakurawa.
Even Senators are afraid to go anywhere, including their hometowns.
Parents’ fears have altered the founding fathers’ vision for the NYSC.
Southerners are suspicious of Northerners.
The youth are leaving Nigeria in droves.
Farms are now overgrown with weeds after farmers were massacred while doing an honest day’s job.
Pray, which of all of the above do Nigeria and its leaders need a summit to discover?
My imaginative mind keeps telling me that all this call for security summit up and down is because someone dug out a file of past summits and saw the budget, the eye-popping approved sums of gigantic proportions and how it transformed some people’s lives and lifestyle.
Right. Try and picture the number of planning committees and subcommittees. There will be contractors and subcontractors. Every committee will have secretary and secretariats. Tens of millions will be spent on branding, printing and documents. At the end of the day, there will be communique and media noise. Don’t even start to imagine the photo ops and spot interviews and analysis of who said what and why.
Gradually, the noise will die down. The hype will be replaced with stuff like “the 2025 security summit and a delegate as the NSS” etc.
Oh sorry, I forgot to add that many of the killers would also attend with a few of their sponsors sitting regally at the high table, pontificating shamelessly, godlessly. Anyway, everybody will eventually go home, the looter with their loots and the victims to their tragedies. The killers will return and kill more, then the analysis will start all over again. Those who made money will up their lifestyle with the loot and the bereaved will continue to mourn in fear.
Blood money is blood money. A ritualist is a ritualist even if he speaks Queen’s English or dines with kings.
However, the Senators, politicians and leaders who want to hold new series of talk shops should answer these questions:
How many times did you hold security summits to fix the insecurity in your estate?
How many conferences did you hold to secure your old parents in the village?
How many people did you hold meetings with before you decided that your children were better off in the UK than Nigeria?
See, when these people want to fix a problem, they do it. Our leaders know how to end insecurity but are afraid to end it. The question is, who are they afraid of?
The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.
