Video Purportedly Shows Nigerian Army, Shi'ite Sect Confrontation

[Ikhide]

http://m.voanews.com/a/3105492.html


- Ikhide

[Samuel Zalanga]

I watched the whole of it. I lament this whole situation. This is not the North that I grew up in. The North I grew up in even though still characterized by inequality and injustice, but it was still orderly. That orderliness has truly impacted my life. What we see in this documentary video is a situation of anomie.

 I understand Hausa and one can get a sense of what is going on. If there was order in Nigeria, this will never happen. Order does not mean there will be no disagreement or grievances, but there should be me standard ways for resolving them.  Essentially, unless the government has a policy that says no one should drive that road, it is not appropriate for citizens to just a block a road that is meant for the public to use. If there was no court order preventing military people or officers from passing on that road, then the military officer should not be prevented from going to wherever they were going to. If the community feels there are good reasons why urban militia should takeover the road, then the courts should make that decision. It looks like the leader of the group has created a state within a state. He may have good reasons for that but this is a recipe for conflict and anyone who understands how the modern state functions, knows that such a clash is just a matter of time.

The North I grew up in was one where even if you have disagreement with people in authority or your elders, you try to channel it appropriately and respectively. And being an elder in the traditional North did not mean simple question of age. "Dattijo" (Hausa term) or an elder means a certain degree of maturity, where one does not allow youthful exuberance or selfishness to override his or her sense of judgement.  In that respect, there is a degree to which I resent anything that will bring chaos. We need some order. But maybe it is the diminished meaning of being an elder and the responsibilities that come with it that has contributed in producing the kind of youth we have in the video.

 I grew up poor but even with that I had sense of hope that I should be disciplined and if I worked had, I may not be a millionaire but at least I can live a life that has some degree of meaning. I lament what I saw in the video because I went to my local government headquarters in Bauchi State last summer to make a presentation just as a way of connecting with the people. I learned a lot about the frustration of people. Left to the ordinary people, even with religious differences, if a person works to serve them sincerely, they will prefer that than someone who preaches puritanical religion but always treats them like trash and takes advantage of them. The "religious question" is part of the problem in Nigeria.

In my assessment, and familiarity with the North, what I saw in this video is not the simple question of the killing and conflict. What you see in the video is the appearance of a much deeper problem in the structure of Nigerian society. If the U.S. government wants to treat it as a simple civil rights or human rights issue, then that shows the superficiality of that kind of reasoning. We cannot talk of such rights in abstraction.

To focus on just the death, important and regretful as that is, is to treat the appearance and ignore the underlying social, political and economic processes that lead to this kind of unnecessary confrontation and threat to law and order.

Watching the video reminded of a classmate of mine in Bauchi who works with the local government system. He told me once that some unemployed youth came and told him that if he can give them N20,000 they would go and kill anyone that he wants them to kill. This is how terrible the situation has become. The kind of youth I saw in the video, are hopeless people, and their society is highly responsible for their hopelessness. If these people grew up in a society that allows them to be integrated very well, there is no reason why they would put themselves in this situation.

You cannot break the law and start shouting the name of Allah or Jesus to make yourself look like you are fighting a religious cause. Nigerians have to be serious about this. Last summer in Jos, I went to a bank and saw a live TV program of Pentecostal preaching. Every customer was forced to listen or watch. I am a Christian but I felt that was inappropriate. Such a place is part of the public sphere and we should interact freely there. Not everyone visiting the bank is a Christian and not all Christians believe in that brand of Pentecostalism. Civility just means that such things should not be allowed to takeover the public sphere. I know that maybe in some part of the country, some banks to will air an Islamic program but that does not make it right.

 In my school, we invited a Shi'ite from Iran to come and speak some time ago. He demonstrated that a Shi'ite can be intellectually engaging. Simply because someone is Shiite or any religion for that matter, does not allow them to prevent normal citizens for using a public road. If this is allowed to continue in Nigeria by any religious group, normal law abiding persons can just run into their death for just driving through a road that is open to the public in theory but denied access through illegal means. The country has to do better in terms of not allowing this kind of embarrassing situation.

No amount of prayer or miracle can get rid of this kind of unruly behavior among unemployed youth in Nigeria if the society fails to really address the fundamental needs of the people and integrate them in society effectively. This integration is multifaceted. It must start from kindergarten through high school and university. Not all youth will go to the university but they must be provided some vocational training. People want meaning in life. I can sense from the way the youth spoke that what they were doing gave them a sense of meaning. Assuming this is the case, was this all that independence of Nigeria means after 55 years?  They felt they are important by being able to control the area on behalf of their leader or maybe faith. If there are places where Christians do this kind of thing, that should also be reprimanded. The freedom to practice one's religion should not be used to takeover over public resources. The military felt it was a classic case of a situation where state authority is contested. That some people in a community can decide to deny public officials access to roads that are meant for the public is an indication of anomie. This looks like a "warlord" kind of situation.

It is truly unfortunate and regrettable that the killings took place, but in my view, it is very cheap to just focus on the killings. As Zimbardo said after his prison experiment, often people focus on an evil act but they fail to pay attention to the sequence of events that lead to the act. The sequence of events here goes back to the structure and process of Nigerian society, with particular reference to the North. There is poverty all over Nigeria, but that of the North is worse.

 If I were a leader, I will have sleepless nights about the situation in the North. I will commission experts, professionals and practitioners to check throughout history where a society faced with similar problem of huge unemployment and meaninglessness, pursued some policies that reintegrated the youth and restore order and stability.

The youth in the video exactly represent what Professor Stiglitz in making his point about the way globalization just made some people irrelevant said, statistically speaking, it is better to be a cow in Europe than to be a kind of human being in the Third World. The EU subsidized their cows under the common agricultural policy at at least $2.50 per day and the cow produces milk, cheese and beef which gives it a lot of relevance in the economy. What Professor Stiglitz meant is a kind of human being that has no any meaningful human capital that is useful in the neoliberal global economy, no money to spend that can make him or her  a consumer with effective purchasing power; he or she does not produce anything of value in the economy that will compel someone to acknowledge him or her as a value addition; and such persons have no entrepreneurial skills. If such persons want to live in a cosmic economy and society, let them try doing so and that will be a good historical environment but in this real world that we live, it is true that many of the youth are just irrelevant compared to the cow in Europe. This is unfortunate.

You can read the Holy Bible or the Holy Quran daily from beginning to the end but unless you can find a way to be relevant in the materiality of neoliberal  global capitalism, you are just irrelevant. And as Manuel Castells argues, in this situation, it is even better to be good enough to be exploited by capitalism than to to be irrelevant. This is because being irrelevant is more dangerous and painful for one's life than being good enough and attractive to be exploited in the economy. I do not feel good about this, but I have spent much time to understand the structure and functioning of modern capitalism. 

Unfortunately, both Christians and Muslim leaders do not in their theological thinking engage these economic realities that have impact on people's lives and bodies and therefore their spiritual lives. I have no problem if such religious people disagree with neoliberalism capitalism, but then they should work towards coming up with an viable option. If not, then they should work sincerely towards finding ways to make their followers thrive or flourish in spite of the messiness of the current system.

 Note that the youth in the video still desire some of the good things of life provided by capitalism. My experience in Nigeria suggests that for the most part, ordinary Nigerians have no time to systemically critique neoliberal globalization, let alone sit down to understand it well.  If you go to a Nigerian market, you see some goods from Asia that you never see in regular U.S. market. They consume them, but the country never has sleepless nights on thinking on what they need to produce such things, given that production engage people to at least get a sense of agency. This is more so, given that many of the Asian countries struggled like African countries before. We have to learn, adopt and adapt to our situation, lessons from afar.

 To reduce the killing in Zaria to a simple religious question is to be very superficial in understanding what happened. What happened is a symbol of deeper problems in the Nigerian social structure, especially in the North. If the issues are not addressed, no amount of churches or mosques built can in themselves solve the problem.

No society in history has continued to do the wrong things and yet make significant progress through some miracle or just building churches and mosques whose teachings do not infuse public morality.  We have many countries that are comparatively less religious, but by doing the right things, they live with a degree and sense of justice and fairness (Nordic countries). On the other hand, we have a lot of societies that claim to be very religious comparatively but suffer a lot of injustices because they do not do the right things. That is why Usman Dan Fodio, even though a person who tried to use faith to reform society (not too different from the Reformation in the West), asserted after all is said and done that: " A Nation Can Survive Unbelief, But it Cannot Survive Injustice." There is something remarkable about the insight in this assertion. Simply performing regular religious rituals and building many churches and mosque while ignoring issues of justice will take a nation no where and Nigeria is a very good example of that. I wish the religious leaders can channel their energy to fighting for social justice and inclusion.

My lamentation.

Samuel

On Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 6:25 PM, 'Ikhide' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

http://m.voanews.com/a/3105492.html


- Ikhide

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[Anunoby, Ogugua]

A young Lt. Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu was ordered over fifty years ago to lead a band of Nigerian soldiers to end the Tiv riots. He respectfully told his Commander that the Nigerian Army as he saw it, existed to combat foreign enemies not fellow citizens. He added that the confronting Tiv and other rioters was rightly work for the police, not the army. If only more Nigerian soldiers- officers and men, and especially the Commander-in-Chief were as enlightened. True education matters it seems. 

It is unconscionable that hundreds on Nigerians- Shia Muslims, according to some reports, were killed and maimed by armed soldiers whose job was to protect them from foreign enemies, all because the COAS must travel on a particular road at a particular time without fail. It was Biafra protesters the week before. Who would it be next? 

Nigeria inherited the English common law system at independence and chose to keep it for the most part. She borrowed the presidential system of government from the U.S.A. and continues to operate it. Why does she borrow foreign legal systems and not also, the better parts of their judicious practice?  Could the state violence visited on Shia Muslim youth in Zaria for blocking a road albeit unlawfully, have happened in Britain or the U.S.A. in 2015 because the COAS had to ride on a particular road at a particular time, again without fail in a city that as far as the public knows was not in unmanageable turmoil? What point was the Nigerian Army making by its brutal assault on disorderly young people? Is the life and service of the COAS only a few months on the job, and the purpose of his travel on that road at that time, enough payoff to Nigeria for the loss of the lives and limbs of hundreds of young men and women? Was due account taken of a possible short and long term blowback- from the Shia Muslims and other Nigerians?  

Yes, there was a law and order problem. Its solution should not have been a military one. The COAS should reconsider his tenure. But again, whose army is the Nigerian Army? That is the question.

 

oa