Nigeria’s current global ranking as a failed state finds its most gruesome proof in the many tragedies spanning the Niger Delta and the Southeastern states. At the time of Nigeria’s independence in 1960 the country was said to be standing on a tripod, made up of the East, West and North. Now it is very obvious that the eastern flank of the so-called tripod has been cut off, and the country is staggering badly on two feeble artificial legs. The unrest in the oil-rich Niger Delta has earned quantum publicity across the globe. In the five Southeastern states of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo it is a daily fare of gratuitous armed robbery and kidnapping. It is a jungle out there, and the security apparatus has all but collapsed in its entirety.
Assassination comes quite cheap. Any potentate visiting any of the states has to arrange personal security as could be fit for an entire local government! Robbers can unleash mayhem on any number of banks for as many hours as they please without any challenge coming from the police and sundry law enforcement agents. At the university town of Nsukka in Enugu State, the robbers had a field day robbing all banks in sight and ended up killing the Divisional Police Officer (DPO) and burning down the entire police station. The robberies in the commercial town of Nnewi in Anambra State take the pattern of the heavily armed gangsters parading the streets in convoys, going from bank to bank, with the entire town at their mercy. A prominent Catholic bishop was reportedly kidnapped in Imo State, but the police could only come up with waffling replies in denial.
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The Abia State scenario was such that the government had to resort to dethroning the monarchs of whole towns because they were harbouring kidnappers. Embattled Governor Theodore Orji even went further by banning the use of commercial motorcycles (okada) in the state capital, Umuahia, and the commercial nerve centre of Aba. The siege of robbers and kidnappers on Ebonyi State is such that the elderly state governor Martin Elechi has been going hoarse calling for federal rescue.
It is obvious that the federal regime has entirely forgotten that the East is still a part of Nigeria. Nobody is safe in the region as attested to by the brazen kidnap of the spokesperson of the Enugu Governor, Dan Nwomeh, from his official car right in front of his residence. The young, the old, male, female, nobody is free. Nothing is sacred in the matter; what with the robberies in churches, the kidnapping of priests and the invasion of priestly ordinations?
Allied to the insecurity collapse is the abject neglect of literally all the federal roads in the eastern flank of the country. Gully erosion has since taken over with whole villages sacked at will without the federal regime batting an eyelid. Some commentators have opined that the country is somewhat reverting to the Biafra scenario, that is, a throwback to the polarization of the country during the civil war in the Republic of Nigeria and the Republic of Biafra! This issue of creating Biafra by other means is indeed very dangerous for the progress of this country.
In the absence of the feeling of a sense of belonging within the ambit of the country it is little wonder that the angry youths are finding engagement in such bodies as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) and the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB). The vision of a united indivisible nation dreamed up by the founding fathers is now a nightmare. The new song goes thus: to thy tribes, oh Nigerians!
President Yar’Adua may keep feeling all is still well with the country, but the obvious truth is that the rug is being swept fast from under his feet. When a large part of the country has become ungovernable there is no escaping the reality that Nigeria is fast on the way of damnation like Somalia.
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The rulers of ruin in Nigeria have been living on the diet of lies for far too long, and it is about time they are made to face the home-truth: this country is hanging precariously on the precipice. It is not that the East alone is going to waste. The only barely policed places in the country happen to be the federal capital, Abuja, and the commercial nerve centre of the land, Lagos. The rest of the country is a vast jungle, not unlike Mobutu Sese Seko’s Zaire in the last years of his reign when the capital Kinshasa was the only navigable place in the accursed land. The ugly scenario in Nigeria cannot last for much longer without a great calamity descending on Africa’s most populous country. It will be akin to the destabilization of the entire continent. Mark my words!
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