If you enter Nigeria legally, the first thing you must do is prove that you are not an enemy of the government. They throw you in front of the DSS, the secret police, which audits your passport.
If you are on its mysterious list, or if someone merely wants you to undertake a humility test, you do not even make it to the immigration officer to have your passport signed. They take you away.
It is one of our greatest failings as a nation that, in the age of computers, databases and instant communication, the government still deploys thousands of witch hunters every day.
Because witch-hunting is what they do, hunting for people who are rarely stupid enough to walk in through the front door.
Absent, at the same time, are the same DSS agents in the hunt for enemies of Nigerian citizens: the people who seize villages and local government areas away from the federal and state authorities, collect taxes and fines, kidnap children and rape housewives.
Last week, that trend continued, making increasingly louder global news. In Maga, Kebbi State, on Monday, kidnappers took 25 girls from the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School.
The following day in Eruku, Kwara State, gunmen attacked a church, killing at least five people and seizing the pastor, among others.
On Friday in Papiri, Niger State, as I wrote this story, gunmen invaded St. Mary’s School. “Details remain unclear, but residents fear that over 100 students and staff may have been taken away during the early-morning raid,” BBC reported.
Where was DSS? It was at airports and border stations, pretending to be busy.
On Monday, men alleged to be ISWAP fighters inflicted perhaps their deepest wound yet: ambushing and murdering Brigadier-General Musa Uba of the Nigerian Army, on Nigerian soil.
So where do we go from here? How does a Nigerian know for sure that the future has begun? What will be the principal sign that Nigeria is recovering as a nation?
Before I answer that, let me tell you of the pride I felt in 1994 when I served in the United Nations Mission in Somalia (UNOSOM II).
Prior to that, I had no idea how UN missions functioned or how the Security Council deployed them. In Mogadishu, it was surreal to get off that UN plane in a nation that had ceased to be.
I joined the corps of international civil servants, hundreds of us in our “Embassy Compound” location protected by 7,000 Blue Berets.
Like everyone else, I had to wear a flak jacket, a heavy-duty, sleeveless vest designed for protection against bullets or shrapnel from explosions. Yes, presence in a combat zone is literally a matter of life and death.
I settled in quickly and soon met members of the Nigerian military contingent. They served not in Mogadishu but in a nearby location. I was surprised to see soldiers who were warm and knowledgeable, and friendly.
That Nigerian contingent was also the most successful of all the contingents in the UNOSOM II system, establishing for itself the reputation of being the most effective and disciplined despite being cited among nations with human rights violations.
What was not so well-known about them is that they were probably also the poorest of the contingents, often borrowing military boots from their Ghanaian and Kenyan colleagues.
I repeat: the Nigerian contingent to UNOSOM II in 1994, reputed to be the most effective during a time that the UN paid $1,028 monthly per soldier to troop-contributing nations, including Nigeria, borrowed shoes, and perhaps more, from other African troops!
This means that Nigeria sent out peacekeepers without adequately providing for them. For this reason, I have never ceased to be supportive of the Nigerian soldier, who does not let the betrayal of his own nation or military command stand in his way on international missions.
Because it also leaves you wondering: if the government and the military command can leave Nigerian soldiers handicapped abroad, what do they do at home, where there is far less oversight?
This has always been a touchy subject: occasionally, a frustrated soldier or group of soldiers would risk it all and complain openly about the conditions under which they are sent to combat ruthless opponents who out-muscle them in terms of firepower and communications.
Run that against the background of the insecurity that has imitated life in Nigeria since 2007, and you obtain a glimpse of why we continue to stumble backwards into hell.
The latest stop in that journey was reached last week with the abominable capture and execution of Brigadier-General Uba.
No, we have not been here before. We have had entire schools of children abducted, to our eternal shame as a nation, under Presidents Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari, the former soldier who had gloatingly used the Chibok abductions as a ploy to win the presidency.
We have had villages burned to the ground. We have had local government council areas overrun. We have suffered militants raping women, imposing governance and collecting taxes while the government in Abuja, eager to remain in power, theatrically denied or downplayed each incident.
We have had army bases and police installations sacked, officers killed, and their equipment destroyed or stolen.
But never have we suffered the humiliation of a top military commander on duty, with thousands of soldiers under his operational command, seized and slaughtered, in effect signalling that the hunter is now the hunted: that the governance of bellicosity and belligerence in Abuja has ended.
The government of President Bola Tinubu has belatedly confirmed the death of General Uba, without accepting responsibility either for how we got here or doing anything to demonstrate that it can save Nigeria from itself. The objective is to retain power two years from now: not to earn it or win it, but to retain it.
So, how will a Nigerian know for sure someday that this country has ceased to travel in circles? The truth is that as a democratic entity, Nigeria is completely fake. You see it every day when our chiefs of state strut around the world with pomp and arrogance, reading empty and tedious proclamations authored by consultants they do not know.
But they do this not on the sovereignty granted by the electorate but somehow, on the authority of that uniformed soldier standing behind them.
That is how you know that something is seriously wrong, particularly now that even top military commanders can be seized and shamefully killed by militants on TV.
We must ask ourselves: how can we salvage our democracy? President Bola Tinubu has responded by telling Bello Matawalle, the Minister of State for Defence, to “relocate” to Kwara “to monitor security efforts to secure the release of the abducted students.”
But this, at best, illustrates our penchant for blunt instruments where precision is demanded. In June 2023, I warned that Nigeria appeared to be “scrubbing our character,” and one year later, I described the “Matawalle Metaphor.”
If Nigeria is to become a respected democracy, she must first be a genuine one, not a strange diarchy. It must rest and be acknowledged by her elections, and its standards of accountability and integrity must be clear and firm.
Provided by zaianews. (zaianews.com).