The North: The Have-Not -By Muhammed-Bello Buhari

These past weeks, we have watched in horror, the vicious killings of innocent lives of defenceless citizens unfolding in the place we all call home where old men & women, youths, and young children are being murdered at random, we are witnessing an eruption of the disease of bad governance which seeks to destroy all Nigeria. Just this week, dozens of travelers were killed in Isa Local Government Area of Sokoto State. According to the Sokoto state government, 23 persons died of injuries sustained from burns after bandits shot at the bus conveying the travelers from Sokoto to Kaduna. The Nigerian government has continued to leave rural areas in Northwestern states like Sokoto, Zanfara, Katsina, Kaduna, and Niger in the northcentral, at the mercy of vicious and rampaging gunmen who have killed hundreds in the last two years. On 28th May, at least 74 people were reportedly killed in Sokoto state, when gunmen attacked four villages in Sabon Birni Local Government Area. These brutal deaths were and are a tipping point for events that are reverberating throughout Northern Nigeria. It’s destroying and pushing the region into a major humanitarian crisis.

It’s a fact that today, terrorism and banditry have been institutionalized and weaponized in the North. And the government’s failure to stem the violence is costing people’s lives, properties, and livelihoods, and without immediate and effective action, [God forbid] many more lives may be lost. In what is considered to be failure and the President”s neglect of the defenceless citizens in the North, the President keeps on claiming that he has repeatedly tasked the security agencies to end the killings. But why is it so difficult for the President and the government to understand that the common [northern] Nigerian is sick and tired of being the victim of neglect and manifest disregard for his/her plight? Why is it so difficult to understand that we are no longer concerned about anything else other than our lives?

It’s true that if the common [northerner] Nigerian accepts his/her place (unemployment, lack of quality education, poverty etc) amidst intense insecurity, accepts exploitation and injustice, there will be peace. But it will be peace with irresponsibility, peace with injustice, peace with incompetency. (And just as Martin Luther King, Jr., would say) It would be “a peace boiled down to stagnant complacency, deadening passivity”, and if peace means this, we don’t want peace; if peace means keeping our mouths shut in the midst of inhumanity, injustice and evil, we don’t want peace! We don’t want it. Indeed, it’s true that for many years, the common Nigerian tacitly accepted bad governance, oppression, and government’s irresponsibility. And in all these years, our approach to these issues only makes the situation even worse. IN THE NORTH, we are the victims of stagnant passivity and deadening complacency. The status quo of bad governance and political-worshiping of our [corrupt] leaders caused many of us to feel that perhaps we are inferior. This, not only harms us physically, but it injures us mentally and spiritually. It distorts our personality and inflicts our oppressors [and their families] with a false sense of superiority while inflicting us with a false sense of inferiority.

The common Northerner always fears change. We feel security in the status quo and we have an almost morbid fear of the new. For the common Northerner, the greatest pain is not the pain of insecurity, injustice, poverty, and bad governance, but the pain of a new idea. Indeed, one way in which our people react to oppression is with acquiescence. But one thing about acquiescence — which is the easiest way for us [Northerners] — is the way of the COWARD. We can never win the respect of our oppressors with acquiescing — it merely increases the irresponsibility, arrogance, and contempt of our corrupt, evil, vicious, and lying leaders. We are already yielding its results in the vicious killings of innocent lives of defenceless citizens that’s reverberating throughout the North.

And even though we must continue moving with determination and remain optimistic of a better and peaceful Nigeria, how can we do that if we are dead? How long? We must ask! How long will we have to be terrorized and murdered at random like this? Indeed, you can either choose to love President Muhammadu Buhari or choose to love humanity. But you can’t have it both ways, you can’t love the former and at the same time, the later. His administration neither have empathy towards the plight of the masses nor towards the lives of Nigerians. The highest empathy the President has towards the masses is expressing “shock”, “ashuaring [assuring]” us, and then forgiving the shockers that shocked him, but the romancing is too much that they keep on shocking him with our lives. Is it not time to start marching yet? We must march with rage until the very foundations of this Nation are shaken.

It’s recognized that systems are designed for the results they get. It’s true that we have all deeply contributed to the status quo, maintaining silence, sitting with that discomfort, and moving to do better — allowing for unconscionable words, inactions, stoicism, and acquiescence to become the norm rather than the exception. But every day, each and every one of us can stand up against injustice, inhumanity and bad governance. We must be able to know when and where to converge around common grounds! We must be able to understand that there is a time when we must look up to the government irrespective of our political and ethno-religious affiliations and say that we are tired, it’s enough, and something must be done.

These times calls for the North to unite and rally around common goals and demands. We must be able to look up to power and say the truth to it. We must say that we are tired of being at the bottom. We are tired of being harried by day and haunted by night by the simple fact that we are common [northern] Nigerians. We are tired of living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next. We are tired of being plagued with inner fears and outer resentments. We are tired; We are tired; We are tired! We must aak how long?How long will we have to continue to suffer like this? How long will we continue to see vicious bandits lynch our mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters from roads, their working places, school, and own homes? That we’re not asking, we’re demanding the fullest meaning of our citizenship. We will no longer be tolerant of anything less than our due rights as Nigerian Citizens. And we’re not gonna let any dogs or water horses turn us around. We must start demanding until the very foundations of our nation are shaken.

We must be able to understand that it’s our collective responsibility to stand up to power and demand for the primary purpose for which they were elected — to safeguard our lives and properties. We, this generation must not let bad governance, inhumanity, and evil go unqueried. We must take our rage out to the streets. I still believe that there is no weapon which is more potent and available to an oppressed and neglected people like us than the tramp, tramp of our [bare] marching feet.

And to the inhumane hypocrites living amongst us as humans, in case you are surprised why we are the way we are, kindly note that: We have to become sensitive to life – not to our thoughts, emotions, egos, ideologies, or belief systems. Because life is of the highest value. We have reached a certain level of sensitivity and extent that we can neither be silenced nor be intimidated. We either stand up for truth, justice, and liberty or we all perish as fools. And perhaps, when you are forever fighting a deteriorated, degenerating, and degraded sense of worthlessness and nobodiness — then you will wake up from your blindness and hypocrisy and realize why we can no longer “wait” nor accept bad governance, lawlessness, and banditry as the new norm in our society.

Dear North, we shall all survive this trying time. This, I hope and pray. That Our Lord, The Watchful, The All-Forgiving, and The Most Merciful is watching. And Mr. President, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, never forget that your administration is responsible for the utterly underrating of Northern Nigeria. We have never received such a ‘you don’t matter’ treatment. Your condolences and social media condemnations are never accepted.

#SecureNorth #NorthernLivesMatter #EnoughIsEnough

— Muhammed-Bello Buhari (MB Buhari) is a Human Rights activist, public and political affairs analyst. He writes from Kaduna and can be reached via embbuhari@gmail.com