Killing The Scourge Of Banditry Business In Nigeria, By Tunde Abatan
By all standard, the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo was a seer who came far ahead of his time.
Even at that, his timely clinical prophesies and warnings should ordinarily have gingered a nation into a state of urgency with his periodical interventions in our body polity while his forty years in Nigeria’s political landscape lasted.
Alas! he was derided as a joker by many of the ruling political elite who felt his warnings was tantamount to becoming a prophet of doom.
It was in this light that he declared rather prophetically in 1983 during and after the heavily compromised and rigged general elections warnings was masses in the North and indeed South East regions of the country will react violently, the day they knew their enemies.”
He was referring to the failure of leadership in terms of provision of education for the masses of the citizens and the danger those the state failed to train poses for the society and by extension the emergent governments in such areas.
For effect, as at the time Awo made the statement, only five states in the South West are enjoying free and compulsory education from ages of five to sixteen.
The Northern parts of the country especially the core -North and North East are reeking under religious cage of the citizenry courtesy of the institutionalized Almajiri system which today has produced over 1.4milllion out of school children roaming the streets of Kaduna, Kano, Sokoto, Bauchi and other metropolis.
This is in spite of former President Muhammadu Buhari’s directive to the UNICEF and other multilateral bodies to focus their intervention on education and health delivery more in the Northern states.
For the bodies, they were handicapped because the human resources needed by them to bridge the yawning education gap is absent.
Those who are fresh graduates from institutions in the North are not even ready to take to teaching.
Buhari was only reacting after almost four decades of Awos warning of the ruling elite which kept unconcerned by culpable silence and inaction.
Today, forty years after his ‘doomsday’ prediction and warnings, the geographical landscape of both the North and South East parts of the country is under siege of armed men of all hues making decent living a difficult task.
For the North, what started as a Boko Haram insurgency -religious zealots protesting against the state in 2007 has metamorphosed into professional banditry.
The sort of bandits we now have to cope with are well trained to constitute an army of occupation poised to earn a living from the sweat of others.
The bandits operate both as a well- trained social militia and economic marauders who extort, occupy and reign economic terror on farmers, artisans, business men and women and the Lower rung of the almost non- existence middle class.
Thus, it is surprising when Mohammed farmers, artisans current Minister of state for Defence declared that Banditry has become a big business in the North.
Coincidentally, Matawalle who graduated from being a teacher to a politician himself have had the opportunity of presiding over the affairs of his native Zamfara state- a state with much proclamation of religious piety but with less action to reduce economic suffering of his people.
Instead, negotiation with Bandits who possess more weapons than the state actors became the other of the day during Matawalle’s tenure as Governor.
Now, that he has become a Minister of state of Defence, it is left to him and his senior Minister, Mohammed Badaru Abubakar who are both Northerners to devise a Code to stamp out business of banditry which has made real business of Farming, a delicate task in the North.
Today, the North known for its upscale farming activities has become endangered by activities of bandits.
Matawalle with Badaru has to devise a means to stop bandits who grew so much under him that they now impose levies on market women as an alternate government, before the former can sell farm produce, cultivate and harvested under serious security condition.
Ironically, Matawalle was governor when his state procured nineteen limousine cars for traditional rulers in year 2021 at a time when his state was owing West African Examination Council, WAEC and National Examination Council, NECO, over three years of unpaid examination fees.
He has little to explain why procurement of Limousines for traditional rulers is more important than keeping students who have turned Almajiri’s in school.
He is among those who Awo predicted will face the products of their educational neglect.
Matawalle who governed between 2019 and 2023 also was in power when a leader of bandits, Turji Bello procured chieftaincy title and Turbaned by the Emir.
Isn’t it curious that Matawalle, even hailed Turji whose group records show was responsible for the death of over 200 people killed between January 4-6 this year.
He hailed him for agreeing to cooperate with authorities to reduce killings. Matawalle, it was who also refused to take the cue of Bello Masari, the stubborn Niger state governor who refused to negotiate with bandits in his state led by Kachalla Gudau Ibrahim even after taken photographs with him.
Also in the same league was Nasir El Rufai, the former governor of highly volatile Kaduna state who also refused to negotiate with bandits who rendered state security actors led by the military almost clueless by their savagery and rootless operations which made Kaduna the hotbed of Bandits in the past eight years.
In another vein, El Rufai unconfirmed acceptance of culpability in inviting mercenaries from neighboring Niger Republic to resist possible refusal of former President Goodluck Jonathan to accept defeat in 2015. He also has his fair share of blame as he falls in the mould of Northern leaders Awo spoke about though he was in his early 20s when the statement was made.
Now that the bandits who turned against helpless citizens after their job came to an end in 2015,has refused to go but transmuted into terrorists, both Rufai, Matawale, and those who recruited them from the rogueish spots of insurgents in West and North Africa, have to design ways to reig them in.
Matawalle, has to find another lucrative job for those he said have made a profession and career out of Banditry for the North bourgeoise to enjoy peace and the Talakawa’s to breathe after toiling day and night to farm reap and sell their farm produce.
The ruling elite have to ensure that the farm produce of the poor farmers is dispose of without them paying a chunk of their earnings to bandits as market Pass or in lieu turn their over laboured wives in as ransom.
Since the four Ministers in the field of Defence and Agriculture in person of Dr Mohammed Mahmoud Abubakar and Senator Abubakar Kyari are from the North, it is desirable that home grown solution to end banditry should not be farfetched.
As for the South East, the dropping of the threats by Independent State of Bagration, to allow economic activities in the South East states is a first step towards ending their nightmarish existence.
That most South easterners seldom travel home for Yuletide and New Year of recent, is an indication that banditry of the region has matured both in army of young boys who couldn’t afford to pay school fees and those whose source of farming has been taken over by erosion and twisted Values of the Ndigbo.
It also created its own banditry in the army of Drug Barron’s who has transformed themselves to international Cartels. This has painfully made Nigerians to populate foreign prison cells after getting caught in drug offences.
That hundreds of young able bodied men troop into other parts of the country from South East to earn a living is not necessarily a result of lack of space to exist freely but the height of insecurity which its own version of banditry has created through unemployment caused by organized banditry spurred by pervasive poverty.
For the South West, the increasing number of young men and undergraduates who has dominated the Credit card fraud, Yahoo Yahoo, Yahoo plus and Money-making ritual industry is also a failure of the governments to address the educational gaps in the region.
The dearth of graduates of vocational schools and twisted values of hard work has created a new generation of rampaging youths and their social nuisance.
That the Economic and Financial Crimes their social and the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA operatives now has a field to harvest and operate in the region is a failure of both state and family values.
Banditry in all forms is indeed big business all over Nigeria and each of the 49 Ministers have to take urgent steps to nib in the bud its own version of organized Banditry for Tinubu’s agenda anchored on the Renewed Hope to succeed.
