Niran Adedokun
niranadedokun@gmail.com
Friday’s attack on Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, Katsina State, tells copiously about Nigeria’s current state and level of preparedness for the future.
That the event could happen is an indication that that the country is deaf– unable to hear, dumb –unable to articulate any strategy for survival, numb –too far gone to feel and too dense to learn from the past.
It is doubtful that any other country, where over 200 female pupils were abducted in 2014 and 110 in 2018, would allow that happen again. But Nigeria is unlike countries where lives have value and vulnerable members of society get the protection that enables them live life to the fullest. Here in Nigeria, life is cheap, short and brutish.
But then, disasters can and do occur everywhere. What marks the humanity in people is their reaction when nature or human agents of evil pull a fast one on them. These reactions should even be more circumspect when misfortunes affect the vulnerable.
This year alone, thousands of lives have been lost in avoidable circumstances. If they were not felled by the guns or knives of Boko Haram terrorists, they were set on fire or killed by the dagger of murderous herdsmen who have become a new nightmare. At other times, innocent Nigerians are killed by kidnappers or even, by the guns of the policemen paid to protect them. Sometimes, it is through automobile accidents on the death traps that our Minister of Works and Housing insists are not as bad as people say. At other times, ailments that most parts of the world have left in their past killed Nigerians. These things no longer make any meaning, they happen, we raise our voices in mourning for a day or two and then, move on, awaiting the next misfortune.
What is worse is that this country is indiscriminate in its disregard for the sanctity of the lives. Man, woman, child, the disposition of Nigerians, leaders and the led, is “every man for himself, God for us all.” This lone wolf disposition has taken compassion and consideration out of the contemplation of many compatroriots. This is why despite occasions when young people have been attacked in schools in the past, hundreds of Nigerian children are sent to schools in danger-prone areas like the North-East and North-West without any formidable security cover. That is, in spite of the country’s 2015 endorsement of the Safe School Declaration, an international commitment to ensure the protection of students, teachers and their schools during armed conflict. As it is with most things, Nigeria adopted that declaration to fulfil all righteousness and thereafter, moved on without any intention to make it good.
It is even impossible for us to tell the number of children that may be in the hands of the bandits that attacked the school as we speak. And that is not just because we do not know how many of themmay have escaped and found their way back to their parents. Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the President, Mallam Shehu Garba, suggested that only 10 students were left with the abductors. He was quoted by the BBC to have insinuated that the actual number “was lower than” what was initially released by the school. Governor Aminu Masari would later give the figure of 333 based on what he described as “available records.” Yet, one of the students who was lucky to have escaped, informed the BBC Hausa that 520 pupils were counted before they were directed by their abductors to walk into the night through the forest. It is disgraceful that just as the correct number of students taken away was contentious in 2014, so it is in 2020, you see a country that has refused to learn lessons!
Garba also claimed that the army had already identified and surrounded the area where the students are being held. Reports said he told the BBC that: ”…Military commanders on the ground have the coordinates of where they believe the bandits are, and whoever they are holding. They have surrounded all of that area.”
It is not clear if Garba now has the mandate to speak for the military but the release of operational information like this is odd. From the lay man’s point of view, it is capable of putting the captives at risk. Little wonder, a couple of hours later, the gunmen were said to have sent a message warning security agencies to abort the surveillance of their hideout. These innocent children who were only pursuing education, have suddenly become pawns in the very dangerous game between the Nigerian state and citizens that have taken up arms against it.
While one is not privy to the intelligence gathering mechanisms and operations of the security agencies, the brazen approaches of ragtag contenders for the control of Nigeria is an embarrassment to the hierarchy of security apparatus and a waste of the stupendous resources committed to this sector. It took the 2001 Al Queda attack for the United States to initiate changes in flow of finances and introduce innovative measures to secure global entry and exit point. The world has never been the same, but Nigeria is here howling about inability to procure sophisticated equipment to procure the war against terrorism yet too lame to generate any homegrown panacea.
Sadly, these bandits are products of the same negligence that led to the abduction of these schoolchildren. The late South African leader, Nelson Mandela, said: “There is no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” The depth of Nigeria’s depravation is evident in its treatment of its children, a significant number of which neither go to school nor have any assurances for the future.
Six years after the abduction of 276 girls from Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, 112 of them are still missing. Of the 110 girls taken from Government Girls’ Science and Technical College, Dapchi in 2018, close to 50 girls,including the young lady known as Leah Shuaibu are still in the custody of these criminal insurgents without any clear indication as to what government is doing to reunite them with their families. Now, another set of Nigerian children have been abducted and we still do not have a clear plan as to their rescue. This is how Nigeria digs the grave for its future. The bandits who now overrun villages and schools terrorising innocent citizens are the children that Nigeria abandoned yesterday- now they are taking it back on the country.
While there cannot be any justification for taking to a life of crime, a country owes is citizen, especially the children, the opportunity to live to the best of their potential. It is the neglect and failure to give all citizen equal opportunity to attain, that is at the root of the violence and rebellion that has gripped the soul of the country. Yesterday’s untrained children have become contenders, albeit violent ones to the same governance structure that limited them. That is the danger ahead of Nigeria’s future.
In the northern parts of especially, a multitude of Nigeria’s children are unable to attend schools, yet those who attend are at the mercy of criminals without any security from the state. This discourages others from attending school and the country unwittingly plays into the hands of Boko Haram insurgents in particular.
Every society reaps what it sows in its childrenjust as it bears the toll of its own irresponsibility in the dangers that untutored children portend. When children are denied proper education that addresses their souls as well as their intellect, society throws its future to the dogs.The result of that lack of investment is what Nigeria is currently harvesting in the unruly youths raping and abducting people all over the place. This is why the government must do all within its power to rescue every child under the custody of these brigands. Governors of states should also prioritise the education and welfare of children. This, rather than the obscene accumulation of wealth is the legacy that elected people should pursue.
Adedokun tweets @niranadedokun
