A Chastisement Of Scorpions, by Ike Willie-Nwobu

Boko Haram’s audacious attacks in Yobe have served notice to the Tinubu presidency that tales of its demise are greatly exaggerated.

Early this month, Boko Haram sunk its scythe into Mafa in Yobe State. By the time it wiped the blood-stained scythe on the body of its last victims, about eighty persons lay dead with many more injured or uprooted from their homes in attacks that recalled the worst days of the terrorist group.

Nigerians would rather forget the year 2009 for it was when Boko Haram rejigged its operations and launched an onslaught against the Nigerian state. Things have never remained the same.

Communities have been torn apart, lives turned upside down and livelihoods eviscerated as non-state actors co-opting the instruments of force, have repeatedly forced the Nigerian state to its knees with daring acts of terror.

Insecurity sits heavy on large swathes of the country like a fatal fog, bidding the final minutes before it delivers the deathblow.

The most insidious consequence of Boko Haram’s atrocious audacity is the weakening of the security architecture of the Nigerian state. Repeated and ruinous attacks have tallied perverse victory for the group, exposing in the process the soft underbelly of the Nigerian state.

Emboldened by Boko Haram’s successes, many equally ferocious terrorist groups have banded, battering the country from every angle, and causing rampaging anxiety.

While Boko Haram has rarely launched attacks in Nigeria’s major cities, apparently deterred by the concentration of security, rural areas have suffered an impossible fate. Recurrent attacks, each deadlier than the last, have dashed the serenity and tranquility of rural areas, exposing the most vulnerable Nigerians to impossible conditions.

Nigerians will be hard-pressed to place a finger on the moment their country’s demise started, but there is no doubt that insecurity unless contained will be the undoing of this fabulously assembled by fragile house of cards.

With the honeymoon well and truly over for the Tinubu presidency and the last condensation of competence and clarity  evaporating with alarming speed, the government is struggling to answer the questions pouring in from all angles about the Nigerian conundrum.

Why has the country failed so  tragically to lay a glove on the security challenges raging for more than a decade now despite spending billions of dollars? Why does the nagging sense of insecurity Nigerians feel only grow by the day in a country that should have no problems securing lives and property?

One ready-made answer is to be found in the disingenuousness of a government that allows itself to flagrantly flirt with avoidable distractions such as rounding up protesters and activists rather than facing graver matters of state. The miscalculation of such a  government finds apt description in the parable of the house owner who sprints after rats while their house burns.

While the government is always so eager to disembowel discontent and dissent with force, its agents predictably come second best when engaged by true forces of destabilization.

Nigeria must now convoke a national inquiry/ inquest into why insecurity persists in the country,  reducing lives and livelihoods to rubble. Despite the exasperating exertions of security forces, it is clear that there is something that is not being done right.

If some measure of stability has finally returned to the bedlam that was Kaduna and Benue states under the previous administration, then there is hope that other parts of the country can finally wriggle clear of the wrenching burden that insecurity imposes.

Life has not remained the same since Boko Haram forced its way into the public glare, grinding out one atrocity after the other. Nigerians have had to reckon with the consequences of the state failing to rein in a ragtag but ruthless terrorist group.

Sixty-four years after independence and twenty-five years since democracy triumphantly returned to the country, Nigerians certainly deserve much more than this lash of scorpions wielded by terrorists  and condoned by the conduct of those who should stop them.

Ike Willie-Nwobu,

Ikewilly9@gmail.com