Nigeria’s Prodigal Sons -By Kene Obiezu

Nigeria’s fatal affection and preoccupation with her returned prodigal sons seems fated to consume her relationship with her loyal sons. However, and clearly too, those in charge of the country couldn’t care less.

For many Nigerians, the story of the prodigal son in the Bible bears many teachable moments for Nigerians at this inopportune time, and not just because the Chief of Defence Staff himself drew the comparison.

The optics are simple: the decision to reintegrate returning terrorists in the country does not sit well with many Nigerians. Add the murky reasons for the reintegration to the huge amounts of money rumored to have been given to them, and the distress of Nigerians grows darker.

Nigeria’s decision to reintegrate the terrorists appears defiant of the concerns of Nigerians. Indeed, unlike the father of the biblical prodigal son, there is no attempt whatsoever to reassure the loyal son that his loyalty all these years would not be in vain. Rather, the government thinks it is all a foregone conclusion.

The problem Is that nothing is foregone yet. Many Nigerians cannot imagine living side by side with the terrorists who destroyed their lives, families, and communities. This is especially true when the process for letting them back into communities is dubious at best.

With every day that goes by, Nigerians feel increasingly insecure in their country. It is not just on roads or at their farms that people are attacked these days. Right at their homes, people are attacked, hacked to death, or abducted. Through it all, the helplessness of the security agencies is downright alarming.

But for the weighty demands of hope and patriotism, one would say that Nigeria is losing the battle against terrorists in the country. The fight has been going on for years now, and rather than being contained, insecurity seems to be spreading fast. What started as a few gunshots in the North has exploded into deafening bomb blasts echoing all the way to the South.

Yet, through it all, those who are supposed to silence the noise, those who opened their hands to embrace the prodigal sons, are silent, cocooned into complacency and complicity by the comfort of barracks and government houses.
There is something profoundly wrong with this beleaguered union called Nigeria. It is as if it has been put under a spell of carelessness. Those who are supposed to care simply don’t.

They don’t care that the roof of this house caves in or that everything burns down. They don’t care that nothing remains for those whose only hope is here.

Those who betray Nigeria would perch precariously on the shoulders of the highways, peering down anxiously as they wait for their brigand children to return.

They aren’t concerned about the danger posed to those who are at home. They do not care that those who are returning are only returning to finish what they started.

A country, any country, Is doomed the moment those who are supposed to defend it sit to sign the dotted lines with those who would destroy it.

As insecurity plows through Nigeria with precipitous fury, plundering all the country has ever held dear, those who have stayed loyal to the cause are being betrayed while prodigal sons are invited from their voyages of debauchery to reign as princes.

Their forebears flogged Nigerians with whips, but these ones are about to give Nigerians a lash of scorpions.

Kene Obiezu is a lawyer and writer.