And then it all comes crashing down

“Even a farm which belongs to a father and son will have demarcations” – African proverb

You will find it difficult keeping track of the dizzying frenzy of activities and chatter from top to bottom as the country goes through one of its periodic convulsions as citizens take on the state or one another. There are many battle stations and too many commanders to deploy those who will do battle or defend them. It is the noise from the confusion that gets you. Too many commanders choose their own battles. The lines between friend and enemy get blurred so easily, many get caught in crossfires. There ought to be one supreme commander who sets out the rules of engagement, but he is missing in inaction. No one, therefore, can tell whether battles are being won or lost. The front shrinks or expands on the logic of confusion, panic and voluntary activity that mostly just tells you the situation is not getting better, and you could be a casualty or an aggressor soon.

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This is what happens when you ignore a creeping problem, or you sit on it until it outgrows you. The nature of many of our problems has never really been understood by leadership that will not win prizes for analysing problems. Nigerian leaders from Yar’Adua to Jonathan to Buhari saw the Boko Haram insurgency as a passing insurrection that needed the strong arm of the state to eliminate. While they engaged it with force, its roots dug deeper in minds and weakened communities, and it flourished by exploiting the weaknesses of a state whose institutions and leaders have been crippled by endemic and systemic corruption. President Yar’Adua had seen the value of a political solution to militancy and criminality in the Niger Delta  and had deployed solid political will and huge resources towards resolving it. His immediate reaction to the Boko Haram insurgency allowed it to outlive him and grow under President Jonathan. Corruption and incompetence gave it the oxygen it needed to grow into the monster that has defied President Buhari’s spasmodic governance. One of President Buhari’s legacies could be an insurgency that brought him to power and bears testimony to his impotence as a leader.

Look how quickly the problem of cattle rustling created the criminal Fulani. Criminal Fulani stained the Fulani herder. Fulani herder poisoned relations between his host communities and a huge part of the North. This in turn allowed a quarrel involving two people in an endemically mixed community to ignite a fire that had been prepared to ignite. As we speak, the country is in grave danger of major conflagrations. This, however, is not a source of concern for all concerned. There are activities involving people with responsibility targeted at damage control, and quite possibly, others who want the fire to burn more. Northern governors have quarreled in the open, and now they are attempting to put a united front and launch a counterattack against people who make them look bad. They are meeting with community leaders and governors from the South West to contain and put out a fire that could pitch northern and western communities against each other, on a scale that had never been seen in the land.

Governors from the West are running from pillar to post, between their constitutional responsibilities and communities that had been primed for violence by ethnic champions, to de-escalate tensions and rebuild relations among communities that are not strangers. Some politicians  from the eastern part of  the country are beside themselves with joy at a political manna: a major falling out between the north and the west, a gift that will enhance the chances of the type of mindsets, which will tilt the scale in favour of the south east on the issue of the presidency in 2023.Many in the north think they now have solid reasons to resist the pressures to concede the presidency and vote only a non-northerner as president in 2023. Passions are running high all over the land. Many in the south cannot understand the anger in the north over the decisions by some communities in the south to pay back the Fulani herder and the arrogant Hausa (the generic term for people in the south for northerners) in the same coins with which they  paid for the hospitality and trust of southern communities. There is enough hostility, fueled by desperate politics, which does not recognise red lines all over the country. There are a lot of hotheads in northern communities who are almost breaking free to take pounds of flesh and make statements about the country they feel is not worth sacrificing northern lives for. There are also fringe groups that just live off provoking a leadership and making it look bad, like the people who assembled at Lekki Toll Gate last week.

In all the heat and the noise, there is a voice missing. It is President Muhammadu Buhari’s. Virtually everybody blames him for the state of security, deterioration of relations among communities and for being the remote and immediate cause of the state of the nation. It is very unlikely that the country will raise its voice in demands that President Buhari speaks to the nation. After the experience of the #EndSARS protests and riots when the president spoke more to himself than to the nation, there will be less clamour to ask that he be heard. His spokespersons must be at wits’ end. The country does not believe them, yet they cannot stop trying to speak for a president whose disposition to issues suggests that they actually choose what to say and when.

There are other voices that are silent. They do not need to be heard in public, but they must find a way to get to President Buhari and nudge him into action. A mass movement of victims of attacks or even terrified citizens from one part of the country to the other is the last thing the country needs. Yet, it could be the very goal of people interested in escalating fear and levels of violence. Eroding the foundations of the country will injure most citizens and parts of the country. But there is a tiny minority that will benefit from having all of it come crashing down. This minority must not win.