Crime, punishment and bush ‘repentance’

Perhaps most of us have recollections of the news that day on July 22, 2011, when a certain Anders Breivik first detonated a bomb in Oslo, outside the Norwegian Prime Minister’s office, killing eight persons. He then travelled some 38km to the island of Utoya, where a youth league was having its meeting and, for over an hour, in cold bold, Mr Breivik shot and killed 69 young persons. By the time Breivik surrendered to the police, he was responsible for the deaths of 77 persons, all of them killed in one day.

By August 24, 2012, Breivik was found guilty and sentenced to a minimum of 10 years in prison for the murder of 77 persons. While this means he could be in prison for up to 21 years or indefinitely, depending on his behaviour, it also means that he could be a free man after 10 years.

How does one commit a crime like that and get to spend 10 years in a prison cell, which, when photos of it emerged, looked like a stripped-down version of an Abuja luxury hotel suite.

The Norwegians celebrated the verdict.

“How could you celebrate such a verdict?” I asked a Norwegian journalist friend, who explained that in Norway, that was the maximum penalty anyone could get for any crime.

It has often been said that the law is an ass. That of course has proven true in numerous instances. In this country, the smart people have made the law not just an ass but a drunk and abused ass. People who have stolen billions of public funds have received VIP treatment and nationally televised thanksgiving services, while goat and bread thieves have suffered jail terms and ignominy. The bigger one’s crime, the greater his clout, it would seem.

Two days ago, Auwalu Daudawa, the man who reportedly masterminded the abductions of 344 schoolboys from Kankara, managed to embarrass Nigeria and President Buhari in whose backyard the atrocity occurred, decided to repent. He surrendered his guns (or at least some of them) and was received by the government with open arms, earnest smiles and I imagine a warm plate of jollof rice. He has committed his crime, for years, and now he walks away free. For his victims and their families, those he and his gang probably murdered and those who they caused to sell their farmlands to pay for ransom, forced into endless penury, there is no mention of justice. That for me is a problem.

This, however, is not without antecedents.

When bandits started terrorising villagers in the North West, the government floundered. Soon it became clear there was no strategy to secure the villages, protect the villagers and bring the criminals to justice. So, the government appealed to the criminals for the favour of a dialogue. From the shadows of the forest, a mysterious man named Buharin Daji (Buhari of the Wilderness) emerged as the kingpin of the bandits. He posed, alongside the Katsina State governor, Aminu Masari, with a meek smile that bellied his savagery, brandishing an assault rifle, and declared he had repented.

Not long after, he unrepented, found himself another gun and returned to the wilderness to continue his reign of terror. When he was killed, it wasn’t by the government or its agents but by a rival gang of bandits he had rubbed the wrong way.

It is understandable that the government, desperate for peace, is willing to accept the surrender of these people. It is, however, heartbreaking that the government had, through sheer incompetence, negligence and corruption, allowed itself to be boxed into a corner by bandits who, when they feel like, grace the negotiation table and dictate terms. It is sad that these criminals know that there is very little the government can do to touch them, to bring them to justice. They know they have the country by the balls.

It is baffling that through Nigeria’s many conflicts, from the Maitatsine uprisings to the Niger Delta insurrections, to the Boko Haram bonfire and now the bandits’ bloodbath, the government has failed to develop a clear strategy to address these situations and has failed to master conflict and crisis management. Every time something like this happens, it would seem no one has any idea or experience how to deal with it as if we are staring at a tabula rasa, except our slate is not blank. It contains our history written with the needlessly spilt blood of the innocents.

If anything comes close to a conflict strategy, it would be the Amnesty Programme. This too was borne out of the government negotiating from a position of weakness, where it has, in effect, offered rewards to militants to allow the government operate its cash cow, the oil wells in the Niger Delta. A good number of militants today are on a monthly stipend just so they don’t rock the boat. Where there is no cash cow for the government, the people are left to their own devices.

It is natural that in negotiation and in the interest of peace, there has to be compromise. However, compromise without any sense of justice—especially for victims of crimes—is an invitation to chaos. This, sadly, is what we are witnessing now.  This explains why Norwegians celebrated the justice the court handed out to Mr Breivik.

Here, the government has so compromised itself that it is in no position to dictate terms to any brigand with big guns. The consequence has been a resort to self-help. Hence, in reaction to banditry, for instance, we have seen the rise of vigilantes or yan sakai in the North West, who ironically, bandits leader are now trying to pin blame on for their continued criminality. So also the emergence of Amotekun in the South West and the incendiary issuance of “quit notices” to Nigerians of a certain extraction from certain parts of the country, which the federal government seems aloof to. And of course, Nnamdi Kanu’s Eastern Security Network, in the South East, driven by hatred and the rhetoric of man in desperate need of a mental health intervention.

Interestingly, as if they are bandit gangs, there has been no move by the government to bring these self-help groups under its laws and supervision. When they detonate, as such things tend to do, we will have to contend with a shit storm of unimaginable proportions.

So while it is clear, the state is failing, and for the foreseeable future will continue to fail in protecting its citizens, it should be understandable that Nigerians, beleaguered by all these criminalities, would celebrate, or at the very least, be relieved, by the “repentance” of these bandits. If it endures, unlike Buharin Daji’s, it would mean fewer people killed or kidnapped, fewer villages pillaged and fewer women raped.

However, we should all be worried that the government has no means or even the will to protect its citizens, secure them justice for wrongs done to them and instead falls to its knees, praying, hoping that the bandits would crawl out of the forests and repent, while corrupt officials use the situation to line their pockets. This certainly is no way to run a country and if we continue on this trajectory, there isn’t much of a future to look forward to.