LIFE BEHIND BARS: INSECURITY AS NEW NORMAL

Back in 2001, almost two decades ago, I had lived in South Africa as a student at the University of Kwazulu-Natal in Durban. At that time, insecurity was so rampant in that country as to beggar belief, to borrow the cliché.

Robberies, rapes and burglaries were every night occurrences. My then South African medical doctor friend, Dr. Fakroodin, used to say that in his country, the innocent live behind bars and the criminals, who should be the ones behind bars, roam free.

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During those days, South Africa’s major commercial centre, Johannesburg, used to be referred to as the world’s crime capital. Behavioural scientists had always rationalised South Africa’s then raging crime rate as backlash from black Africans who had been so short-changed during the apartheid years.

Fakroodin would always ask me whether Nigeria was a safe place to live, and I had always answered that it was so. I had no reason to believe Nigeria was then unsafe; there was no way, in my wildest imagination, I could think my own country would come to such a sorry pass as we are in today – much worse than the South African situation of twenty years ago.

But one thing I was later to learn was that insecurity was raging in Nigeria even then, but it was more or less ‘below the radar’, as it is said. Many of the elite were protected one way or the other – including me. For, you see, prior to my sojourn in South Africa, I had spent some years working abroad. When I returned home ‘to help develop my country’, the Federal Government in its (lack of) wisdom had accommodated me for a whole year at Abuja’s Sheraton Hotel. That Sheraton insulation, I later learnt, artificially protected me from not least the vagaries of general national insecurity.

Today, we can be said to be worse than the worst of the South African situation. For one, there is no proliferation of small arms in that country as there is in Nigeria. And two, even though there is a drug problem there, theirs has been explained that it is more to drown the sorrow of hopelessness and despair, while our drugs problem is to make reckless the criminals among us.

In almost everybody’s bedroom in Nigeria today, there are layers upon layers of steel bars and wire grids of all kinds, all assembled in the vain hope that we sleep and wake up alive the next morning. Not that these safeguards are of any use when the men of the underworld come a-visiting (and may ALLAH perish them!) Nigerian armed robbers and kidnappers have become so sophisticated as to have precision equipment with which they easily cut through heavy steel and all types of barricades to gain access to people’s lives and property. Most Nigerians know that all the safeguards we employ are there just for the emotional reassurance.

This state of siege which Nigeria’s insecurity has landed us in is enough to conclude that we all now live in maximum security prisons in our own homes. If not, how could anyone explain people being kidnapped (‘abducted’ is the word) from their own homes in cities such as Katsina, Kaduna, etc.

For most Nigerians, there is this foreboding dread that it is just a matter of time before it comes to their turn to pay their ‘dues’ in this most horrible of all injustices: kidnapping. No one sleeps or travels with any assurance of safety and security in this country, except for the very few who occupy the haloed spaces called State or Government Houses.

A lighted environment is a securer environment. But to make matters worse, due to inadequate electricity, Nigeria is the darkest country on earth (both figuratively and literally). Since there is no round-the-clock light, either in our cities or our roads, most people just go to bed as a perfunctory requirement of the human body, not to relax or sleep, but just to wait for tomorrow. Most people now sleep only after returning from the dawn, or subh, prayer, when it is light.

We are not safe at home, neither are we on the roads. Many years ago, fresh from my sojourn overseas, I was myself a victim of highway robbery on Abuja-Kaduna road. The ‘operation’ occurred at dusk, when it was still light, not too far from the Kaduna-end tollgate. The robbers not only robbed us of everything, they also abused us and gave us a ‘generous’ beating. On hindsight, I say alhamdu lilLah that kidnapping had not been ‘invented’ yet.

Next morning after that robbery, I had gone to the then Kaduna State Commissioner of Police (now late) to lodge a complaint. When I explained to him what happened and where, his reaction was more shocking than the robbery itself. After he himself described the contours of the road and the surrounding bushes to ensure he had got the correct ‘venue’, to which I concurred, the CoP had said: “Shegu! A daidai nan sukewannanaika-aika” (Bastards! That’s where they perpetrate their dastardly acts). He even knew the place, so it was preventable.

For many years after my traumatic experience, robberies hadcontinued to occur in the exact same place, again and again and again. A senior military officer was killed on the same spot. Two Kano politicians (both incidentally past presidential candidates, one now late) were also attacked at the same place. And indeed, alhamdu lilLah for armed robbery if one was not killed – in kidnapping you are either dead physically or, with payment of ransom, you are dead financially.

One wonders whether one will ever be safe in this country. Insecurity is now the greatest failure of this so-called democratic administration. When one is not safe in his or her own home, or in his travels, what success can any government claim?

But by far the most traumatic of all crimes is to be robbed and have your wife or daughter raped by these ugly, despicable vermin. Perhaps in anticipation of this traumatic experience, Prophet Muhammad (upon whom be peace) had said that whoever would die defending his (and his family’s) honour would be admitted directly to heaven. Armed robbers, rapists and kidnappers belong in the opposite aboard: hell.

Inna lilLahi wa inna ilaiHi raji’un! May Allah protect us!