The federal government’s response has been usually caustic and quick fused. These concerned within the looting of a warehouse belonging to the Agric Division Strategic meals retailer, positioned at Tasha space of Abuja, on March 3 have been arrested. To the federal government, there is no such thing as a justification for prison conduct, solely the comfort of selection, and selection compulsion.
The looting following comparable looting throughout the nation as starvation and anger are mounting within the nation. It additionally introduced reminiscences of the coronavirus virus pandemic, when warehouses across the nation have been ripped open as enraged Nigerians went on the rampage. Throughout the ENDSARS protests, Nigerians didn’t categorical their starvation for meals. Quite, it was their starvation for justice that noticed a number of public buildings attacked.
The 15 individuals arrested for looting the warehouse could also be an infinitesimal variety of Nigeria’s surging inhabitants, arrested for his or her assault on the warehouse, however numbers don’t lie like Nigerian politicians. Photos maintain nothing again, just like the legislators who hoard their constituency allowances.
In additional methods than the authorities would care to confess, Nigeria is a looted nation, a plundered nation, one lengthy topic to the depredations of males. There have been the slave sellers who fronted the Transatlantic Slave Commerce. Then got here the colonialists, who held sway till independence in 1960. If independence was alleged to be Nigeria’s salvation from the plunderer’s poleaxe, the shackles have held somewhat agency.
Democratic governance in Nigeria lasted all of six years earlier than the army intervened. As a result of the army was desperately ill-suited for the cut-throat nature of civilian politics, Nigeria quickly discovered itself on the mercy of the depredations of an internecine civil battle. It’s alright to say that the nation has by no means been capable of recuperate from the depredations of that battle, regardless of one of the best efforts of Yakubu Gowon.
In some ways, Nigeria is a looted nation. From the artefacts stolen from the Benin Empire, a lot of that are but to be returned, to the Abacha loot which continues to trickle right down to the nation to the warehouses looted at intervals within the nation.
With this identification of a surfeit of loot, it could also be an irresistible temptation to ascribe ease to the identification of the looters. The nation of those that colonized Nigeria is just not hidden. So is Abacha’s grave, as is the identification of the warehouse thieves. The issue is that past those who Nigerians know, there are others. A lot of them, certainly, who’ve both conspired or are complicit within the looting of Nigeria nonetheless stroll free. Shoulders stiff, heads excessive and eyes straight, they tower above the regulation in Nigeria, which somewhat reserves its chunk for Nigeria’s nice unwashed.
The warehouse could have been looted, a lot to the embarrassment of those that have been determined to undertaking Abuja as exempt from the chaos consuming up Nigeria, however the looting blueprint was set a very long time in the past.
It’s not even concerning the present administration, which is exhibiting all of the indicators of traditional cluelessness. It’s extra about those that have now been pressured out of workplace by the brutal transience of energy.
Starvation scythes by Nigeria and although contributors embrace the battle in Ukraine and the disturbances within the world market, corruption is accountable for the injuries Nigerians really feel most deeply.
It will be simple for these accountable for stealing the nation dry to cry themselves hoarse over Nigeria’s worsening insecurity. However who will blame the hungry for grabbing bread hidden in plain sight? Who will blame these whose residual theft was simply nudged awake by the starvation rippling by Nigeria?
The overwhelming temptation is to really feel a twinge of sympathy for the Tinubu administration. It’s uncommon for a brand new administration to be beset by a multiplicity of such ferocious challenges. However any temptation to sympathize with him have to be tempered by what has gone earlier than.
President Tinubu needed to be Nigeria’s president. He clamoured for it, labored for it, and orchestrated his victory in some ways and over a few years.
It was at the same time as step in the suitable path of his presidential ambition so deftly realized on Could 29, 2023, that he midwifed the seismic electoral upset of the Individuals’s Democratic Occasion in 2015.
Thus, any temptation to sympathize with the Tinubu presidency over the mounting challenges in Nigeria have to be put throughout the context of the truth that maybe, he labored too arduous to be president, which was in itself suspicious. His unflagging need to be president will need to have been with a plan planted someplace. Did that plan embrace the welfare of the poorest of the poor in a rustic the place greater than 100 million individuals languish beneath the worldwide poverty line? If it did, how is the implementation going? This final query seems superfluous within the mild of the looting in Abuja and the protests and looting which have rocked elements of Nigeria.
The regulation In Nigeria criminalizes looting of any sort. After all, when it has to do with the poorest of the poor, such legislations and their enforcers sharpen their tooth. Expectedly, they slacken and battle when it has to do with holding to account the highly effective, whose energy comes from looting public funds.
Self-preservation goes to the core of each human being. Starvation seeks to upend that core, and so it’s instinctive to hunt to sate one’s starvation. Nobody can legislate starvation. Until one thing is finished quick concerning the hardship grinding down lives and livelihoods within the nation, there’ll quickly be a legion of looters looking down each warehouse within the nation.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
