Descent into anomie, By Wole Olaoye

Where is the owner of the dismembered hand dangling from the mouth of this dancing ape? And where is the body from which he amputated the human foot he is using as a clapper in his celebration orgy? In which unfortunate country did this happen? Where was the law when these  beasts were on the prowl? Who is going to redress this unspeakable transgression? 

As members of the global human family, what hope for the rest of us, the unarmed survivors, who are usually told to patiently await our turn to be guillotined, with our body parts used in a mock-dance.

Mercifully, I’ve since learned that the video was shot in Burkina Faso by their own religious lunatics who are nonetheless as cannibalistic as the Nigerian variant. Thanks to PRNigeria, an online medium, we now know that, “The viral video originated from Burkina Faso. The men seen dancing with what appears to be human body parts are militants from that country, celebrating the defeat of their enemies.”

If you have also seen the video, may I ask you how it makes you feel? Or, have you reached the stage of being unshockable — which the educationist, Dr. Tai Solarin, warned us against many years ago? 

No, we must not allow society to get used to these numbing depravities regularly posted on social media by subhuman monsters who should never have been born. Boko Haram started the trend with colourful video clips of decapitation. Then, its leader, Abubakar Shekau, posted even more horrifying videos of himself personally slaughtering helpless victims. 

Borno and Middle Belt 

Even the mere retelling of just a tiny slice of the horror we have been through gives goose pimples. Now, we are being bombarded daily with even more horrendous stories of whole families dismembered and then incinerated in Benue and Plateau states by bands of terrorists who, in some cases, have since taken over the villages.

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Governor Zulum of Borno State was almost reduced to tears the other day when he was calling for help. It was pathetic, more so because Zulum has been one of the more forthright and competent administrators among the current generation of governors. Horror has its limits. For Boko Haram to be knocking on the door of the state capital when we all but thought that those demons had been consigned to the bottomless pit, was galling.

Perhaps because of the trauma, and for want of better intellection-based solutions, Professor Zulum then went on to ban the sale of alcohol throughout the state. I would have thought that, as an academic, the governor would commission social scientists to help him establish the causative factors of the state of anomie so that appropriate actions can then be taken. I was therefore taken aback when the good professor simply announced the ban on alcohol.

I haven’t yet done a research on the subject but I suspect that irresponsible parenting which exposes children to homelessness, begging, narcotics and anti-social behaviours would feature prominently among the causative factors. The almajiri system provides a ready army for Boko Haram and other terrorist organisations using religion as a cover. 

Truth be told, the traditional milieu in which parents can just abandon their children (some as young as three years old) to a mallam for religious training, does not belong to the twenty-first  century. Such impressionable children are gullible enough to be pumped with anti-social sentiments and queer religiosity which ties their candidacy for paradise to the number of skulls they harvest. 

If the political elite want to end the odious almajiri system tomorrow, they can; but will they? If it’s a matter of political realignment or demanding more political appointments, the elite will show up in their resplendent voluminous robes. But which of them is looking out for the children of the poor?

Security Summit

The Senate has recently been wrestling with the idea of a national security summit to address the state of insecurity in the country. We have had several such summits in the past and they came to nought. We all know that talk-shops mean different things to different people: contract to the contractor, honorarium to the academic, photo-op to the politician, mudslinging latitude to party apparatchiks, visibility to the ambitious ‘in-coming’ , etc.  

There are many recommendations from past summits/conferences gathering dust in abandoned files in the federal and state government’s offices. Let’s task the relevant committees of the national assembly, in collaboration with the security agencies to update what had been done in the past. 

We don’t have all the time in the world, so we must treat this issue with the urgency it deserves, Already, the terrorists have retaken villages earlier seized from them by the army in the Northeast. They’re collecting taxes. They’re torching and renaming villages in the Middle Belt. They’re killing hunters and vigilante members in the Southwest. And, if social media revelations are anything to go by, hundreds of newly imported foreign fighters are massing around Kwara State with the aim of attacking the Southwest.

If their progression continues unchecked, who says they will not forcefully declare a republic someday soon? After all, their unmourned leader, Abubakar Shekau, once declared a caliphate. 

What to Do

It is my considered opinion that we have to do the following urgently:

• The armed forces are overstretched and should be limited to the worst areas of insurgency and banditry in the Northeast and Middle Belt and selected strategic infrastructure (for example, oil installations in the creeks).The strategy of the savages is to open up many fronts of engagement to overstretch the elastic limits of the armed forces. 
• Relevant laws should be amended to allow hunters and vigilantes, under the supervision of the state police, to bear arms up to the calibre of AK 47, the favourite weapon of the vagabonds. If not, people in the rural areas will start acquiring their own superior weapons in a bid to counter the terrorists.
• All states should establish their own police forces immediately. All states should also constitute vigilante groups for their villages under the supervision of the state police.
• The diplomatic corps should be sensitised on the criminal activities of their nationals, e.g., Chinese cyber criminals exposed in Lagos.
• To side-step traitors within the system and expose sponsors of terrorism, the federal government should contract an independent ‘digitracker’ to help expose how the ransom money of bandits is laundered between various accounts.
• The federal government should release the list of terrorist sponsors identified by the UAE government.  

Habemus Papam 

The declaration, “Habemus Papam” reminded me of my Latin classes in the days of yore. By the time the identity of the new pope was revealed, the announcement triggered shock waves around the world. Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost went into the second day of the papal conclave as a voter and came out as Pope Leo XIV. 

A 1977 graduate of mathematics who later read Philosophy and bagged a doctorate in Theology, he is the first Augustinian friar and first American/Peruvian to become Pope. Augustinians embrace a lifestyle of poverty, traveling, and living in urban areas for purposes of preaching, evangelisation, and ministry, especially to the underprivileged. His motto indicates his spiritual egalitarianism: In illo uno unum — “In the One, we are One”. May his reign be impactful. 

Those who couldn’t tolerate the late Pope Francis’ advocacy for the poor should hold their breath until they hear this new pope. What are Augustinians if not advocates for the poor?

Wole Olaoye is a Public Relations consultant and veteran journalist. He can be reached on [email protected], Twitter: @wole_olaoye; Instagram: woleola2021