Insecurity: The Northern Leaders’ Incongruous Silence, by Kazeem Akintunde

My brother and colleague, Reuben Buhari, wrote an article on his Facebook page that left me traumatized and depressed for days. It was based on the testimony of a man living in a community that has entered into an agreement with Boko Haram terrorists.

Reuben and I worked together at Leadership Newspapers for several years. I was based in Lagos as Deputy Editor while he was a pair of strong hands in Kaduna State. When I was promoted as Editor of one of the titles and had to relocate to Abuja, Reuben became a veritable source of exclusive news for me and we became close. Both of us have since left the newspaper, but we remain friends on social media.

Last week, his article was a sad story of what has become of the community where he was born in Kaduna State. I have taken the liberty to reproduce the story below, with little or no editing.

Be warned: Some issues in this post may be disturbing.

This is the back of someone (picture of a man with his back to the camera and face covered) who lives in a community that has entered into an agreement with Fulani kidnappers following repeated attacks. The community is now in its third year living alongside bandits.

I chose to show only his back to protect his identity. It took him a week to leave his community, which I will not name, but it’s in Kajuru LGA, Kaduna State.

The man you see is married with five children, but his wife no longer belongs to him since the agreement was entered into. The kidnappers sleep with her whenever they feel the urge, sometimes while the children watch. If he protests, he will be shot. The same thing happened to all the women in the village.

READ ALSO:Nigeria As A Killing Field, by Kazeem Akintunde

If a kidnapper leaves a blanket in front of your house or drops a stick, it’s a sign that he will sleep in your house with your wife or daughter that day, while you sleep outside.

This man, like other families, can’t leave the village now, though some have managed to. If you are caught, you will be shot. If you are seen walking with a bag, you will be searched.

They are allowed to farm, but one quarter of the harvest goes to the bandits. They aren’t allowed to own a phone, though a few have found a way around it. If you are caught, you will be shot.

You can’t wear any new clothes. A bandit will simply tell you he needs them. They aren’t allowed to own torchlights. Only bandits can own torchlights in the village. You can only own an old motorcycle. They take any new one they see. It’s the bandits who buy petrol and sell it to those with motorcycles in the village.

They aren’t allowed to own a machete; only hoes and diggers are permitted for farming.

They can visit villages that have also entered into an agreement with the bandits. If they want to buy anything from a village that hasn’t entered into an agreement, it’s their wives who are allowed to go. If the wives don’t return, the husbands and children will be shot.

If the men want to go to an outside market to buy anything or sell grain, their wives and children stay behind.

READ ALSO:The business of abductions in Nigeria, by Kazeem Akintunde

Youths in the community are forced to accompany the bandits to steal or kidnap. They are forced to ride the motorcycles while the bandits sit behind them with guns. If you refuse to go, you are shot.

They can’t hold any church service on Sunday unless the bandits are not around.

Schools in those communities do not function because teachers have abandoned them. Likewise, primary health centres (PHCs) do not function.

Everything is controlled by the terrorists. Sometimes, they pick people from the community and shoot them to show what will happen to anyone who disobeys them.

This is just a summary of the chilling things this man said.

There are more than 20 communities in Kajuru LGA, about 30 in Kachia LGA, and dozens in Chikun LGA that have entered into such agreements with these kidnappers and are living under similarly harsh conditions. Though the conditions vary, most have no freedom at all.

I read the chilling accounts above and sleep deserted me for days.

Are we in a society governed? Law and order seem to be foreign terms to most Nigerians now. Specifically, do we still have any semblance of governance in Kaduna in particular and in most northern states in general? Are we going to continue like this and pretend that we have a nation?

Reuben’s chilling post has attracted over 2,000 comments on Facebook, with revelations that many communities in the North have entered into such agreements with bandits and kidnappers so that they would not be attacked by the criminals.

READ ALSO: Xenophobia: The gradual death of African brotherhood, by Kazeem Akintunde

My take is that the loss of their freedom, dignity, livelihoods and their families qualify as attacks nonetheless. Signing away their freedom to bandits who make sex slaves of their wives and children is the worst form of attack.

In one of the comments, a woman who claimed to be a health worker said women are now willingly coming to her facility for family planning interventions.

When questioned as to why, despite being legally married, they confided in her that they are daily being raped by bandits and terrorists in their own homes while their husbands remain helpless and powerless. They carry the shame around but are determined not to have children for the bandits, hence their resolve to seek family planning interventions.

The same author, Reuben Buhari, in another post titled “The Expanding Danger We Are Toying With,” wrote:

“A looming danger posed by these armed kidnappers, who are ravaging parts of northern Nigeria, is that they are consolidating their hold over large swaths of empty land. This is how they achieve it: they consistently attack a community, then later ask the community to enter into an agreement with them. Once they secure that, they move on to the next village.

“If you refuse the agreement, they intensify the attack until you agree, or you run and abandon your village, which fits their plan—they now have space.

READ ALSO: Insecurity, politics, and judicial rascality, by Engr. Bello Gwarzo Abdullahi, FNSE

“Also, if you refuse to enter into an agreement, members of your community are kidnapped and held for a long time, subjected to constant beatings and food deprivation. Some are killed. Under pressure, your community could be forced to enter into this agreement and effectively become their slaves.

“They set up their camps around those abandoned communities. That’s where kidnapped victims are brought and held. The kidnappers also settle there with their families. As they kidnap, they earn money to buy more arms, motorcycles and continue expanding their operations.

“Through these, the kidnappers now control a large swath of previously inhabited territory across Chikun, Kajuru and Kachia LGAs. The most prominent is the one around Rijana. I have spoken to several kidnapping victims who said they were held in a camp about a day’s trek from Rijana village. One man said the camp holds about 80 victims brought from different communities.

“According to several victims’ testimonies, that’s the camp where both the Ariko and Awon victims are currently being held. Victims are brought in, ransom is paid and they are freed. As they are freed, more are kidnapped and brought in. The camp is constantly refilled and constantly generating millions of naira and motorcycles. That’s why most villages in the area have been attacked until they were abandoned. The survivors are now taking refuge in Rijana, Katari, Jere and even in Kachia town, among others.”

For his advocacy on social media, Buhari has been invited by the Department of State Services (DSS) in Kaduna. His community members are angry and are mobilising to accompany him whenever he honours the invitation. Several lawyers have also pledged free legal services for him.

In one of his previous posts, he alleged that a local government chairman in Kaduna State had been complaining about his advocacy on Facebook and that he had repeatedly been warned to keep quiet.

READ ALSO: UN: Four million Northeastern Nigerians under threat of food insecurity

It is the culture of keeping quiet that has pushed the North to where it is today.

Many of its leaders kept quiet when the Boko Haram crisis started almost two decades ago. Some were even associated with the late Boko Haram founder, Mohammed Yusuf, before he was eventually killed by the military.

Today, large portions of land are under the effective control of Boko Haram fighters across several northern states.

In Katsina State, up to 17 of the state’s 34 local government areas are considered severe security flashpoints heavily affected by armed banditry. These include Batsari, Jibia, Safana, Danmusa, Kankara, Faskari, Kurfi, Sabuwa and Dandume. Many of these communities have, in the past, entered into agreements with bandits through negotiations led by community leaders and traditional rulers.

In Kwara State, remote border communities in local government areas such as Ifelodun, Ekiti, Patigi, Edu, Irepodun, Isin and Oke-Ero have also experienced repeated bandit attacks, kidnappings and security interventions. Similar situations exist across several northern states.

Many northern youths who fear being kidnapped and are unwilling to join the bandits have migrated south, where they now survive on menial jobs.

In Lagos State alone, there are over 50,000 northern youths, many without formal education, earning a living as commercial motorcyclists (Okada riders). Others engage in different forms of manual labour. They sleep wherever they find shelter, with some eventually becoming security concerns.

The same trend is evident in many southern states.

It was the culture of not keeping quiet in the South-West that made the difference when kidnappers abducted schoolchildren and teachers in Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State.

Many Yoruba leaders united to demand the victims’ release, while the media kept the issue on the front pages. Sustained public pressure forced the kidnappers to release the victims. The suspects were later arrested and are now facing trial.

Northern leaders should emulate their South-West counterparts and unite in condemning banditry and kidnapping.

It is abnormal for leaders to treat these crimes as routine occurrences in their jurisdictions.

Even the Qur’an, the holy book of the dominant religion in the region, forbids the deliberate harming of fellow human beings. Leaders should openly condemn these atrocities instead of dismissing the perpetrators as misguided “brothers.”

Security agencies should focus on pursuing those who have turned vast areas of the North into no-go zones.

Reuben Buhari is not the problem.

No right-thinking person should remain silent in the face of such atrocities against humanity, whether the victims are from their own communities or not.

We owe one another a moral duty to be our brother’s keeper.

The North is bleeding, and until its leaders choose to confront this menace decisively, the region risks dragging the entire country toward the precipice.

See you next week.

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