simplemind
JF-Expert Member
- Apr 10, 2009
- 16,418
- 9,206
The Nigerian poet and author, Ben Okri, recently said it all for me when he appeared on the Hard Talk show on the BBC with Stephen Sackur. He was asked about something his compatriot, the great Wole Soyinka has said concerning the continuing war between the Nigerian government and the jihadist Boko Haram insurgency.
I think Okri put it succinctly when he said, and I quote, “... It is a critical war and it’s not just a war with or against Boko Haram. It’s something much deeper than that. I think it has to do with many things not properly acknowledged about the state of Nigeria today.
“The hidden religious conflicts, hidden religious agendas of various parties, various individuals… but more profoundly, I think it’s poverty. I think that poverty plays into this in a very profound way: The sense of injustice, the sense of deeply inequitable distribution of wealth in the country. Many of the areas where Boko Haram actually gained the biggest success are areas of incredible social ruin.
“…There is a (huge) social programme that needs to take place…The level of poverty in some parts of the North... If I were that poor, I’d do almost anything, I’d be as angry. (SS: Would you kill? BO: I wouldn’t kill, but) … there’s a lot of anger in the country, and it’s not just Boko Haram, (which) is just one strand; there are other strands slowly emerging because of that, because of this same thing I’m talking about: the Niger Delta is one such strand, and there are quite a few that are tugging away at the body-politic, tugging away at this incoherent shape of the nation.
“I’ve said it many times, it is constantly on the brink of disintegration, (which will happen), if we don’t come up with the right kind of reformers and the right kind of policies to truly transform that country with all the wealth that it generates.”
These words cannot be overly surprising to anyone who knows something of the country under discussion, but their poignancy goes well beyond Nigeria and covers the whole African continent.
With all its excesses, Nigeria is, alas, not the only country to which Okri’s words can apply.
Our political unrest, civil tensions and even civil war have been caused, and are still being caused, by poor governance by regimes run by people who believe that the mere fact that they are in power is licence for them to enrich themselves, their families and kin, by looting and despoiling their countries.
It does not matter whether these avaricious individuals came into power through the ballot box or through a military putsch — they are all the same.
Because they usually hold unchecked power, they get away with murder, sometimes literally, as they will kill those who dare oppose them and their greedy relatives.
The violence that our rulers will use, one, to stay in power at any cost and, two, to plunder their people’s resources with such ruthless and abandon, has to be placed at the same level with armed robbery, only that what they do they do with legalised force, such as when they shoot scores of striking miners at Marikana.
In our current arrangements, governments often become sponsors of terror as they deploy officially and legally sanctioned instruments of violence to do their bidding.
The aim is usually to silence critics and muzzle any dissenting voice, beginning with the media.
In this sense, we have terrorists in government, who will not bow to any force of logic if it is not accompanied with considerable dozes of violence. But when such a “considerable” force erupts from the dark shadows to stake its claim to attention, it is all too often clear that it is not educated to carry out a conversation in civilised language.
Thus, our rulers, mired in greed and gluttony, become the unwitting creators of Boko Haram and other such groups of drug-crazed loonies who have their ways of countering thieving governments.
In this sense Boko Haram was created by the Nigerian political and economic elite.
Source TheEastAfrican.
I think Okri put it succinctly when he said, and I quote, “... It is a critical war and it’s not just a war with or against Boko Haram. It’s something much deeper than that. I think it has to do with many things not properly acknowledged about the state of Nigeria today.
“The hidden religious conflicts, hidden religious agendas of various parties, various individuals… but more profoundly, I think it’s poverty. I think that poverty plays into this in a very profound way: The sense of injustice, the sense of deeply inequitable distribution of wealth in the country. Many of the areas where Boko Haram actually gained the biggest success are areas of incredible social ruin.
“…There is a (huge) social programme that needs to take place…The level of poverty in some parts of the North... If I were that poor, I’d do almost anything, I’d be as angry. (SS: Would you kill? BO: I wouldn’t kill, but) … there’s a lot of anger in the country, and it’s not just Boko Haram, (which) is just one strand; there are other strands slowly emerging because of that, because of this same thing I’m talking about: the Niger Delta is one such strand, and there are quite a few that are tugging away at the body-politic, tugging away at this incoherent shape of the nation.
“I’ve said it many times, it is constantly on the brink of disintegration, (which will happen), if we don’t come up with the right kind of reformers and the right kind of policies to truly transform that country with all the wealth that it generates.”
These words cannot be overly surprising to anyone who knows something of the country under discussion, but their poignancy goes well beyond Nigeria and covers the whole African continent.
With all its excesses, Nigeria is, alas, not the only country to which Okri’s words can apply.
Our political unrest, civil tensions and even civil war have been caused, and are still being caused, by poor governance by regimes run by people who believe that the mere fact that they are in power is licence for them to enrich themselves, their families and kin, by looting and despoiling their countries.
It does not matter whether these avaricious individuals came into power through the ballot box or through a military putsch — they are all the same.
Because they usually hold unchecked power, they get away with murder, sometimes literally, as they will kill those who dare oppose them and their greedy relatives.
The violence that our rulers will use, one, to stay in power at any cost and, two, to plunder their people’s resources with such ruthless and abandon, has to be placed at the same level with armed robbery, only that what they do they do with legalised force, such as when they shoot scores of striking miners at Marikana.
In our current arrangements, governments often become sponsors of terror as they deploy officially and legally sanctioned instruments of violence to do their bidding.
The aim is usually to silence critics and muzzle any dissenting voice, beginning with the media.
In this sense, we have terrorists in government, who will not bow to any force of logic if it is not accompanied with considerable dozes of violence. But when such a “considerable” force erupts from the dark shadows to stake its claim to attention, it is all too often clear that it is not educated to carry out a conversation in civilised language.
Thus, our rulers, mired in greed and gluttony, become the unwitting creators of Boko Haram and other such groups of drug-crazed loonies who have their ways of countering thieving governments.
In this sense Boko Haram was created by the Nigerian political and economic elite.
Source TheEastAfrican.
