Prof. Olukotun
This is a scathing critique of the supposed ACN governance 'revolution' in the Southwest where beautification has taken the place of sound, reasonable and poor-friendly governance. You just wonder what role aesthetics has to play within the dynamics of poverty except to make that framework of poverty more glaring-Ijora Badia in the shadow of the multibillion skyscrapers!
I wish, and I am not ashamed to wish it, that the kidnappers will become politically correct in their modus operandi by targeting the political and economic elites more. That is only reasonable since it is the obscenity of their banal grandiosity that fuels the unemployment-crime interface in the first place.
Let the contrived fangs of the informal sector sink into the exotic fabric of listless power!
Adeshina Afolayan
BAMIGBETAN'S ABDUCTION SAGA AND NIGERIA'S SOCIAL TINDERBOX
Ayo Olukotun
Making the rounds in both the regular and social media are lingering reactions to the kidnap saga and subsequent release last week of Kehinde Bamigbetan, human rights activist and chairman of the Ejigbo Local Council Development Area (LCEA) in Lagos state. As the country announces itself to the world as the land of the living dead and a fascinating laboratory of tragic dysfunction, it is more and more difficult for a writer not to wear the hat of a seer foretelling national disaster, or collective perdition unless the reprobate and blissfully indifferent ways of its political class are mended and urgently, too. For those who care to learn, the Bamigbetan story which increasingly lends a federal character to a mini industry once confined to the South South and South East is full of ominous signifiers. Hostage taking to extract mouth watering sums as ransom, it will be recalled first made its entry on the social calendar in the context of the Niger Delta struggle for justice, where expatriate oil workers were frequently targeted. Its astonishing success as a commercial window for arms bearing but unemployed youths soon propelled kidnapping into the status of an equal opportunity employer in the increasingly distressed circumstances of the countryside of the South East. The list of celebrity victims includes among others: Nollywood actors, Nkiru Sylvanus and Pete Edochie; Super Eagles player, Christian Obodo; and matriarch of the Okonjo family and a grandmother, professor Kamene Okonjo, mother of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, minister for finance. Close to 1000 cases annually of kidnapping involving both great and small have been recorded according to one source since 2008. Only recently, however, did the roving gangs and their barons extend their reach to the south western part of the country, including, Lagos. As a disconsolate Bamigbetan and the traumatised members of his family alternately seek to live down memories of the horror, and savour a narrow escape from death, let us inspect the narrative as told by the survivor and the newspapers for possible lessons. There is for example, the striking absence of the police and regular law enforcement agencies beyond the clichéd assurance that the police will leave no stone unturned in finding the captors and liberating the victim. On Saturday, 21st April as journalists sought desperately to confirm reports of Bamigbetan's release, Lagos state police commissioner, Mr. Umar Tanko was quoted by several newspapers as saying that the police was not aware of the victim's release. Just as the police were not on hand to prevent Bamigbetan's abduction, they also apparently played no part in his release. Of course, as the scandal of the deplorable living conditions of the police college, Ikeja reminds us, the police are more sinned against than sinning; in a sense they are also captives in the unending drama of official banditry in which enormous amounts of money meant for their welfare and for national development end up in the private pockets of politicians and their looting accomplices. The clear and present danger therefore, is not just, the multiplying dens of kidnappers around the country; but the evaporation of the law and order infrastructure or its severe enfeeblement in the face of rampaging anomie. Contrast police incapacity in Bamigbetan's case with the decided swinging into action of the police and justice system in the United States after the recent bombing of the Boston Marathon. Within a week of the event, the surviving suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnev had been charged with employing a weapon of mass destruction, demonstrating that there are sanctions for operating outside of the law. True, the United States justice system is much older than ours, but should that prevent us from learning from international best practices? If anyone is in doubt that the kidnappers are in part the offspring of arbitrary, dehumanising and ill thought out neoliberal economic policies of federal and subnational governments, then listen to their griefs as narrated by Bamigbetan: "Many of them are graduates, have not been in jobs for years and have gone to take the risk because they cannot match the millions and billions that we talk about with which comes into their pockets. They cannot understand why we budget billions of naira and graduates cannot get jobs." In other words, the chickens of several broken promises to create jobs; stolen billions of public resources and demolition of struggling private enterprises; and of lacklustre governance have come home to roost. I do not excuse lawless behaviour that is capable of wiping out lives; but we must also understand that we do not have governments that are bound by law much less ethics or compassion. The moral law to consider the poor, has been overtaken by beautification projects and urban renewal programmes that drive the poor to extinction. Government continues to act as the enemy of the poor and as if the social contract is a dead letter. Nigerian religion mirroring a decadent state has become a celebration of the rich and affluent riding on a gospel of material prosperity and ostentatious living. It has no place for a God that reveals himself as a 'father of the fatherless and a defender of the widows.' In a sense, therefore, the swelling ranks of kidnappers and militias in search of the decencies of life represents a thunderous objection to the iniquitous inequities of Nigeria's failed governance especially as it pertains to policies that empower the rich and thumbs down the poor. No newspaper columnist could argue the case for reparations for the marginalised in this society as eloquently as the kidnappers did. Bamigbetan was quoted by The Guardian on April 22 as saying, "One kidnapper claimed to have studied Human Resources Management, another said he was already in the final year in a United States university when his father's shopping complex was demolished and he had to be recalled home, while another one said he was a commercial motorcyclist whose source of income had been outlawed by government." Politicians at all levels of government surround themselves with bards and court jesters who celebrate their every action even when these actions have deleterious consequences on society and the survival chances of individuals. The kidnappers in this sense, even if bizarre, provide a counter narrative to the glib claims of official propagandists, and the cleverly woven deceptions of cash and carry journalists that Nigeria is making progress. It remains to be seen therefore whether our leaders will correctly decode the message conveyed by the surge in kidnap cases nationally and attend to the social anomaly where 64 million out of 80 million youths are unemployed and another two million underemployed. This growing army of unemployed youths roaming around amidst the display of fabulous wealth by politicians constitute a social disaster waiting to happen. A discerning political elite will interpret the social emergency correctly and act fast to reverse it. Finally, a nation as endangered as ours cannot long tolerate poorly equipped and incompetent security institutions, especially the police. Bamigbetan's captors have delivered a pungent message to a nation marking time; the wise will consider it a wakeup call to concerted action to meet the social crisis head on.
Prof Olukotun is Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Entrepreneurial Studies at Lead City University, Ibadan. ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com 07055841236
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