Reading this article at my office in Lagos this morning, is different than when I read similar articles as a resident of a village in Benue State between October 2010 and March 2012.
The profound peculiar helplessness and deliberate underdevelopment in our villages, that most of our expanse of countryside is, is insane to be frank and quite pathetic and embarrassing. And visiting these places is never the same as dwelling there; dwelling there as visitors arriving for businesses, isn’t even the same as being born there, with scarce resources and options. It is possible that the people running away in videos in ransacked villages don’t even have bank accounts or the next meal assured. Put, that, side by side, a business person visitor running away from same mayhem with tons of resources tucked everywhere. If both survived the attacks, one heads to “paradise” (which in any case, is any flourishing city in Nigeria, and recoups), the other is forced to an IDP camp, naturally, almost all the time. So, in the hinterlands, we are dealing with the poorest of poor, majorly. I am going to write about the CCTV systems adoption raised in the article quoting the IGP in stemming the tide of insecurity.
Firstly, to the city dweller, the cost of operating a CCTV system and its inherent “sophistication” may just be commensurate to the cost of acquiring a high-end mobile phone, and in some cases, top quality laptop….and quite a number of homes in cities have alternative power sources, to the point that CCTV systems can be operated 24hr-a-day. To the extent that on some streets, four houses with CCTV out of a total of 15 properties may be sufficient a deterrent and some estates only need to install at specific designated points on streets within the gated estates…notwithstanding that homes own their own personal CCTV systems. These are in cities
The hinterlands, the countryside and the villages like the one I lived and conducted business in, in Benue, are a much different proposition altogether. In Aanyiin, Logo LGA, Benue state, where I lived and conducted business in. To use the bank or a bank-affiliate service from that village….between Oct 2010 and March 2012, you had four options, all of which are a minimum of 4 hours return journeys. Two of the four required you crossed a river; you crossed a river at some point in your journey to get to Gboko or Makurdi from the village. You labored similarly unfortunately on terrible roads to get to Wukari in Taraba, or Zaki-biam to use a bank service that required your physical presence…minimum of 4hours return trip on any of the options. Imagine the lives of the poorest of the poor in a place like this. Now, imagine this village under terrorist attacks. That village is then Governor Gabriel Suswam’s birth place; historically rife with underdevelopment and repeated violence due to ethnic, religious and community disputes.
I am going to make some lousy assumptions to cut the chase on this write-up;
“Let’s assume that the government somehow is able to selectively issue out CCTV systems to strategic points and places in our hinterlands at no cost to the people”, across Nigeria, where the majority of violence due to insecurity takes place. Is it the same government that perennially watches terrorists on social media apps? Increasingly displaying either their loots or the destruction left behind in attacked precinct, like the citizens too, watch. Is it that same government, or another one somewhere that would act decisively on the evidential outputs of CCTV systems and footages after a violent attack? Some of the actors of the scenes of our troubling violent terrorism and banditry, that we aim to catch with CCTV systems are already on apps, TikTok and the likes…with tons of multimedia, their faces uncovered, in many cases, clearer, fuller and much more meaningful video outputs than any CCTV systems on the market can muster. What has happened to them?
In my view, the solutions lie with the will and willingness of the constituted government authorities. It is not likely that, warts and all, the authorities would allow this to linger for three decades, if the atrocious mass of killings were in the cities. 100 people slain in the “countrysides” of Benue or Plateau, is not the same as 100 people slain in the “countrysides or outskirts” of Lagos, Rivers or Abuja though, they are all Nigerians, if you know, you know. But, there are Nigerians and there are Nigerians. An outrage in Benue is different than one in Lagos or Abuja or even, Kano….even, where the outcry has to do with the poorest of the poor in each of those locations. We have our country-specific parameters to battle in those regards; “especially the economics and politics of ethnicity, tongue and religion”. That’s for another day.
Majority of the casualties of this suite of violence here and there are “poor people we don’t really care about”; oftentimes, poorest of the poor, to be specific. The problem is, they are many, and the more the authorities don’t care, the surer the footings of the assailants and their sponsors in critical swathes of the country; a sure path to the actual mess, that will touch us, where it really hurts us. We may be encircled in the long run, by these swathes of overtaken lands, and the consequences would be dastardly. The poorest of the poor being annihilated in our midst is considered just a bad, horrific movie in Nigeria, it doesn’t hurt anyone that matters that muxh…it actually doesn’t even hurt the ordinary man on the streets, beyond eeyah, oohh, aahh, exclamations; provided he is tucked away relatively safely, safer than the affected victims, beyond the actual fields of deaths.
So, the solution is not in CCTV systems installations, it is in the system of responsibility and accountability of the government to do the right thing; before or even after a crime of this nature is committed. The system to not discard, ignore or discount CCTV footages after the act or the fact, like they do with footages uploaded by bandits and terrorists online, all the times. There’s no such system in place, such system to lose sleep over the systematic decimation of the poorest of the poor in our midst, weekly, if not daily.
That system does not exist.
That’s possibly why Gen. TY Danjuma (retd) suggested and still suggests out of frustration, that degree of self-help, as you rightly noted. It’s not rocket science that these killings have been 25 years already, and counting.
Have the more glamorous, “newsworthy” attacks on the UN office types, and government properties also continued unabated?
No. They haven’t
If there’s a phrase worse than collateral damage, it would be applicable to the poorest of the poor in our daily existential approach and affairs here, in Nigeria.
The poor counts for nothing.
The poorest of the poor also counts for nothing that is worse than nothingness.
~Kuti Sofumade
