A Nation in Peril: Reflecting on Nigeria’s Unfolding Crisis

The opposition parties coalesced into a big political party before the 2015 elections with a change agenda. Some of the things used in their campaigns to chase Jonathan out of Aso Rock in 2015 were the kidnapping of the 210 Chibok girls, heightening insecurity, and corruption.

At that time, GMB as he was then, who was the flag bearer of the coalition was at the right place, and at the right time.

Some of the things that went well for GMB, now PMB, were his perceived man of probity and integrity, who was incorruptible. Besides, the campaigners reasoned that as a retired army General, he would use his military experience to end insurgency in the North East, rescue the middle belt from herders/farmers clashes, and decisively deal with banditry and kidnapping across the nation.

Looking back now and eight years after, my heart bleeds to read and hear about people dying from ISWAP attacks and the ambushing of our galant military officers. The herders/farmers clashes are still much with us. So what has really changed?

It would seem to me that we have lost our humanity where life is so cheap.and means nothing to the criminals. Seemingly, the original and ideologically based insurgents and separatists have given way to pure criminalities. The bloodletting minefields seem to be coordinated, fuelled and managed by conflict entrepreneurs and gun-running mafias, who are fighting on behalf of international entities. I see these entities struggling to capture the economic soul of Nigeria for keeps.

If in doubt, read stories about Congo, Rwanda, Somalia, etc. Presently Congo has never known peace because of its rich cobalt mine belt. The international community is feasting on their raw materials, and they know that the best way to continue the looting is to use divide-and-rule tactics to set the ethnic nationalities against each other. Sudan is also boiling. The two brothers who hitherto worked together to topple their government are now divided and fighting for the soul of Sudan.

We should not be fooled. Russia versus the rest of Europe may be the issue in Sudan. If care is not taken, these aggrandizers shall soon perpetrate coups to reacquire strategic African countries using proxy wars so that Africa will never settle, to think of how to manage their mineral resources, without depending on the same countries pulling the continent from both ends. This is the huge task before the President-elect as he gets sworn-in on May 29, 2023.

From the look of things, the President-elect seems to have settled with France as his major ally as his itinerary of travels depicts. I hope he is carefully weighing all his options.

Today, online media reports alluded to over thirty persons killed in the Mangu local government area of plateau state. Also, on May 14, 2023, Vanguard newspaper reported that three soldiers were killed and 10 others injured when repelling an ambush on their convoy by the Islamic State of the West African Province (ISWAP). This same month, Aljazeera, in another incident, reported that a police spokesperson said two Police Mobile Force operatives and two staff of the US Consulate were killed and set their bodies ablaze. Three others were kidnapped” somewhere in the Southeast.

No conflict can fester for decades without the unseen fingers of those in government, internal security agencies, international collaborators, the capitalist bourgeois class whose appetite for wealth is to create dysfunctional entities to sell their equipment of mass destruction acting as the brain boxes.

Something tells me that the fight to tear Nigeria apart has begun, and interested international entities are only waiting to cash in on any opportunity to use the insurgency as bait to invade Nigeria.

Now that the advanced nations are shifting focus from oil to cleaner energies, the crisis we are witnessing may be part of the grand design to “Congolize” Nigeria because of its rich lithium ore, which is the primary source of raw material for making batteries for electric cars.

When some of the protectors and defenders of a people become part of the criminal gangs, resolving conflicts become highly impossible. The examples of security agents arrested last week for kidnapping and robberies in some states attest to this.

Until the international community and their internal collaborators in the bloody minefields decide to give up the billion dollar criminal enterprise, it is welcome to the world of unlimited terror. I hope time shall prove me wrong.

Grace and peace!!!