THE INCIDENT IN ZAMFARA ...
... left several injured and "scores of cars burnt".
When there is no substantive democracy, the participants will compete undemocratically. More to the point, when there are no rules of conduct, and when what we pretend to be rules are enforced sparingly and arbitrarily (usually "victor's justice", where the person who won by breaking the rules using the rules to destroy his competition), then the competitors will push the limits of what they can do because victory goes to the man who is able to go that one step further than where his competition is willing or able to go. Each party in the contest knows that if it doesn't or cannot match its opponents' excesses, it will lose. Effectively it is in the rational interest of all participants to act without moral limitations.
Not only do we not have rules, but there is no rule against killing and lesser forms of violence, is there? Murder and mass-killing have been at the core of our post-1960 politics, as have intimidation, brutalization and the deliberate fostering of a climate of fear and distrust.
You can't say that the political class are opposed to it, because most of them have been the direct and/or indirect beneficiaries of it. And I don't just mean people who shot their way to power, or people who stay in power undemocratically because Nigerians are too scared to do anything about it. No, it is worse than that. Think about it. Almost 100% of Nigeria's post-1960 politicians (including the giants of the First Republic) would have been completely irrelevant if the political process in Nigeria were not what it was. Outbreaks of ethnic and religious violence have been useful to these politicians because they (a) keep us citizens divided against each other; and (b) serve as "proof" for these politicians' claims that we need them to protect us against the rest of Nigeria that lies outside our ethnicity and religion.
Persistent, low intensity violence, if eminently beneficial to our politicians. Too much violence would be bad for them, as there is neither power nor money to be milked from outright anarchy .... but the absence of violence would mean the extinction of their political careers, so they work very hard to keep us in a limbo that is neither too far here, nor too far there.
And can you imagine if they had to compete for power by offering the citizenry a choice between different credible and intelligent policies to address political, economic and sociocultural problems? They don't know how to do that. It isn't in their nature. Better to maintain the system as a sort of primary schoolyard fight, where triumph goes to the biggest bully, the gang-leader with the biggest gang, the clever cheat with the best ability to fight unfairly, or even to the kid who is able to co-opt the irresistible power of the teachers and/or headmaster/headmistress to his cause (if you didn't get that last one about teachers and headmasters, it was an allegoric reference to co-opting the unchecked might of the Nigerian Armed Forces).
Democracy? They don't understand it.
Rofo-rofo schoolyard fights? Na dat one dem sabi boku.
Depressingly, it has always been this way. Violence has always been the route to power and control.
The British colonial yoke was imposed by violence and maintained through the credible threat of violence; said credibility earned through the liberal use of violent reprisals and "collective punishment".
And in a land where ancient history is mostly oral history of varying provenance, few if any of our ethnic nationalities can match the Kanuri in terms of how much and how far back their written and unwritten-but-empirically-credible history goes. The list of Kings (Mais and Shehus) goes back to the semi-mythical Sef, founder of the Duguwa Dynasty, whose reign began circa 700 CE, some 127 years before Egbert of Wessex forcibly united competing kingdoms to become the first King of All England. At least one writer has suggested the Kanem-Bornu Empires were successors states to an entity that served as an entrepot for Phoenician-era Trans-Saharan trade between North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Alas, the tale of the Kanuri imperial monarchy from the more empirically reliable period of the Saifawa Dynasty (began 1075 CE) to date is suffused with violent rivalries for the succession. These internal rivalries and civil conflicts were so bitter and destructive they all-too-frequently left the Empire exposed and defenseless to its external enemies. The last conquest of the Empire, that of the British, was itself possible in part because of internal political wrangling (pitting the remnants of the Saifawa against the ascendant El Kanemi dynasty), as well as the continuing struggle between the Bornu Empire on the one hand, and the constituent states of the Sokoto Caliphate during and after Uthman Dan Fodio's consolidating war.
Come to think of it conflicts between and within the states and statelets of proto-Nigeria opened the door for a relatively small British colonial army to conquer the entirety of the future "Nigeria" piecemeal.
But I digress.
THE ASSASSINATION VICTIM IN EDO ...
... Oghogho Omoregbe,
"was still alive until they got to the University of Benin Teaching Hospital, where he was rushed to after they could not receive medical attention at the Central Hospital owing to the one-month-old strike of health workers in the state."
Whoever killed Mr Omoregbe is guilty of first-degree murder.
Whoever hired the assassin that killed Mr Omoregbe, be it an individual or a group, is also guilty of first-degree murder.
But I would like us to discuss the possibility of manslaughter and/or negligent homicide cases against everyone that made it impossible for this man to receive emergency medical treatment at Central Hospital, Benin, the nearest medical facility to where he got shot.
This includes:
(a) The labour union bosses who think it is a good idea to endanger the lives of the public by taking doctors, nurses and other health workers out on strike. They have done this intermittently over the decades, and it has never resolved any of the issues they continuously bring up each time they strike, so what is the point of continuing to endanger the lives of innocent citizens? Do they not care? As someone who wants to fight (along with my fellow citizens) for substantive reform, restructuring and transformation of our federal republic, I despair at the fact that no platform exists from which to launch such a fight. The unions have no capacity to fundamentally alter any aspect of the political/economic/sociocultural environment of Nigeria, and frankly I fear they are like every other interest-group in Nigeria, fighting for a more advantageous position in a foundering ship, rather than taking action to patch the leaks and set the ship aright.
(b) The Edo State Commissioner of Health, the top technocrats at the State Ministry of Health. None of them depend on public hospitals for their own health, and hence none of them care. Their own families do not need Central Hospital, so they do not care whether their failure to resolve long-standing issues leads to a pointless and unnecessary strike and consequently to avoidable deaths. It is not like we are a democratic country where citizens can vote our their leaders to punish them for heartlessness. Their plan (as always) is to wait until the doctors and nurses run out of savings, begin to starve, and come back to accept whatever deal the government offers.
EDIT 20/09/10: Health workers strike in Delta State.
Edit 21/09/10: Health workers strike in Lagos State.
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