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By the time you are reading this, the story behind the video showing the lynching and burning of a seven-year old Nigerian child for stealing Garri would have assumed many versions, including some which will maintain that it was all a work of fiction. Whatever you believe, it is difficult to ignore the fact that adults filmed and posted a murder.
There was no evidence of anyone among on-lookers attempting to intervene. No police. No Samaritans. Just a child helplessly begging for mercy and our shrinking soul. These types of videos and pictures rob us of more of the very thin layer of our sensitivity to violence, blood, guts and designed evil. They remind us of how low we have sunk as a people. Neither our faith nor our laws keep us restrained.
We kill and maim and melt into a society that just moves on. I published the material below in November,2013 (admittedly in some anger) when I thought the legion of the unloved, unprotected and desperate younger northern generation we are all responsible for will eventually be the undoing of us all. I reproduce it today to appeal to President Buhari: please, sir, find the people who murdered that child and bring them to justice.
He is somewhere near sixteen, but no one is sure. Actually no one has bothered to register his actual date of birth. Police have different ages for him taken from his many detentions. He has a home and a family, but no one will go out looking for him if he is not seen for days, or forever. He is tough and scary, but he is also very scared. He fears the beatings and torture from police, but he fears the violence of members of his gang and rival gangs more. He lives every day as if it could be his last, because it actually could. He has no faith in anything or anyone. He trusts no one, and no one trusts him. He has bruises going back to when he was about 13 years old. He has beaten people to death, or near death, and he expects that his end may be violent.
He is available to politicians and religious enforcers, when he stays off drugs long enough to be told what to do. He floats in and out of gangs. The local police and local vigilante know him, and he knows them. Children fear him, adults shun and curse him, and peers keep him on a tight leash. He is the face of half of Northerners under 18. The other half know of him. They did not go to school with him, but he was always there when they went and came back. They grew up in the same neighbourhood, but their worlds grew further apart as they got older. They learnt lessons in schools, he learnt his in streets. He is half almajiri, half illiterate, available for anything that will give him a meal and some excitement. They could graduate and go further than secondary schools, or they could fail to get any further, and live on similar circumstances as him. They have hopes for a future with education and jobs and families. He lives for the next meal and the next fix.
He is in all the towns and cities of the North, an alarming reminder of our decaying social and economic assets. Politicians who used him during election campaigns now zoom past him in big jeeps with tinted glasses. They do not know him. They should not. He was brought to them, drugged and willing, to be mobilized to break heads and chase away crowds. They bought him a knife and lots of drugs, and sent him forth to steal political mandates.
A few of his mates have found accommodation in corridors of power as quasi-vigilante and political enforcers. They appeal to him to wait for the next elections. The next elections are too far to wait for on an empty stomach without a fix. So a gang which fights other gangs and the community provide an alternative source of engagement. It promises some form of identity, protection, excitement, people to rob, women to rape, and endless sources of drugs. Police and vigilante show no mercy, many times killing his mates. His gang also shows no mercy, protecting its turf with knives, cutlasses and blood. Community leaders shut their doors when gangs fight. Police do not come until it is all over, and casualties are registered. Kids admire or fear them. Some request to join.
When Northerners contemplate their future, they should start from their substantial army of alienated and angry youth. That category with no education, no skills, no future and no faith in anyone or anything. They should ask searching questions over what happens to the tens of millions of school-age children who do not go to school. They should ask what happens to 10 million almajirai when they become adults and have to find space in a nation which has zero-tolerance for anyone without education or skills. They should ask how the millions of young married girls manage families without physical and emotional maturity, education or resources. They should ask what type of wives and mothers they make; what type of children they bring up; and what the community loses by not allowing them to go to school, even if married.
The juvenile, drugged and armed young gang member that terrorises urban communities is blight on the North’s landscape. He feeds the marauding criminals who live in forests and attack villages at will. He was a member of the lowest ranks of, and would have been shot dead hundreds of times or is incarcerated in detention facilities all over the nation. He joins fights between rural communities, for little more than the desire to shed blood for a pittance and small scores. He lurks around streets, robs and maims and rapes because he can. He is untouchable, a link in a long chain of untouchables who remind the powerful and the wealthy that they have failed. He is the reason why politicians speed past the public at frightening speed; why the rich build high walls around their residences and why our towns and cities are dotted with military and police checkpoints.
The angry and hopeless youth is now being joined by those in universities who see a diminishing prospect for the good life. Hundreds of thousands of young undergraduates now sit idly in seething anger, feeling abandoned by government, the community and their teachers represented by ASUU. They now have a grievance almost the size of their neighbour who never went to school. The system has failed them. They will now graduate at a much later date than planned. The months of strike are not likely to revolutionize the quality of the instructions they receive, their learning environment or their welfare. Even when they graduate, the prospect of getting jobs is becoming dimmer by the day. They will join millions of other young people who will be bitter that a nation which should do much better by them has failed them woefully.
The nation is breeding entire generations which are fed on heavy doses of frustrations, bitterness and hopelessness. They grow up with no sense of obligation to a nation which has done nothing for them. Those who have received little or very poor education learn to resent the rich, the powerful and the well-connected peers who will rush past them into expensive education and guaranteed employment. They are taught to blame others, and hate other ethnic groups because they are responsible for their conditions. They hate politicians who milk their future dry; they resent the hypocrisy of religions leaders who preach honesty, sacrifice and humility, but live opulent lives. They resent every form of authority because it has been corrupted, and because it reminds them of the conspiracy of the powerful and the wealthy to keep them out of the good life.
The expanding numbers of unemployed, unskilled, bitter and desperate youth in much of the North will provide the tinder for explosion when political competition and disputes go searching for foot soldiers. For a brief moment, the millions of alienated and bitter youth with no future will find relevance as heads are broken, houses razed, and whole communities destroyed. Leaders who failed to give them hope and a future may perish at their hands, or they may build higher fences while those who have no future scramble for their pittance.
If you are not worried about 2019, begin to worry now.
He is somewhere near sixteen, but no one is sure. Actually no one has bothered to register his actual date of birth. Police have different ages for him taken from his many detentions. He has a home and a family, but no one will go out looking for him if he is not seen for days, or forever. He is tough and scary, but he is also very scared. He fears the beatings and torture from police, but he fears the violence of members of his gang and rival gangs more. He lives every day as if it could be his last, because it actually could. He has no faith in anything or anyone. He trusts no one, and no one trusts him. He has bruises going back to when he was about 13 years old. He has beaten people to death, or near death, and he expects that his end may be violent.
He is available to politicians and religious enforcers, when he stays off drugs long enough to be told what to do. He floats in and out of gangs. The local police and local vigilante know him, and he knows them. Children fear him, adults shun and curse him, and peers keep him on a tight leash. He is the face of half of Northerners under 18. The other half know of him. They did not go to school with him, but he was always there when they went and came back. They grew up in the same neighbourhood, but their worlds grew further apart as they got older. They learnt lessons in schools, he learnt his in streets. He is half almajiri, half illiterate, available for anything that will give him a meal and some excitement. They could graduate and go further than secondary schools, or they could fail to get any further, and live on similar circumstances as him. They have hopes for a future with education and jobs and families. He lives for the next meal and the next fix.
He is in all the towns and cities of the North, an alarming reminder of our decaying social and economic assets. Politicians who used him during election campaigns now zoom past him in big jeeps with tinted glasses. They do not know him. They should not. He was brought to them, drugged and willing, to be mobilized to break heads and chase away crowds. They bought him a knife and lots of drugs, and sent him forth to steal political mandates.
A few of his mates have found accommodation in corridors of power as quasi-vigilante and political enforcers. They appeal to him to wait for the next elections. The next elections are too far to wait for on an empty stomach without a fix. So a gang which fights other gangs and the community provide an alternative source of engagement. It promises some form of identity, protection, excitement, people to rob, women to rape, and endless sources of drugs. Police and vigilante show no mercy, many times killing his mates. His gang also shows no mercy, protecting its turf with knives, cutlasses and blood. Community leaders shut their doors when gangs fight. Police do not come until it is all over, and casualties are registered. Kids admire or fear them. Some request to join.
When Northerners contemplate their future, they should start from their substantial army of alienated and angry youth. That category with no education, no skills, no future and no faith in anyone or anything. They should ask searching questions over what happens to the tens of millions of school-age children who do not go to school. They should ask what happens to 10 million almajirai when they become adults and have to find space in a nation which has zero-tolerance for anyone without education or skills. They should ask how the millions of young married girls manage families without physical and emotional maturity, education or resources. They should ask what type of wives and mothers they make; what type of children they bring up; and what the community loses by not allowing them to go to school, even if married.
The juvenile, drugged and armed young gang member that terrorises urban communities is blight on the North’s landscape. He feeds the marauding criminals who live in forests and attack villages at will. He was a member of the lowest ranks of, and would have been shot dead hundreds of times or is incarcerated in detention facilities all over the nation. He joins fights between rural communities, for little more than the desire to shed blood for a pittance and small scores. He lurks around streets, robs and maims and rapes because he can. He is untouchable, a link in a long chain of untouchables who remind the powerful and the wealthy that they have failed. He is the reason why politicians speed past the public at frightening speed; why the rich build high walls around their residences and why our towns and cities are dotted with military and police checkpoints.
The angry and hopeless youth is now being joined by those in universities who see a diminishing prospect for the good life. Hundreds of thousands of young undergraduates now sit idly in seething anger, feeling abandoned by government, the community and their teachers represented by ASUU. They now have a grievance almost the size of their neighbour who never went to school. The system has failed them. They will now graduate at a much later date than planned. The months of strike are not likely to revolutionize the quality of the instructions they receive, their learning environment or their welfare. Even when they graduate, the prospect of getting jobs is becoming dimmer by the day. They will join millions of other young people who will be bitter that a nation which should do much better by them has failed them woefully.
The nation is breeding entire generations which are fed on heavy doses of frustrations, bitterness and hopelessness. They grow up with no sense of obligation to a nation which has done nothing for them. Those who have received little or very poor education learn to resent the rich, the powerful and the well-connected peers who will rush past them into expensive education and guaranteed employment. They are taught to blame others, and hate other ethnic groups because they are responsible for their conditions. They hate politicians who milk their future dry; they resent the hypocrisy of religions leaders who preach honesty, sacrifice and humility, but live opulent lives. They resent every form of authority because it has been corrupted, and because it reminds them of the conspiracy of the powerful and the wealthy to keep them out of the good life.
The expanding numbers of unemployed, unskilled, bitter and desperate youth in much of the North will provide the tinder for explosion when political competition and disputes go searching for foot soldiers. For a brief moment, the millions of alienated and bitter youth with no future will find relevance as heads are broken, houses razed, and whole communities destroyed. Leaders who failed to give them hope and a future may perish at their hands, or they may build higher fences while those who have no future scramble for their pittance.
If you are not worried about 2019, begin to worry now.
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