By MA Iliasu
On the day of Arfat I noticed that a certain angle in my room had decided to confess its frustration of being the oldest chamber in the house by showing wall scars.
And stupidly enough, I decided to put it down without realizing no bricklayer would be willing to sell me his service while fasting on the day of Arfat, or on the Eid day that follows, or on the usually meat-cutting day that comes after it. Meaning, I’ll have to manage in my younger sibling’s or find a bricklayer that can fix the room within the week. So I went on a bricklayer hunt but to no avail.
Being an attractive settlement for scholars who wander towns and cities with their students, my neighborhood used to be quite rich with people very familiar with such line of trade.
Mostly the students who think they have studied the holy book enough to focus their attention elsewhere. And that reminded me of an old acquaintance of mine who came from Doguwa local government with his teacher a very longtime ago and stayed in the neighborhood for 11 years during which he mastered the art of bricklaying.
So I dropped him a call enquiring for his services during the Eid season with an assurance of handsome payment, which he agreed to. And within four hours he rode from Doguwa with his equipments.
Umaru is a very smart person. Quite usual for someone of his age.
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His bricklaying skills ensured that there’s hardly any prominent town or city in Nigeria that he hasn’t traveled to sell his service. And that built so much of his experience. On my part, I couldn’t find a hard laborer, so I had to employ my own service if I want the job done on time.
And the duo of him and myself proved a remarkable company considering how close we used to be when he was a student.
Among the talks during the service delivery, I brought up the menace of kidnapping. And so I asked whether as someone who constantly wanders through the North if he had any insight on the state of the menace here and elsewhere. And as if he was waiting for me to finish asking, he began talking about it like he was always looking for someone to speak with.
In his own words, his older brother was earlier kidnapped in a marketplace by people who showed him the ID of Secret Service and took him out of town, then confessed to him that they’re kidnappers and later called his relatives to ask for ransom.
They were together when it happened. And he was left behind only because they said there was no need for the Secret Service to have both of them. A little while after, two of his cousins got arrested by the police.
However, when they checked the nearby police stations, they realize the boys weren’t there, neither were the policemen who arrested them. Two days later a phone call went-in asking for ransom money. Meaning, it was kidnappers in police uniform.
His sister, who was married somewhere in the village had once been kidnapped when they got to her husband’s keep. He said that in the place where she lives, the people must pay certain money before they are allowed to cultivate their lands.
And being supreme in some areas how had visited, kidnappers and bandits demand a woman, regardless of married or not, to be taken to them for their satisfaction by her own husband or parents anytime they like, otherwise death will be the price.
His home local government, Doguwa, was, not so long ago, under the constant siege of bandits. Until the community leaders took an order by their hands and began killing them by employing the services of local hoodlums whose relatives were also affected by the catastrophe.
He confessed that they had to go as far as executing bandits before the issue cooled down in the area for a bit. In his words, even though he was never actually taken, being surrounded by the victims and having so many of his assets sold to pay for the ransom, he can’t help but feel like one. And I honestly agree.
The two versions of his testimony, which I narrated in two immediate separate paragraphs above, got me exercising two thoughts in mind:
- The weakness of the Law and its enforcement agencies allows kidnappers to pursue people as fake, undercover agents. Who is providing them with the state ID? If it’s forged, who is providing them with the uniforms? If they’re forged too, what effort is the police putting to track down the sources of the pieces of equipment? If that’s very difficult, how easy it can be for a random household to handover his wife, who’ll later get returned, to be noticed and therefore be tracked down? Forgive me, but my doubts upon the Law and its enforcement agencies are growing by the day. Should we become more vigilant when we or one of us gets involved with a law enforcement agent? For now, we’re confused about who are the actual law enforcement agencies.
- If disorder keeps thriving through kidnappers, and Jungle Justice keeps yielding the desired outcome on the part of the civilian, what’ll remain of the influence of the government who was supposed to be the neutral arbiter would be frightening. The kidnappers have tried and have succeeded. The people have started taking orders by their hands and it begins working; the cross outcome would be a battle between outlaws who never rate the gov’t and victims who no longer have any trust in the government. At the end of the day, our societies may become Mario Puzo’s Sicily where people hold no regard for the government and take it to themselves to resist the Mafia establishment that since proved stronger than the gov’t.
Hoodlums with the remaining fear of God will not venture into kidnapping and banditry. Instead, they’ll organize themselves to protect people in return for protection money. And from that point, our state will split between Tommy Shelby’s Birmingham that’s ruled by the Peaky Blinders and Turi Guiliano’s Montelepre that’s ruled by the resistance’s of friends of the friends.
In any way that’s far from the admiration of sanity. A government that’s only thinking of long term plans during a ravaging crisis is a government that’s bound to fail. Likewise, a government that chooses to venture into long term carelessness is a government that’s bound to fail. The crisis is handled with immediate measures. When solutions are long term, the executioners may not survive the time frame. Likewise, if it’s carelessness when short term it’ll tell the society that the law is awake. And that’s why John Maynard Keynes, who is doubtlessly one of the greatest crisis managers in history, says “in the long run we’re all dead “.
MA Ilias.
2/12/2020.
