By Adeola Aderounmu

Genocide remains an unpunishable crime in Nigeria. Sometimes, acts of genocides are perpetrated by the government.

When more than 200 people are massacred in one night, at a swoop, in 2023, such act is out of civilization’s framework. But it happened during the 2023 Christmas celebration in Plateau State, Nigeria. Several communities were sacked as terrorists (most likely from Northern Nigeria) went on the rampage.

If you ask the crazy Nigerian government, they will tell you it is herdsmen and farmers’ conflict. But there are records of villages that have been completely taken over by these terrorists across the length and breadth of Northern Nigeria and some parts of the Nigerian Middle Belts. Taking over indigenous people’s farmland or their resources through genocide and even taking over their communities entirely is no longer something that any Nigerian government cares about. Genocide remains an unpunishable crime in Nigeria. Sometimes, it is done by the government.

In Nigeria, deaths and blood spills do not lead to outrage. They are commonstances. Sometimes, as superstitiously as it may sounds, it seems that government thrives on bloodshed and woes of the citizens of Nigeria.

At the time the genocide was in progress, more than 7 hours, no Nigerian security forces intervened. It sometimes sound like the government sponsored the killings, so they do not interfere. Is there any other way to analye terrorism that is perpetrated for more than 7 hours without interventions of security agencies? I am willing to learn how. It was also at that period that Bola Tinubu arrived in Lagos. He went on Christmas holiday to a place where everybody knew his name. Sadly too, nobody was calling his name. Rather, the people that lined the streets when he arrived were all crying and wailing: We Are Hungry..!

The genocide in Plateau and the general hunger in the land cannot change a thing without accompanying rage or rages. If there is no rage, there cannot be a change. Nigerians completely lost it when they think swapping APC for PDP or PDP for APC is change. It is very ridiculous because when you are looking from a distance, you will see that APC is PDP and PDP is APC. You will also see that there is no end, yet, to the thousands of anomalies about Nigeria.

My constant prediction is that a few people in Nigeria will prosper annually because the system will smile on them directly or through some strokes of luck and happenstance. These few people will create fuzzes that will forever kindle the hopes of the poorest people making them lame and vulnerable to a lifetime of penury and extreme poverty. These majority will continue to live and die without ever experiencing the meaning and value of life. Nigeria was built that way.

In a country that was built on false foundation, one group of senseless terrorists from a shithole somewhere – even at this time of global human civilization – will still think that they have to commit genocide on another group because they think they are a superior race than the others and should rule the province. In a country that was built on false foundation, people will line the country and shout “we are hungry” without doing anything about it.

Majority will continue to live and die without ever experiencing the meaning of life, and the value of it. Nigeria was built that way.

Nigeria has been like this since time immemorial, and since time immemorial people have been hoping that change would come, that common sense would prevail and that the good of the land(s) will be for the good of all. But alas! The good of the land is never meant for circulation. It can be distributed to the elites, their families, their accomplices and a few lucky souls.

What has happened since hope (especially in religious rites) took over common sense and human dignity, is that Nigeria’s population has exploded. More and more people have been born into a lifetime of poverty and estranged attitude to the true meaning of life. The pockets of achievements by Nigerians especially in medicine, entertainment and sports are not inspired by government or institutions. They are mostly fueled by the resilience of people who wanted to survive by all means. There was never a level playing ground for talent discovery and institutions-backed national development.

All the things that could make a nation great if the inhabitants share the same culture, spoke the same language and have the same insights into the meaning of life, are completely absent in Nigeria. That is why terrorists would attack Plateau. They do not see the inhabitants of Plateau as humans. They see them as lower animals that must be wiped away from the surface of the earth. Invariably, the message is clear, the terrorists of Northern Nigeria have no single reason to belong to the same country as the people of plateau. If you don’t get that, there is no way I can make it clearer to you. You can therefore expect more massacres. Nigeria is built that way.

In a nation, a land or a country where everybody speaks the same language, it would never happen that some people would cry out of hunger and not do anything about it. If the hunger that Lagosians faced is in the hands of Tinubu are in a situation where Tinubu is president of Yorubaland only, I cannot see how Tinubu can survive the rage that would follow. But the hunger is spread across a group of unconnected nationalities that thrive on confusion, a group of unrelated nationalities that blossom in tribalism and extreme nepotism. So, it is not hard to predict that Nigerians, as it is, we continue to be among the poorest people in the world because they have not taken steps to end Nigeria and build strong independent nations like the Oduduwa/Yoruba Nation, Biafra, Arewa, Middle-Belt kingdom and Southern Niger Delta.

In the absence of the emergence of these nations-that would not only compete regionally for progress and development, but also internationally for fame, prosperity and superpower, the people of Lagos can continue to carry placards for the remaining over 150 million or more living from hand to mouth, unsure of the next meal. For the people of Plateau, the best solution is self-defense. Call on your politicians, let them buy arms and ammunitions, so you can protect your land and resources that keep enticing the enemy. Protect your women, children and the elderly. No matter how much you cry, the terrorists are coming back, and they will not stop until you are completely decimated. This is the history of Nigeria, a bloody British mistake and colonial invention, made solely for the suppression of the progress of the African race.

If we don’t stop Nigeria, we cannot stop the chant “We Are Hungry”. If we don’t stop Nigeria, the only way to survive terrorism and forceful take-over of our local resources is to “fight back”.

In a country that was built on false foundations, people will line the country and shout ” We are Hungry” without doing anything about it.