Plateau Genocide And The Hungry Generation: Out Of Civilisation’s Framework

January 2, 2024January 2, 2024 / Adeola / Leave a comment

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.

Bangers, The Fire Brigade Approach And Another Call To Duty

December 27, 2012 / Adeola / Leave a comment

Adeola Aderounmu

In the past and even this year, the Lagos State Government had tried without success to prohibit the use of firecrackers and other fireworks (popularly called knockouts and bangers in Nigeria).

The fire disaster that took place in Lagos this week is another wakeup call on many fronts.

The unfortunate incidents reminded me of one of my earliest articles published both on the Nigeria Village Square and in the Nigerian Guardian Newspaper. The article first published in 2007 is titled: What is Fire Brigade Approach?

In that article, I defined The Fire Brigade Approach as “Nigerians spending last minutes efforts in trying to solve a problem that has been there forever”. That definition borrowed from what I knew of the Fire Brigade while growing up in Nigeria still sadly fit the working approaches of several institutions and agencies in Nigeria today.

No one will likely succeed in stopping the use of fireworks during celebrations or festivities. Some traditions are too strong to kill.

It will require adequate regulations to monitor the safe sale and proper use of these fireworks.

It should not be possible for any businessman or woman to just be able to import or take possession of these dangerous things simply because they are business persons.

The federal and state governments in Nigeria should monitor and approve companies that are fit to undertake such businesses and these should not be based on sentiments or family connections.

Wholesale and retail outlets that distribute these products should have adequate safety procedures to deal with accidents. It is even better to have procedures that will prevent the accidents in the first place.

Considering the fire outbreak in Lagos, it is clear that there are no regulations or they are not followed. Often in Nigeria, the time is not taken to do things meticulously. In many cases no one is ensuring that the regulations are followed especially when bribes can be paid to make rules worthless and inconsequential.

I cannot still imagine that knock-outs as we call them are sold in such a congested area in Lagos. Obviously whether they have done that for several years is not the question, the point is that it has always been a disaster in the making. Then it happened!
With adequate and proper planning, such an accident (if it occurred) should have happened in an industrial area or a shopping area out of town. I mean a building that houses fireworks should either be isolated somewhere or has walls made of fire-resistant materials that will prevent the spread of accidental fire.

On other fronts some of the abnormal things about Nigeria were furthermore exposed by the ugly fire incident which has claimed one life and injured several others. The damage also included a number of houses.

Do we know if there are in-house emergency arrangements in the building where the fireworks are sold? I have not read about fire-extinguishers being used while awaiting the arrival of the fire brigade.

Generally this accident calls for a review of emergency handling situations in Nigeria.

Minor, major, man-made and natural disasters need to be reviewed in Nigeria.

People need to be taught how to deal with minor accidents so that they don’t escalate to major accidents. In certain accidents in Nigeria, stampede has led to more casualties than the original causes of the accidents.

People need to be taught how to prevent domestic and environmental accidents. When they happened they need to know how to deal with the situation immediately and what to do while seeking or waiting for help.

How many Nigerians have been educated that firecrackers are supposed to be mainly outdoor hobbies, something done at some reasonable distance from places of abode? I remembered how people threw bangers at each other in Nigeria and in fact that it was okay to aim them at another man’s flat or compound!

I knew people who held bangers in their hands till they explode and I’d seen at least two boys whose hands were blistered from such experiments.

Sadly too I recall many ugly incidents-including deaths-related to the use of fireworks in Nigeria.

Nigerians are also fond of looking and forming unnecessary crowd at the scene of accidents. Still what kind of crowd gathered in such a way that
it took the fire brigade about an hour to get through?

If the sirens were blowing out loud, does it means that Nigerians have become deaf that they couldn’t hear the siren or could it be that the sounds of sirens have become meaningless considering the misuse/abuse over the years? Where was the Nigerian Police during all these?

One man even took the helmet of a fireman. Was that a joke? The fire brigade and emergency workers can claim in this case that their work have been hindered or hampered by crowd gathering and doing nothing but taking pictures to be posted on social networks. Some heartless people actually visit scenes of accidents to steal or loot.

However, one man was reported to be scooping water with a bucket from a nearby source. Lagos (and Lagos Island in particular) is lineated, permeated and surrounded by water and the fire brigade always runs short of it. The disgust is the same when you see people who don’t have safe water to drink.

In any case, this man-made accident is another wakeup call.

The concerned Lagos State Government agencies or authorities should rise, step up and do that which is necessary to prevent another tragedy of this nature. It is not enough to earn or share money through official titles. It is not wise to wait for the next tragedy before something is done. The jobs must be done now and people need to be educated and informed.

The Lagos State Ministries in charge of Commerce & Trade, Environment, Information, Education, Town Planning and Industrialization should step forward and tell Lagosians the measures that have been or that are now in place to ensure the safety of lives and property. Emergency Management Agencies, the Police and the firemen/women should not be left out of the plans.