The Boko Haram conundrum, coupled with the fallouts of the removal of fuel subsidy seems to be creating more contentious issues for the country, writes KUNLE ODEREMI.

In the melee occasioned by the national strike over fuel subsidy removal, the Deputy National President of the Nigeria Labour Congress [NLC], Alhaji Issa Aremu, made some fundamental remarks on the Nigerian nation.

He assessed the general condition in the country over the years and concluded that the people still have a lot of reasons to be worried and apprehensive.

“It’s rather sad that we are living in a country, in which yesterday seems to be better than today,” he intoned

Almost within the same period, President Goodluck Jonathan also looked through his crystal ball and gave a picturesque view of contemporary realities in the country.  He specifically premised his analysis on current security challenges and his verdict was that things had never been this bad, even when Nigeria was engulfed in a three-year civil war.  Jonathan was quoted as saying, “I believe we will overcome our immediate challenges. The situation we have in our hands is even worse than the civil war that we fought. During the civil war, we knew and we could even predict where the enemy was coming from; you can even know the route (through which) they were coming from; you can even know what calibre of weapons they would use and so on. But the challenge we have today is more complicated…”

Many individuals and groups have equally captured the prevailing situation in different ways and offered possible way out of the confusion and tension in the land. Everyone agrees that Nigeria, the most populous black nation and world’s fifth largest oil-producing country but regrettably with a teeming poverty-stricken majority, is faced with the most defining moment. They have expressed deep concern on the rising threats to the foundation of the country. The fears have been heightened by threats from the Boko Haram sect to southerners resident in the North to relocate to their homestates and counter-threats by certain groups in the South to non-natives from North to leave. There were reports that the threats had led to the exodus of some citizens in some parts of the country to their states of origin. This is in spite of assurances by the authorities, particularly heads of security agencies and the police that they were on top of the situation. For instance, while the Ohanaeze Ndigbo has condemned the threat of Boko Haram that non-natives should leave the North, another shadowy group from the South-East has advised northerners in the region to leave the area in their own interest, thus returning the country to the dark era reminiscent of the June 12 debacle. Then, who owns the land?

Beyond the Boko Haram problem are the attendant discordant tunes of sections of the Nigerian population on the raison d’être  for the virulent activities of the  organisation. The endless carnage carried out by the group has provoked public anger with many raising core issues relating to the unity of the country. The kaleidoscope of events triggered by the removal of fuel subsidy has only aggravated the seeming confusion in the polity, threatening the stability of the nation. The agitation for government to restore the subsidy has cut across the country. But observers said this has not defeated the fact that the country was still in a very precarious situation politically because of the security challenges posed by the present crises, following threats of attacks and threats of retaliation by various groups. The worsening crisis has compelled some religious leaders to advise their followers to brace up and defend themselves because the authorities appeared overwhelmed by the different dimensions of the problem.  The leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), for example, has not minced words on how worrisome insecurity had become. The carnage in the North as a result of the activities of Boko Haram necessitated the president of the group, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor to say, “We call on Christians in any part of the country to defend themselves whenever they come under attack.” He added, “I will not subscribe to the notion that Christians should quit the North because of the ceaseless attacks, rather I will urge them to be vigilant and be prepared at all times to defend their families and their churches, including their businesses with whatever is available to them.”

However, the Ijaw National Congress (IJN) Chairman, Dr. Goddy Idaminabo, said the spate of brutalities in certain places make a Sovereign National Conference imperative. “We are aware that some groups of people, through their utterances, are fanning the embers of war under the guise of fuel subsidy removal. We, therefore, advise such groups to desist from such utterances and actions and work towards the unity of the country. We request the Ijaws wherever they find themselves, particularly in the North, to remain calm as the situation is being studied very carefully.”

The trio of Professor Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe and J.P. Clark have also lent their voices to the growing anxiety over the Nigerian federation. They have accordingly warned: “let not this fire spread.”  And Soyinka was particularly worried that the country was apparently “back to the trenches predictably,” just as Dr. Tunji Braithwaite, whose group, the National Consensus Group, was already planning to convene a national summit, where eminent citizens could fashion the way forward, issued a statement entitled, “The Pilchard is Broken.” Their position is that the emergency national summit slated for the coming week in Lagos will help to articulate and give direction to the aspirations of all Nigerians.

The consensus at the moment among  some prominent persons, including clerics and dons now is that the country is at the crossroads. It has led to them proffering varying solutions to the gathering storm, which no doubt is threatening the corporate existence of the country.  Many say the problem has been aggravated by the increasing rate of unemployment, grinding poverty among the masses, who constitute 70 per cent of the nation’s population, who reside in the rural areas.  Nigerians in the Disapora are also concerned about what they consider as the worsening socio-economic problems in the country. One of such eminent persons is a scholar at the Oxford University in the United Kingdom, Anthony Akinola. He said, “The state of insecurity we find ourselves in today can be attributed mainly to general poverty in the land. There is massive unemployment, university graduates can be found here and there hawking pure water and ice cream in order to make ends meet. This state of poverty also threatens the corporate existence of the country.”

The outcry over the gradual drifting of the country to a perceived dark alley has become more frequent among religious leaders following the spate of killings, because of the activities of Boko Haram in the North. Therefore, a former president of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and Catholic Archbishop of Abuja Dioceses, Arcbishop John Onaiyekan, was surprised that the government could decide to remove oil subsidy at a time the country was in a dire strait, owing to the terror unleashed on the citizens by the group. He believed that the official action was capable of compounding the security challenge in the land.

“Before January 1, we were trying to see how we could save our nation from terrorist attacks. That was supposed to be a major pre-occupation of the country, because fuel in or out, will be meaningless if there is no peace and tranquility in the land. The problem now is that the fuel subsidy is becoming a rather unfortunate diversion,” he said.

However, the public fury over the unpalatable consequences of Boko Haram is also discernible in the disposition of another former leader of CAN and Primate of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), Most Reverend Peter Jasper Akinola. But he insisted that the strategy of bloodshed currently being employed by the sect could not tackle the critical issues plaguing the country.  He believed the country could borrow a leaf from other lands, which shared a similar experience in the past but have found a way around their problems. “The Soviet Union agreed to disagree. For that reason, about five or six countries came out of the union. Already, Nigeria has six geo-political zones, which can form the basis of the division. But this is unthinkable, especially for those of our heroes like Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and others who fought the civil war to keep Nigeria one. For them, the question of Nigeria’s unity is a foregone conclusion. It is not debatable, not negotiable. Nigeria is one. And that is the end of the story. But in present reality, it is not so, because these people are anxious about destroying whatever stands in their own of getting Nigeria in their own thinking,” Akinola asserted.

However, Oxford university-based Akinola expanded the approach of adopting dialogue in the quest to get the country out of its present quagmire. He suggested that opinion leaders like traditional and religious leaders, politicians and media practitioners should “congregate and plot the way forward for the country.”   But another compatriot, who leads the Campaign for the Rights of Nigerians living in the Diaspora, Francis Nwapa believed that the ongoing struggle over the removal of oil subsidy was another opportunity for Nigeria to begin the process of producing a roadmap for the future of the country.   He said, “Nigeria should see this as a class struggle between the oppressors and the oppressed, and should rise to take their destiny in their own hands as the system is due to break, having brought untold hardship and excruciating pain to the masses, while a few persons loot and siphon the nation’s treasury.”