Peace is not a four lettered word broadcasters abhor. It is a letter more. English’s five- lettered-words have got both form and sound great for both the lip and the ear. Brief and apt for those who are word-minded. The word in question is one of few Nigerians loved to have on lips every time. It is not only a word they value, it is also a value in the word they cherish.
Take all their riches away. Nigerians will tell you their peace is worth more than anything. We love to live for nothing else. Peace is all we eat and live for. We pray and work for peace. We pray for immaterial peace, the type bad luck, accident, death or any misfortune disturbs any time. We work for material peace, the type our hard work, audacity and struggle guarantees. Both are necessary to make life complete. You need both the help of God and your own struggle to make life what you want out of it.
The love for peace is like any other. It has a tendency to blindfold you from other important aspects of life you drop for it. I do not want to be accused of dismissing the notion that peace is not everything. It is, if you hold it that dear. The issue in peace is more than just that. God in his wisdom reduces man below the point of perfection to give the universal notion that there is no completely good part of anything. So keep it at the back of your mind for a while. Peace cannot substitute for everything, all things for all the time. But it is for us a blessing at least.
From the gory scenes of some places I can collect here on earth, it is amazing to everyone who knows how we live how blessed this country is. From the best part of my sense, it is Nigeria, not the other, now economic-troubled, nation that is God’s Own Country. This is the only country I know which has defied all temptations to cripple it. Forget the scars of 1967-70 and the perennial turmoil and violence here and there; this is the surviving most peaceful of all threatened places in the world.
We have got both of the world’s only precious things; peace and oil. They are the sources of power for nations like Switzerland and Saudi- Arabia respectively. Two great nations by any standards which have not lost sight of their essence when pursuing peace and oil. The essence of every nation is to keep its promise, whatever it is, to its citizens.
We have got in Nigeria both of what the other two nations parade with pride. And we have not doubled their strengths. We have not even caught up with the progress of one. This is because peace and oil are adversaries, not partners in national development. If you have one, you must drop or forfeit the other. Peace and oil are like two rams. If they must drink from the same bucket, they will lock horns. It is partly the reason why God blessed us with both, to give this country the nature no other nation is made of. But for us, it is peace, not oil that is our first and best treasure since we started off. What oil could not give us has been par ably replaced by the peace on the land. See what we are with all our political, social and economic curses: together in poverty in the land of abundance. We are the only people who got much and lost much at the same time. We got much peace and lost much oil in history. Now it reverses: we got more oil and seem to lose our peace.
What we do not have in something else; we got it in our peace. Peace is a Nigerian albatross clad in the white colours of the national flag: plain and clean. Nigeria, like the beauty of its colours and the mountainous and arid landscapes, is God’s own gift to this world so that the lesson of nationhood can be driven from here. God made it rich with oil and peaceful in its diversity for many good reasons many of us may not savour easily.
From the lessons of the curse of oil for which America has invaded Iraq and on the verge of taking Iran, Nigeria’s magic of keeping a peace, however fragile, is quite a national pride, especially when many other poor nations, not the type of America and Iran, are fighting without the good reason of oil.
Now at the most critical international history – when America may elect the first black president in its history; when Mugabe is making an immortal presidency, and when we are here making unprecedented money out of an unprecedented oil boom without any word or action about it – the future of this country is, again, pray, a promise of God, and only Him can decide what He wants for His own country.Peace is what we know as the absence of rift, conflict, or war, enough of which we got all. But peace means more than those. It also means security from famine, disease and poverty, much of which we got all over. So we are both at peace and at poverty. God’s decision to make us rich and poor is to tame our audacity so that we do not take over the world and enslave it. Those who are concerned with this country as they are with all the oil spots elsewhere understand our potentials well and would stop at nothing to get at us.
Our peace has cost us much as individuals and as a people. Nigeria’s brand of peace is rooted in deep cultural and religious value system. This, remember, is the most religious nation on earth. And most cultural too if you like. If you think of any other more cultural society, you must also think of the symbolism of Nigeria’s composition, intricately weaved by the mountains, waters and the terrain; more than the Baltic’s.
I am writing at a time when the militants in the creeks – wild than ever – are, again pulling out their weapons against us. I can see them more dangerous now; armed, red-eyed and blood-thirsty. Anyone who underestimates their might and guts must be unfair to all of us.
And this seems to come from those in government who should have decided on the issue long away. God save us. But why should a group of young men rise against both the public and the government like that? This is one question few of us ask much as we talk of the problems of the Niger Delta. Now all of us seem to be getting ready to pay for the silence and inaction over a paramount national problem, allowing a little flaw in our federalism degenerate to this level. These youth are not imported American marines in the forests of Vietnam? They are our own boys, born and bred on the very soil we call our own and they proclaim, with the seal of Nigeria’s nationality.
I am writing at a time when the national army, Luka Yusuf says, has not received a presidential order to attack and kill. Government has already decided – wrongly – that force- for-force is the only option it got and is going to act without the legitimacy of citizens’ stamp of approval. It means we have come to live with this habit of force-for-force as a national policy even in a democracy.
By the time the army strikes, after which perhaps you get to read this, take it from me, it will be a full war comparable to any other, except you do not want to believe the forces of weapon and frustration of these youth, plus the conspiracy theorists’ idea about the whole issue. But it is a war the national army can win at the end, after grave consequences. I can see the government’s own part of the destruction in the region, including damaging more oil fields, part of the strong reasons it is fighting a war. Typically two wrongs at work against each other.
Then we will be in for a retard to yesterday’s echoes of past military dictatorship clad in agbada: “we will not allow a few disgruntled elements to hold the nation to ransom….” In a democracy not the type of Mugabe Republic, this is outrageous and irrational. Then the same government will take the guts abroad as a big sister to delve into other mediation with the brandish of immorality. I wonder if we will be able to do that effectively if we wage our own war now and play Good Samaritan later. When they have to take defence, the armed youth will take both the fields and humans as shields. And that is the only result of meeting a force with another. When it is over, we will have no guts left to stand up to anybody for anything.
I am now beginning to feel my worst jitters since this government started. I thought the new Yar’adua policy on the Niger Delta will take the option no government before it even thought. This is a clear case of marginalization, a key one. Government has to dread it with care. The hope is to quell not fuel it.
The proposed programme of infrastructural development, a key issue in the militants’ argument, will be a good panacea if it will precede the launch of force. But because that will not be in the interest of the greedy few elite, we may not likely see it happen. Those who are pushing for the enforcement against the facilitation are hawks waiting for a bounty of violence. Unfortunately, they are the same advisers and leaders around the presidency whose words are considered “important to the nation.”
They youth are relaunching their come back to the issue of the Niger Delta at a critical time for the country. The OPEC secretary said that the oil price may hit the tenth record of $170 per barrel. A friend wanted to ask whether that is good for Nigeria. It is bad for Nigeria for the simple reason that signs from government and the attitude of politicians especially since that crude share among the tiers raise more questions than hope for everyone. I had wanted to write about why are we dreading the same old path that lands us into this form of conflict or the other each time we take it?
Now the Niger Delta, more than the blunt edge of press and media debate, is the only national conscience drawing national attention to a national imperative. The lesson in all this is that we have a lingering problem the only way to solve it is not to close eyes to the wrongs but open up a national programme to ensure lasting, not temporal, solution to the problem. I think that except we rise to tell government what is right to do, we may be in a terrible stage in our life.
The other day I wrote about the Niger delta and suggested how those of us outside the region treat the issue and think about it, a friend thought it was an unfair comment. Now see. When government is preparing to go to war over a genuine national issue out of government mistake, the rest of the country is silent or not protesting, afterall they should kill themselves. This regional sentiment is the very stuff which shapes government ideas in the presidency where the mediocre ransack national policy to their whims.
We have lived with peace for a while now but it seems we are reneging on God’s promise for Nigeria. The good peace we kept for a time now seems to slip away. What happens shortly is as critical to all as it is critical to the soldiers and the militants we push into war. In this, both the soldiers and the militants are national forces clashing for no real cause. The absence of a cause is in the enforcement of peace. The government’s false idea is that by the time they are crushed, it will breathe for some time.
Yes. But that is only temporary. As we have seen many times, each time we arrest, kill or eliminate a people, they regroup more powerfully. You see the sweep of every generation is replaced by another in a divine order of reproduction. More youth are born every day; grow out of school, poor and street-bound. They do not only imagine it. They see the glaring indices of injustice every day. The idea of their struggle builds up in their minds and is handed to generations and groups. If you kill them, the idea lives and the violence hardens them more to the struggle.
Even the most peace is a potential threat to national security because the national policy is such that keeps them at bay, pushing them further in the abyss of wants and needs. After the national economy fails to address key problems of a forsaken people, see the way government wants to go about it.
But peace is enforced in this country all the years we have known it. We have not been peaceful by choice. Left to many of us, what God has put together in the conception of Nigeria would have been history. What has ensured our collective survival which now brings us face to face with an oil boom and a war is the deceptive way by which we have been kept silent in hunger, misery and wants in the name of peace a very long time. The push now draws to the wall and the fed up from the other side of life’s hell in Nigeria are just taking the final bow in their life-long struggle to get better. When the better is not held by any national promise, they throw the mantle of life.
No one should think the equal government threat against the militants is an attempt to frighten them. Those are not school pupils. They are products of Nigerian national political economy, graduated into the hard-line of want along the intimidation of abundant wealth. They are ready to die, because on taking arms, they have decided there is nothing worth living for. If we help them die, we will even be doing a favour to them, to the selfish and to our enemies.
But those on whose heads these youth are going to die must understand that the Niger Delta issue may take them to war crimes court or eventually consume it. It is much easier to solve it once and for all: help develop the place by direct intervention; improve life; build industries and build schools to keep the youth within four walls.
There is a conspiracy at work. And Mr. President is feared to be in for it more than anyone. He came into government on a national promise. The symbol of that promise is the hope to upturn the infrastructural degradation represented by the Niger Delta. Any minister, adviser, governor or contractor who is advising the President against the interest of the needy is his enemy and enemy of the State.
While the youth live and now die, politicians, clerics and traditional rulers all over the country are working to seal our hearts and mouths for peace. They have succeeded for the most time, making millions sleep with hunger in empty homes and under the rain. Thanks to their national service. We have lived well for the most of our lives. But here. See what the peace has earned us. We are worst today than ever like we are richer than at any time. And now cannot sleep even hungry. The earth is turning against us from here. And everyone is silent.
Meet the new brand of world militancy from the shores of Nigeria. What is good about us is that even in this we are giving the world a new form of violence that is neither terrorism nor rebellion. If the government is confronting this new force with a force because it thinks this a rebellion, it is wrong. If it is fighting its own type of terrorism of a national challenge, this is going to be a worst war on terror. These terrorists, like the Bin-Laden brand, are fighting to die not to live, and are located in identified zones, making combat close-ranged and deadly. But unlike those, these are nationals who if not for the push of their condition and the temptations of want, would be better fellows than many of us. Now it is their intelligence I fear they will use against us.
We are known for killing our best as we have been known for living peacefully. We have killed enough of our best in the name of oil money. Every moment of peace we enjoy, we pay three times for it. Every time we are in for a preachment for peace, it is a national time to derail the country from a genuine cause or impose a people-enemy policy. What is now experienced is the effect of all the peaceful moments and the policies we have worked to produce.
In enforcing peace instead of facilitating it, we only waste time and energy – and lives. And our problems grow. The new national value on demand is not peace any more: justice. And until it flows in the Niger, Ngadabul, Yobe, Benue; the eyes must not sleep.
Those who must create problems and kill before they will in the luxury they cherish be careful. These are no times like those. The architects of this country live in peace. God save Nigeria.
Hassan Alhaji Hassan can be contacted on 08032829772/08050551220 (text only with full names and address)a[email protected]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect WikkiTimes’ editorial stance.
