Southeast, the once most peaceful part of Nigeria is on fire? What is going on in the region presently has degenerated to what military strategists usually describe as ‘war in a war’: a situation where different violent groups engage one another in an escalating spiral of violence.
The current violence started with killers herdsmen attacking, sacking, killing and maiming several farming communities in the Southeast. When the government which has the responsibility to stop the killings allowed it to continue unabated, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra Mazi Nnamdi Kanu stepped in and formed the Eastern Security Network (ESN) to protect the farming communities under attack.
Kanu’s action received an immediate response from the Nigerian military and other security agencies who immediately deployed military asserts to hunt down Kanu’s group. Also, the Southeast Governors who have been sleeping on duty while the butcher in their zone was going on suddenly swung into action and formed what is today called the ‘Ebubeagu Security Network.’ The latest security network was meant to tackle the Eastern Security Network creating a situation where Igbo youths have guns drawn and pointed on each other.
In the issuing chaos that followed these security challenges, the now very popular Unknown Gunmen emerged killing Nigerian security agents and burning down government institutions including police stations and INEC offices. Additional targets of the unknown gunmen are politicians of Southeast extraction who have consistently been blamed for the pauperization of the zone. As should be expected, the war is currently waged on several fronts: Ebubeagu and Nigerian security agents against ESN and the Unknown Gunmen.
Be that as it may, the intension of this paper is not to profile the different armed groups fighting for the control of the Southeast. The paper rather intends to investigate a simple question: is violence the answer to the problem of frustration in the Southeast?
Frustration in Southeast
Every part of Nigeria has been marginalized one way or another. This notwithstanding, there is general consensus among Nigerians that the Southeast is the most marginalized part of the country.
The marginalization of the Southeast started with the way the Civil War was waged and ended. In that war, other parts Nigeria joined hand to wage a mindless butchery on the Old Eastern Nigeria, especially the Southeast. At the end of that war, the then Head of State of Biafra, General Philip Effiong warned the then Nigerian Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon to treat the surrendering Biafrans fairly otherwise their children will arise tomorrow to fight Nigeria again. More than 50 years after the war, the children of the vanquished Biafrans are still ill-treated and discriminated against in every aspect of the Nigerian society. There is no remarkable presence of the Federal Government, no functional air or seaport and the roads network in the region is the worst in the country. Efiong was correct; the children of the vanquished are taking up and dusting the guns surrendered by their fathers and grandfathers several decades ago.
So from all intents, the youths in the Southeast have every reason to be frustrated with a system that treats them as second class citizens. It is a part of the law of nature, that when a people are treated unfairly for so long, it will get to a point where out of frustration, they will start to vent out their anger in the form of violence.
In his book Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, Martin Luther King Jr., warned his fellow Americans that “as long as people are subjected to unjust systems, as long as they are trampled upon by the iron feet of exploitation, there is the danger that they, like children, will have their emotional outburst which will break out in violence.” This I feel is what is happening currently in the Southeast but come to think of it, is violence the solution to the problem?
Is Violence the Answer to Southeast Frustration with Nigeria?
Right from the beginning of human history, a reasonable percentage of humanity has always seen violence as an effective way of fighting injustice or of pursuing other political goals. This explains the endless violent struggles that have occurred in history as people struggled to throw off what they see as chains of oppression or to protect their interest.
Unfortunately, history has continued to show again and again, that violence is not an effective way of correcting injustice. A case in point is the Nigerian Civil War. Efforts of Ndi Igbo to resist injustice violently in that war ended in tragedy. Millions were massacred and untold collateral damages incurred. The suffering that results from that war endures to this day. In the end, justice was not done; oppression of Ndi Igbo in Nigeria has even increased. Similar to this are the Rwandan and Kosovo genocides. In both cases, the Tutsis and the Kosovars barely escaped annihilation; the price they were forced to pay for forcefully resisting what they considered grave injustice. The intervention by NATO in Kosovo killed more innocent people and inflicted so much havoc on civilians that life was made unbearable for those who survived the bombings.
In the Second World War, the Allies in trying to vanquish Hitler seen by many as the very incarnation of the devil did not only inflict untold suffering and mindless butchery on innocent Europeans but they also brought us the nuclear bombs. Today humanity lives under the shadow of possible nuclear Armageddon.
Additionally, the Americans in fighting the so called war to liberate Iraq from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein ended up killing more innocent Iraqis in few days than Saddam was able to kill in all his twenty four years of terror. Because of that violence, Iraq is far from peace. Very recently, the country has gone up in flames as the terror group ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) rampage from city to city, raping, abducting and killing anyone who stands on their way. One could go on and on enumerating these horrific incidents. The sum of it, however, is that human history is littered with untold tragedies resulting from human attempts to fight injustice with violence. Man, whenever he tries to stop injustice and make peace through violence only ends up committing more injustice and creating more chaos.
The Way Out
In the Southeast today, almost any young man you ask to eschew violence asks you the same questions: what is the way forward; should our people be allowed to be treated as second hand citizens in a country they call their own? Recently, following the re-arrest of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, one more question or demand has been included: should we fold our arms and watch our leader who is fighting for all of us to waste away in jail?
It therefore has to be noted that asking the youths of Southeast to eschew violence is not the same thing as asking them to do nothing; injustice has to be confronted and everybody believes that the Southeast has been treated unjustly. What this paper is underscoring is the need to give peace a chance. Every conflict, no matter the nature is eventually settled around the negotiation table. As Russia and Ukraine fight each other with some of the most advanced weapons including hypersonic missiles, they are still talking and looking for ways to end the conflict.
On this, it also becomes imperative that Southeast elders who are asking the youths to sheath their swords, should be able to show the youths that negotiation is working. Since last year, in other to allow the Anambra state governorship election to hold, Southeast youth were told that the elders would engage the FG, to secure Kanu’s release. Since then, no progress has been made on this and these youths are not fools. Thus, while it is necessary to emphasize that violence will not solve the problem, it is also imperative to underscore that doing nothing or embarking on political manipulation will not either.
