Fourth Republic: The reign of evil
By
A HISTORIAN of Nigeria's Fourth Republic would be remiss to omit the cruel quality of evil that overran the land in the early years. It was as if the demons were on standby. As soon as the last soldier marched out of the political arena, the demons clambered over hurdles, through gates, doors and windows. The reign of savagery began. It was not that the military years had been evil-free. On the contrary, the military era had witnessed principally an institutional form of evil, a depravity perpetrated by a class of usurpers whose messianism, welcome at first, congealed into a damnation. Evil at the time flowed from the state, or better still, free agents committed havoc in the name of the state: securocrats sanctioned assassinations, arbitrary detentions, black-and-blue beatings so severe that the fear of the uniform was the beginning of wisdom.
Now, in three years of democracy, state-approved savagery is mostly gone. But in that period, Nigerians have turned upon one another in unadulterated hate, in ethnic and religious violence or just plain criminality. The graph of the homicidal index is on the ascendant. It is true that the massacres at Odi and the scorched earth attack on Zaki-Biam had the imprimatur of state-authorised brutality ; but there is little surprise that the elements of the state that allegedly carried out those ghastly reprisals were sourced from the military, the ultimate savage class.
The worrisome character of evil in the Fourth Republic is the sudden addition of previous havens to the growing list of forbidden places. Even during the military years, a number of cities and zones had acquired feral images for their bigotry. Since the Maitatsine incident, for instance, Kano had gained in ill-repute for its religious distemper. So, the shocking effect is attenuated when bad news of savagery oozes from the place. Ife-Modakeke had equally notched up some smudged reputation for its intra-ethnic dogmatism often expressed through bloodletting. But Jos was always serene in our minds and in reality. Nearly two years ago, a combination of religious and ethnic hatred swept through the city in savage gusts. Houses, homes and businesses were incinerated. The eyes of a neighbour, cool and inviting and friendly in the past, suddenly transformed into vicious x-rays, to sort out the in-group members, isolate the rest and then kill them off. Calm has mostly returned now; although several weeks ago, rivals of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) briskly fed one another's intestines to the birds of the Jos air. Kaduna has equally lost its cosmopolitan allure after an estimated 3,000 died during riots over the planned introduction of Sharia. And Ajegunle was ruinous and meek enough in its unremitting poverty, at least until the vast Lagos slum erupted in ethnic barbarity.
Partly, the people's understanding of democracy is to blame for the preponderance of evil. The popular misconception is that democracy implies absolute, unrestrained freedom -the right to be lawless, even the right to kill. Get into a conversation with an educated Nigerian who is flirting with lawlessness; warn him of the dire consequences of his commission or omission, and the likely retort is that we are in a democracy and the government cannot restrain him. Such logic formulated in the minds of cretins, and there are millions of them hanging around the country, is the recipe for the prevalence of high-fidelity evil.
In a sense, the national misconstruction of the essence of democracy is a hangover of military rule. Most Nigerians who are below 30 had before May 1999 known no other life than that under authoritarianism. Things were done with immediate effect; might prevailed. You had a misunderstanding with someone else, and how did you settle scores? You "deal with the person". The concept of law and order was amiss. The sense of right and duty was absent. Those who were fed on such psychologically lethal diet are the secret cult undergraduates today; they are the principal recruits into the ethnic militias; they are the armed robbers and assassins whose finger on the trigger is their sense of duty. Military rule created a "them" versus "us" dichotomy: the oppressors and the oppressed. Military rule bottled up the people's energy and emotions. Thus, with the dawn of democracy three years ago, there was a sudden, messy release, like a volcano uncapped. Tether a dog for a long time, free it and witness its excited, often risky, gambol as the dog savours its new-found mobility.
Military rule was, in its worst manifestation, dehumanising. A life was transformed into a thing, an object, and an abstraction that could be obliterated without compunction. All it took was for a rifle to be cocked and aimed and the trigger released: a life with all the years of toil and upbringing, was abruptly cancelled. The statute book under the military was littered with death sentences by firing squad. Blood begets blood; we were transformed into a nation of vampires with civilians imitating the soldiers. It is not difficult, therefore, to see why we have not been able to shake off our shameful disregard for human life. The body count has no meaning for us. When we hear or read that 200 people have been killed in riots in Kano, another 100 or more in Ketu, Lagos, the foundation of our being is unaffected" at least to the extent that we are not directly touched or we have no relation so affected. Dead bodies in our midst are just numbers, an abstract reductionism that ordinarily should assail the pith of our being. But we have climbed down from the higher order of creation and are dwelling among the jackals.
Many there are who are persuaded by the spiritual perspective on the reign of evil in our midst. Primate of the Anglican Communion, the Most Rev. Peter Akinola, early this month delivered his Bishop's charge in Abuja, wherein he warned believers to be wary of "unclean spirits and demoniacs" that are dwelling amongst the people. He said: "These ferocious evil forces have been at work for about 25 years after the inglorious pagan festival of 1977 (FESTAC '77). One of the most painful side effects of that festival was the inadvertent unleashing on the country, of the evil forces and powers inherent in various heathenistic and occultic practices of (Africa's) past." Presumably, the exorcists have also been at work. For amid the whirlpool of evil, there has also been a phenomenal explosion in religious activities: praise-worship, fellowship, vigils and empathetic invocation of the name of God. Yet, there is an odd and shattering relationship between the call on God and the reality of our existence. The greater the intensity of religiosity, the higher and more atrocious the incidence of evil among us. Clearly, the exorcists are faltering. Alternatively, Satan is acting out a malevolent script of Job, to test how much we can endure before forsaking God.
Away from the world of elemental beings, we may yet see for ourselves how the devil has set up active workshops in the idle minds of millions of Nigerians. Practical steps that we ought to take to make life more secure and abundant we routinely ignore. Things that we ought to do to restrain our base instincts, we shun. Is it Satan that makes us forget to do the right things? Is it the devil that has made us not to realise that we have to mop up the many illegal assault weapons so freely available in the country? Is it the devil that has made it impossible for us to modernise our law enforcement agencies? Is it Satan that makes law enforcement difficult in this country and thereby allows evil to proliferate?
It is laughable, that in spite of the plenitude of provisions in the Criminal Code, the Federal Government has lately been beating its chest about proposing a bill to tame political violence. In three years of democracy during which thousands have died in circumstances of criminal or tortuous liability, just name how many suspects have been successfully prosecuted, in order to give meaning to the essence of punishment, which is deterrence. A bus or tanker owner ill-maintains his vehicle which crashes and kills hundreds of passengers and other road users, and the exorcists will be seeking out the devil. For every folly from which we escape, we attribute to deliverance from Satan. Satan may well have become our national scapegoat. In the process, the futile efforts at exorcising the devil have become the substitute for practical steps in tackling the workaday problems of governance and decent living.
June 2002