SIMONKOLAWOLELIVE! BY SIMON KOLAWOLE
Chilling. I mean very chilling. I felt a shiver down my spine on Tuesday when I saw the video of “new” Niger Delta militants, with war weapons, threatening to bomb Abuja and Lagos because of the “underdevelopment” of the oil-producing region. It brought back sad memories – memories of 2004 when organised lawlessness began to take unimaginable dimensions in Nigeria and we finally lost our “innocence”. Between then (when the militants started a campaign of kidnapping oil workers as well as bombing pipelines) and now, Nigeria has become a nation encircled by gunmen: terrorists, insurgents, bandits and kidnappers. The latest: 317 schoolgirls were kidnapped in Zamfara on Friday.
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On January 9, 2021, operatives of Amotekun – the quasi-state police outfit of south-western Nigeria – went to Aiyete in Ibarapa LGA, Oyo state, on a mission to arrest suspected kidnappers based on “intelligence” from the local communities. At the end of the operation, Alhaji Usman Okebi and his two sons were killed and several houses burnt in Okebi settlement. There were reports of gunfire exchange. Now, I have tried to narrate this incident in the simplest form. However, what I have just written in one paragraph is very loaded. If I do not decode it, you may never understand the undercurrents and the implications. You would think it was a simple case of crime fighting.
The public alert by the Department of State Services (DSS) to the effect that some people are fomenting religious crisis in the country is a frightening addition to the unenviable plight of a nation already under siege from various threats to internal security. As the primary agency responsible for domestic intelligence in Nigeria, the DSS needs to go beyond warning Nigerians and take proactive measures, using its paraphernalia of office, to fish out the culprits and bring them to book appropriately.
The agency lately alerted the public to ‘‘plans by some elements working with external forces to incite religious violence across the country.’’ ‘‘Part of the plans,’’ the organisation went on, is to cause inter-religious conflicts as well as use their foot soldiers to attack some worship centres, religious leaders, personalities, key and vulnerable points.