#SecureNorth

 “There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties, or you alter yourself meeting meeting them”. Phyllis Bottome

Her name was Aisha Mohammed. Remember that name, so that she does not become another statistic. She was 30, a graduate of computer science from Bayero University, Kano.Newly employed,she  was living with her husband and three children in  Barakallah, a suburb of Kaduna adjacent major   Nigeria Air Force  facilities. On Tuesday last week, when  it became obvious that armed people were intent on forcing their way into their house in the middle of the night, her husband left through a back door to alert the local vigilante and possibly air force personnel nearby. The kidnappers managed to break through the gates and succeeded in dragging her out of her home .Threatened by the response of the vigilante or air force personnel, her kidnappers shot her and abandoned her near an uncompleted building. When she was found, she was alive enough to say she had been shot. She died with her unborn baby in the hospital.

Remember her, and remember the unborn child that died with her. Remember the children and husband she left behind. Remember her, because she is one out of hundreds or thousands whose deaths are footnotes to the circumstances under which northerners in villages and cities live today. She should remind us of   thousands of women who cannot sleep in the night, or sleep at home, because kidnappers and bandits have encroached into grabbing distances  of towns and villages in the North. She should remind us  of men who are unable   protect their families, proud and brave men who  can hear gunshots and screams nearby or  at their doors, but  run or sit and pray  and wait for the inevitable. She reminds us of all the women who are abducted and go through unspeakable horrors in the hands of bandits, kidnappers and insurgents. She speaks of flowing tears and tears that cannot flow anymore. She speaks of our abject helplessness at the rising confidence of the criminal. Pray for her and the family she left behind. Pray for thousands more who could be her. Pray for those who are in hands of bandits and kidnappers waiting for huge amounts to be paid for their damaged freedom.

She was alive when young northerners marched with placards demanding that northerners should be made more secure. She might  have  followed the #EndSARS protests until they were stolen by criminals. She could  have followed social media frenzy around the protest, the geo-political dimensions they took and the  sorry state of their end. She might have watched President Buhari’s address to the nation days after  the protests, or watched images of stores  and warehouses being looted by citizens and criminals alike. Long before the #EndSARS protests, brave and angry youth in Katsina State had made brief appearances in anger at the permanence of the bandit and kidnappers and rapists in their lives. They were scattered away by the police or elders who promised to do something .Every northerner must have followed that address, watching out for clues that the young people who had marched briefly in the past and during the protests in the north  for more security for northern lives would have made enough  impression on the president  to warrant a mention.

Now that we have prayed for Allah’s mercies on her, should we  just wait to pray for other victims as well? Muslim clerics caution against protests and demonstrations by Muslims. What they do not explain sufficiently to an angry and hard-pressed citizenry is what Muslims who are aggrieved by an indifferent, incompetent, unjust and corrupt leadership should do. The overwhelming consensus here is that uprisings and other activities that could  threaten social order even under unjust or incompetent leaders are not allowed. Unjust rulers have expiry dates, but crises that could be set in motion by  uprisings and revolts  against them could cause more damage than even their injustice. Those who are persuaded by religious injunctions also know that God does not close all doors. He gave us the power to challenge injustice without causing more damage. We elect leaders. We can keep them on their toes while they wield power over us, or throw them out during elections. Even more significant, every bad leader reminds us that we have the power to elect better leaders.

It has become painfully obvious that the North may have to wait for a miracle or  the next elections to see serious improvements in its security and its economy. The miracle will be in the form of a president who will wake up to the reality that under his watch, the North has become one of the most dangerous places on earth  to live in. It will involve his acceptance that he, and no one else, has responsibility for the current state of the North. Not past administrations; not his opposition; not subversives and protesters. Just him. He controls the military, the police, the secret services, a legislature that asks ‘ how high?’ when he says ‘jump’, and awesome powers to use them. He has powers over all these, but he chooses to use pass-the-buck governors, his appointees and traditional leaders with no powers to try to engineer sympathy and point accusing fingers in the wrong direction. When the presidency creates a chorus line on an alleged attempt at regime change and the dangers of social media, you see evidence of pronounced denial of responsibility for the causes of the protests against insecurity, particularly in the north. You saw that in the president’s address; in the communique released after the meeting in Kaduna  involving  the highest levels of northern leadership;  in the levels of sympathy extended to losses from the south by northern leaders, even as northerners there were killed and their assets stolen or destroyed and places of worship destroyed.

There are three basic things our  leaders are doing wrong. One is that they are not responding appropriately to deep malaise created by poverty, absence of transparency and accountability in governance and the dangers of assuming that problems will walk away if sufficiently ignored. Whatever spin you put on the protests, there are real lessons and opportunities related to good and poor governance that should not be swept away with the debris. Two, they are confusing  means of expression with the rights and freedom of expression. Hashtags that criticize  leaders can also praise them. Social media cannot be condemned only on grounds that  they allow citizens to   criticize governments. It  certainly should be vigorously policed to protect society  from dangers of incitement and other abuses, but only governments competent to do this  and willing to tolerate dissent and criticism should do this. Our governments do not fall in this category, so they should adopt  more effective  solutions  to the discomforts of social media: good governance, higher levels of accountability and transparency. Three, they take northern communities for granted. There is an identifiable tendency to assume that the northerner is weighed down  by culture and tradition from expressing discontent over his circumstances. All too often, today’s leaders forget that Boko Haram insurgents were typical northerners a decade ago. Today's bandits were largely Fulani herders and Hausa peasants a few years ago. Criminals who rustle, kidnap, rape and  kill without any qualms were your run-of-mill northern poor who  themselves may have  been victims of other criminals not too long ago. It is not in the human character to keep submitting to abuse and injustice, because the human character always finds options.

Those who worry that our leaders are increasing the  size of the desperate and the hopeless in the North should resist with all  lawful pressure, and stop them or their kind from ever exercising power in future.