by Collins Uma

And, while Nigeria burns, President Goodluck Jonathan is more interested in smiling for the camera. His administrative posture in the midst of the ongoing carnage by Boko Haram and other terrorist organisations in different parts of Northern Nigeria is that of one who believes the killings are just targeted at putting undue pressure on him and making his administration difficult.

My trip along the Makurdi-Lafia road on Friday, March 7, 2014, should rank as one of the saddest I’ve ever had. Trekking along the tarred road in the hot midday sun from Daudu, in Guma Local Government Area of Benue State, to Makurdi were hundreds of women and children. Some of the women were very elderly and some of the children were toddlers who couldn’t be more than two years old. They cried as they walked. They had been walking for miles. Barefoot. Naked. Hungry.

I saw newborn babies strapped to their mothers’ backs, the mothers with as much loads as they could carry on their heads. But the heart breaking sight was that of a heavily pregnant woman being pushed on a wheelbarrow under the hot sun. Her strength was gone and her baby was due at any moment. There was no doctor or medical facility within sight. But she couldn’t stop. They dared not stop.

They were running from war.

They were running from a war described by the government and the media as a ‘crisis’. A war in which their attackers are called ‘hoodlums’ in a bid to downgrade the social perception of their attacks. A war in which the hundreds of lives lost, properties destroyed, the people displaced from ancestral homelands, the women and girls raped, the imminent hunger and starvation as a result of farmlands destroyed, the little children waking up in the middle of the night to sounds of gunfire and sights of relatives immolated and buildings burning are all not deemed as newsworthy. At least, not as newsworthy as a PDP rally in Minna which formed part of the major stories in Radio Nigeria’s 7am network news, twenty four hours after the attack on these Nigerians. The attack did not make the news.

The uncontrolled insurgency by armed Fulani herdsmen in different parts of Benue State, the latest of which is the attack on the Daudu community where several Tiv farmers were killed, has led to the counter-insurgency I predicted in a previous article on this matter. There are now barricades on the Makurdi-Lafia road, mounted by the residents, and vehicles travelling along the route are now stopped and searched. Anyone looking like a Fulani now travels at his own risk as they are often harassed. There have been reports of several innocent men killed along that route only because they looked like Fulanis. I can confirm that businesses around the Lafia garage in Makurdi, owned by fellow Nigerians of Northern extraction, have been closed down and the business owners beaten and chased out of town, many with serious injuries, as retaliation for the killing of Tivs by Fulanis. This is only an effect which carries within it a seed which is a cause that will yield more effects which become causes that create more effects. And it goes on. And until that cycle of causes and effects is broken, this atmosphere of fear and insecurity will continue to pervade the entire North-Central Nigeria.

In other parts of Northern Nigeria, insecurity is not just an ‘atmosphere’, it is a daily reality.

And, while Nigeria burns, President Goodluck Jonathan is more interested in smiling for the camera. His administrative posture in the midst of the ongoing carnage by Boko Haram and other terrorist organisations in different parts of Northern Nigeria is that of one who believes the killings are just targeted at putting undue pressure on him and making his administration difficult so he has decided to party non-stop to show his ‘detractors’ that he really doesn’t give a damn and ‘nothing dey happen’. He fails to understand that, even if he is the sun, these particular planets do not revolve around him. He fails to understand that this may not be about 2015. He fails to understand that this may just be a group of people who enjoy killing innocent Nigerians. And it is his sworn duty to ensure Nigerians are safe wherever they choose to reside.

This is not the first time Nigeria has been in the grip of terrorists. Before Boko Haram there was Maitatsine. That came and went. And we didn’t need a multi-billion dollar National Conference for that to happen. Jonathan once said he had a list of Boko Haram sponsors. Initiating legal action against those on that list would have not only shown that he has the will to stop this senseless bloodshed but also served to act as deterrent for others who may want to sponsor a section of the country to take up arms against fellow citizens, as armed Fulani herdsmen have been doing against Tivs and others.

The centenary celebrations have come and gone but the heavily pregnant woman in the wheelbarrow running from attackers, and the parents of the slain school children in Yobe do not give a damn about the number of foreign dignitaries who graced the occasion or how beautiful the fireworks were. They just want to have a Nigeria where their kids can grow up in peace without being awakened by gunshots in the middle of the night. This is not too much to ask.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.