The Calculated Genocide in Nigeria: The Need for urgent Actions

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By Ogiri John Ogiri

The unprecedentedly incremental purging of certain targets one by one by a particular group of people in this country is gradually becoming an established reality.In Nigeria of today, water is cheap but life is cheaper. The premium placed on life in my country is very low. Life is wasted more often than water is wasted. Before now,we owed our existence to God. Whether we would live or die was solely determined by God. However, that has changed. The decision as to whether we will live or die is gradually coming to depend on what the Boko Haram Islamic terrorists and other bandits perceive to be acceptable in their own version of Islamic Ideology. I am worried. I am scared. Every Nigerian is scared. We are gradually approaching the precipice. The need for urgent actions thus cannot be over-estimated. We lost the sincere fight against insurgency from the day the APC-led federal government decided to entrust the entire security architecture in the hands of people from a particular region.

There are two alternatives available to us. It is either we take a sidon-look approach,pretending that everything is all right or will be okay because we have not been touched yet or we hold serious discussions that will help us take proportionate actions against our common enemies in order to secure the safety of the future of our country and of ourselves including our women and children. I favour the second alternative. Complacency should not be allowed to get the best of us at this time. We must act now to avoid any regret later. It is foolhardy to believe that we can stop insurgency by releasing those who have been killing others into the armed forces.  By doing so, we have legalized their propensity to kill. This time around,they will do it under the cover of government. Let us stop deceiving ourselves. All is not well. Not after watching that horrible video of a teenage Boko Haram terrorist shooting to death the young student from Plateau State that we should still relax and think that all is well. We have wearied out the priests with our constant requests for prayers. We have overwhelmed the pastors and the Imams with our requests for prayers yet none seems to be fruitful because we have no strategic plan of action. We should understand that God will not help us as a nation unless we take the initiative.

During the early days of the Nazi's meteoric rise to power in Germany,many prominent German church men and intellectuals maintained a studied silence because they still enjoyed some forms of false security. However, by the time they discovered that they were no longer safe, it had already become too late for them to speak out. A Lutheran Pastor, Martin Niemôller was to later pen his regret about their inaction and sheer cowardice in his post-war confession in Germany in 1946, a year after the second World War had ended.

He wrote "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me." 

A stich in time still saves nine.

©Ogiri John Ogiri