Nye anyi egbe

In life, there are people who you encounter that end up, even if passively, boost your progress, or change your trajectory. For me, one of those is Dele Olojede.

I was a network engineer and web programmer when jeremyweate insisted that I join them at 234next.com. Dele wasn’t too keen initially, but Jeremy convinced him that I could sort out a problem that they had with the site, so I was given a month, and then I got the job thereafter.

That introduced me to Kadaria Ahmed, and the ensuing shift from being an IT person to being a journalist, which in turn led to my meeting Chidi Odinkalu, and well, the rest is history.

As Aniedi Udo-Obong once accused me, “You betrayed your training.”

Anyway back to Dele, and I have just one thing against him: he let the 234next website disappear. The site is now only accessible via the Wayback Machine, a real shame because a critical period of Nigeria’s history was documented on that platform. This brings me to the call by the governor of Benue’s state today, that “responsible Nigerians should be allowed to bear arms”.

I wrote something very similar in September 2009, which I’ll reproduce in its entirety here, in case the Wayback Machine ever goes down…

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

— -The Second Amendment, United States Constitution

In the 2007 movie Death Sentence, Kevin Bacon plays Nick Hume, an otherwise normal executive whose son is killed by a gang-banger as part of his initiation into a gang. His one ray of hope is that the killer (whom he saw) was caught at the crime scene, but when the DA offers up a maximum of 2 years in prison as retribution, he knows there must be something better, something that will allow his family move on.

In the court, he retracts his testimony as the lone witness, essentially killing the case, and begins to look for another means of justice. It comes to him in the form of violent revenge, which simultaneously gives him the relief he’s looking for, but sadly puts his family on a path towards death, as the rest of the gang comes looking for their own revenge.

Lawlessness

When I initially watched the movie in a cinema two years ago, as the gang pursued Hume through the city entre, shooting away; someone made a comment: “America is lawless.”

I’ve always maintained that the movies a country reels out are a reflection of life in that country. So when you watch Nollywood movies as an example, you get the distinct impression that Nigerians are a fetish lot. Same way, I have a very strong impression that in large parts of the US, a simple argument over a blob of chewing gum for example can end in a gun fight. That is the impression Hollywood conveys, and when one reads that the US is in reality the most armed country in the world, one has almost no choice but to agree with that.

However, people still move around at night in that country without fear for life and property; people still go home without too much fear of armed marauders coming into the homes and snuffing away their lives. And this despite the fact that every other person and his mother has a weapon stashed somewhere.

Maybe this sense of security is brought about because, despite the fact that crime is indeed rampant in the US, we don’t hear stories of armed gangs laying siege on entire residential districts and then proceeding to loot each home turn by turn, sometimes over the course of consecutive nights, and in the almost certain knowledge that the police will not turn up while home owners wait their turn, uttering prayers to a God that is simply not listening…

Such a gang of home invaders would never get far in an American town, because of the ferocity of the armed response it would encounter in virtually every home even before the police and SWAT teams arrive to reinforce those defending their families, and eventually remove the corpses of the dead and dying, amongst whom would be a large proportion of the marauders. Also, it is unarguable that the various police forces in the US, the FBI, and whatever other law enforcement agencies that they have (there are plenty), are amongst the most effective in the world.

This brings us to Naija…

Three days ago, a man was murdered in his own home. Bayo Ohu was a political correspondent with The Guardian. He was killed by three men who walked into his house in broad daylight and shot him to death. The men then walked quite calmly away.

Then, in a ‘swift’ reaction, the police PRO, Frank Mba, has changed his story from ‘suspected murder’ to ‘alleged armed robbery’ because Ohu’s laptop was taken, and the car in which the murderers came has been recovered. Cue the case being left to die away quietly.

The security situation in Naija has always been bad, no questions about that, but it sadly appears to be getting worse. Regularly, one reads in the news of acts of violence that are getting worse in terms of frequency and sheer wickedness. The police appear helpless.

Or are they really?

The question still remains unanswered: You take a man, he has a wife (maybe two), and children. You give him N8500 a month, ask him to buy his shoes from that amount. You ask him to buy his torch, bulb and batteries from that amount. From that amount he is also expected to cater for his aforementioned family. Then you give him a gun! What do you want him to do?

That question hangs in the air.

Consider this scenario: back in the mid-1990s Onitsha was under seige from night marauders. It had gotten so bad that in their overconfidence these criminals would send letters to entire neighbourhoods in advance of their operations, detailing what they wanted, and anyone who failed to provide the robbers with their requests would end up on a mortuary slab. However, there was one man who refused to be intimidated. When he received that letter, he sent his family away, and on the night the robbers visited, met them force for force. He killed three of them before the rest beat a hasty retreat. He was smart enough to leave town before the next night and he is still alive until this day. Now, imagine if his entire neighbourhood was armed.

The point of this article is to advocate that the average Nigerian be allowed to own his/her own personal arsenal. Maybe that would make violent criminals think twice. There are those who would say that if every Okeke, Haruna and Bolaji had a gun, then the level of carnage on our streets would be intolerable.

Perhaps. But what other alternative are there, in a country where life is getting cheaper by the day?

There will always be the random, deranged criminal such as in the Virginia Tech massacre in America. Whether he chooses to kill with a gun is a red herring. If the university had allowed concealed weapons on campus, that deranged geezer would not have killed as many as he did. Because of the ban on guns on campus (which did such a good job, didn’t it?), people were slaughtered like sheep.

Do you believe, for example, that coups -the sort that have brutally destabilised Nigeria since its very inception — would be allowed by the people in America? Before the Nazis went on their extermination of the German Jews, they systematically disarmed the populace. On average, how many people are killed by their own government in world history, as opposed to some external, nebulous enemy? Look it up, you’d be shocked. It is asinine to put your very life in the hands of corrupt politicians and even more corrupt police. You may as well stop doing anything for yourself.

The fact of the matter is simple and all too human (read — common sensical): the police, no matter how good, will never be able to adequately and pro-actively protect you, the average citizen.

Self-defense is a human right, and if, added to an ineffecual police, the Nigerian government takes away the ability to protect yourself against armed attack, then that is tantamount to allowing murder, as is the case of Mr. Ohu.

In Nigeria we have quite stringent anti-gun laws, but, increasingly these days, those laws no longer make sense.

May Mr. Ohu, and all the other victims of unresolved murders in Nigeria, rest in peace. Amen.

P.S: The title of this article in the language of my forefathers means, ‘give us guns’.

For the records, the domain, 234next.com has been taken over by some Dutch pirates. A real pity…

I agree with Benue’s governor, Sam Ortom. The security situation in Nigeria demands that all of us have guns…

11 years later, and Bayo Ohu’s killers have not been brought to justice.