Watching the emerging chaos – Daily Trust

Three incidences of looting occurring in separate locations, recently, had coalesced into a pointer of the coming chaos. I refer to the incidences in no particular order but to draw attention to a looming anarchy.

On Friday of the penultimate week, the driver of a truck fully loaded with packs of spaghetti had made a stop in Dogurawa, outside Zaria city, to join a congregation of Juma’at prayer. In a jiffy, the lorry was attacked by a mob and plundered of all its contents. Many recordings were made of the incident and were sent on social media. One of the sad aspects of the episode was watching people coming from the prayer grounds and partaking in what was open thievery.

A few days later a mob attacked a warehouse around the Gwagwa-Tasha community in Abuja to loot bags of foodstuff stored there. While the attack in Dogurawa would look spontaneous, from all indications the attack on the Abuja warehouse was planned, coordinated and well-executed. The warehouse, as reported widely, belonging to the Agric Dept of the FCT was stripped bare over extended hours of looting in broad daylight and unchallenged by security agencies.

It was distressing watching the mob not only looting bags of food items but also stripping the warehouse of roofing sheets, doors, windows and whatever that could be removed. 

About the same period, it was also reported that during some demonstrations in some locations in Niger State, trucks of foodstuffs have been stopped and looted by mobs. The demonstrations were ostensibly to protest the present poor condition of living experienced due to high inflation.

Besides these sporadic attacks on trucks and warehouses, the latent assaults on schools by bandits are now spiking up. In a sordid re-enactment of the raid on a Chibok secondary school in 2012 by Boko Haram terrorists, bandits operating in Kaduna State hit an LGEA primary school in Kuriga, Chikun local government area to abduct over 200 students, most of them under the age of twelve. A day after during a similar operation armed men broke into a boarding school in the North West and seized 15 children as they slept.

The attack took place in Gidan Bakuso village of the Gada council area in Sokoto state in the wee hours, where the bandits seized the children from their hostel before security forces could arrive. Elsewhere, there are conflicting reports of a seizure of a large number of IDPs from a camp in Ngala, in the far north-east part of Borno State.

What all these add up to is a pernicious build-up of insecurity across the North. The attacks and abductions of children in schools are already attracting unsavoury publicity in the international media. When they kept comparing these with the Chibok girls’ abductions, they correctly tell us that we are reverting to those dark days when Boko Haram terrorists caused mayhem in our schools. Perhaps, what could be additionally vexatious to the government of the day would be the spate of attacks on food trucks and warehouses.

These attacks are a pointer to a breakdown of law and order brought about by a show of an uncaring attitude from the government. There might be elements of mischief makers making hay out of the lackadaisical approach of the government to deal with the situation. From all indications, when things get worse, these attacks will only increase. 

From my perspective, the government continuously remaining on a high horse is untenable. It needs to come down and engage. There is anger in the land brought about by high and galloping inflation which has eaten deep into the citizen’s ability to meet up with the cost of basic necessities of life. And all these problems can rightly be put at the feet of the president who decided at a whim to do away with the subsidy on petrol and also float the naira. I must confess that I am one of those who applauded the hard decisions because of the corruption surrounding both the subsidy on petroleum and the naira floatation.

I guessed there would be consequences, but I was in the firm belief that President Tinubu, the savvy administrator that was sold to us, would have in the kitty measures to alleviate whatever the consequences of his decision. However, as the consequences piled up, the naira kept tumbling down and the prices in the market kept bouncing up, I was awakened to the realisation that it might have all been a bluff, that the decisions were taken without thinking them through and we were now left with the short end of the stick.

But all is not lost. President Tinubu can still match his words with deeds by opening up the government’s warehouses to distribute food to the needy. This palliative can presently dampen agitations and steal the thunder from looters. The position of the naira would be a harder nut to crack. The president might not necessarily bring it down to the position ante. What is required would be to stabilise it so that users and long-term investors can plan. These plus some other rabbits in the president’s hat – review of workers’ salaries, provision of CMG Buses to alleviate transport costs, etc., – when pulled out could earn the government a breather in the short run, and put brakes on the emerging chaos.