OUR GOVERNMENT IS A TERRORIST AND ENABLER OF OUR NATIONAL INSECURITIES. Written by KEMKA S. IBEJI

Whenever one is reminded or thinks of government, the first thing that occurs to mind is those who tell us what to do in the community. We remember the fears from tax enforcement, levies on the salaries of public and civil servants, bills from electricity, water, tolls and more. Again, especially in Nigeria, we always have in mind the issues of monthly state allocations and the sharing of money in Abuja. Other things we have in our memories once we hear of government are the police who stop you on the road for #50 (fifty Naira), the EFCC that dabbles into every issue ranging from personal and interpersonal businesses to domestic matters, the judiciary that sell judgements in their supermarkets dubbed courts, the legislators who fight for money at the National Assembly buildings and engage in all manner of contract businesses in the name of constituency projects and sorts. We also won't forget their clownish committees where money is severally shared, where budget defenders are harassed, humiliated and forced to bribe their ways through. The jamborees of oversights and visiting of contract sites, invitations of their fellow contractors for either embarrassments or egunje will not be forgotten. Egunje is the Nigerian word depicting bribery and such types of corruption.

Bitter memories of our government and their significant signposts are inexhaustible and the more we wish to write about them, the more we run into despair, confusion, dejection, mental torture, psychological terrorism, fears and all manner of emotional and subconscious startling and intimidation. We tend to feel more unsafe once we remember the government. They oppress us in our our homes, in our business places, on the roads, in our schools, in the public places and everywhere possible.

With all listed in the foregoing which are just a tip of the iceberg, we see government as the group of oppressors who fix themselves at all corners of our national life to situate pains, agonies and dehumanisation.

When we were taken on academic study of government, which I now see as too ideal, our learning was to put up an understanding of government's primordial and foundational duties as safety or security of lives and property. Certain allegories were employed to drive home these teachings. Prominent among such theories is the Social Contract. Along their lines, the trinitarian social contractarians of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean Jacque Rousseau painted an image that seems to be describing some environments near our present day experiences in the society where lives were brutish, solitary, nasty and short. Their drafts of that society was named "the state of nature". In that society tagged state of nature where lives were lived so badly unsafe and in the utter lawlessness, the people, as we read, came together in rejection of their shared daily experiences and adopted their subjection to a sovereign who was bestowed thereafter or forthwith with the powers to manage and administer their common will in the commonwealth.

The infinitly finite decimal and substructure of the sovereign, which is now the government, is to establish, keep, sustain, retain and procure the safety of lives and property in the polity or community. It is important not to forget that the sovereign has grown over time to be what we know today as the government. And the government has been broken down into three arms known today as the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary. While the Legislature comprised of the legislators are saddled with the responsibility of law making, the Executive is of the job of enforcement or execution of the laws while the judiciary is billed to interpret the law in the case of discrepancy or misunderstanding. In all their work, these folks are merely and essentially empowered to keep everyone in the political jurisdiction safe and of social health with their property. Though their work or job description goes beyond security and delves into welfarist concerns and more, it is instructive to note that the predominantly essential duty of the government before any other thing is the security and safety of lives and property of her citizens.

It is therefore impressive to engage a juxtaposition of what the government is to us now or at the moment and what the government was set up to be.  One may begin to think such comparison is a comedy of association or an incoherent chemistry of symphony. In other words, trying to compare what the government is today in our society and what it is supposed to be by its creation one begins to appreciate that the is is a far cry from the ought. What government has turned out to be is far away from what it was established to be. This negation of natural and contrived duty of government has been further disturbing when one begins to see the hands of the executive arm of government in the creation, planting, nurturing, fertilization and harvesting of the spate of insecurity in the land.

Today our society is cursed, shamed, stunned, bedraggled and bedeviled with/by an army of insecurities while the government looks confused, hapless and helpless.

Instances are advertised where the government itself is the architect and creators of the insecurities. We have been baptized with plethora of news items where the police and other security agencies are either the kidnappers themselves or their tact aids. The security outfits have severally been fingered in either frustrating the attempts to foil and/or apprehend the criminals of armed robbery, kidnapping, murder, assassination, rape, trafficking in humans, drug peddling and abuse, embezzlements and the likes. And in most cases, they have been caught leading the gangs of these outlaws. Do we now talk about the Executives who hold back the salaries of citizens thereby creating hardships and crimes in the society? The diversion of the common will into their private and personal purses has become traditional and acceptable norm within government circles from the civil service rank and file to the peak or uppermost echelon. The government agents break the law so unabashedly, they rape common mores and defile sacred rights of all with the pride of resounding arrogance. Social and legal taboos are a commonsense in our society and nobody gives a hoot. Instead of guiding the citizens against the criminals, the government and her security agencies are now protecting the criminals from the citizens who are trying to help themselves out. The government disarms the citizens and render them vulnerable and defenceless while empowering and emboldening the unlawful actors.

How on earth can one describe or explain a situation where the government is begged to declare the deadly armed bandits and killer herdsmen as terrorists? I mean, how? These armed bandits and killer herders have killed thousands of innocent citizens and counting and are found within the circles power yet we are forced to believe that the government is what it is supposed to be. The army and police make demarcations and take up a location leaving the rest part of the states for the terrorists yet we believe there is a government instead of terrorists. In several places in the country, we have heard of the government security agents invading communities, maiming and killing innocent citizens for daring to safeguard themselves against the terrorists of armed bandits and evil herdsmen.

What about the case of our soldiers dying in droves at the fields trying to ward off the terrorists? What about their families being left without adequate care? What about those court marshalled and sentenced to death for either running for dear life after being overpowered by the terrorists with superior warheads and weapons or those who killed the terrorists and were craftily tagged human rights violators just to protect the terrorists and discourage the rest from harming the terrorists? Do we also have to remember instances where religion and ethnicity have been elevated above and beyond the national security? Are we not replete and tired of the flood of these news items flowing like rivers to our consciousness each day?

Do we need to dwell everlastingly on the executives in ignorance of the legislators and their pretentiousness and subtle or covert enhancement of the insecurities and criminal elements in the land? Do we have to forget or keep blind eyes to the fact that these legislators are of the responsibility to enact legislations to criminalise, outlaw and prescribe adequate punishment for these practitioners of insecurity in the country? And now have we ever wondered why no motions have been moved or bills presented in the parliament or legislature by any legislator to tackle the incessant insecurity in the country? Are these dreaded menaces being subjected to legal criticism and pruning by any legislator in the legislature anywhere in our knowledge? Why? These conspicuous vivid and lucid crimes which are openly known to the foetus as capital offences have enjoyed seemingly eternal existence outside the encoding of the statutes by the conscious avoidance of the law makers. Who again are the terrorists and who is best described as such?

There is no place for kidnappers, armed bandits and killer herdsmen in our daily constitutional discussion. In fact, they have been tactically absolved from responsibility accruals. If and only if the government and especially, its arm as, the legislature is not tactically involved in the national insecurities, one would have been sure to be graced with constant headlines of their wars against such recurrent acts destabilising our country. The prescription of requisite responsibilities in rewards or punishments for kidnappers, armed bandits and killer herdsmen should have been made commonsensical and a simple knowledge to all citizens by now if only the legislature and the entire government are not a terrorist either by commission or omission. But instead of doing their job and ensuring the security and safety of the citizens as established by their job description, they have worn the dresses of pretence, shirking of responsibilities and recrimination in skillful avoidance of their duties. The reason for this is not far fetched - they are the real terrorists.

How about the judiciary? The gimmicks of technical knockouts and procedural dribbling will quickly come to mind when we remember the judiciary - the most cogent pretender and alibi fashionista. These criminals have the courtrooms as thoroughfare. The criminals are very confident that once you successfully land their feet at the courtrooms that you have inadvertently set them free. They therefore work hand in cap with their institutional chauffeur (the police) who ensures that they are safely guided into the courts to meet My Lord who will pronounced them discharged and acquitted and in comical rendition, they ask them to take a bow. What a terrible society?

How many of such cases have been seen justly dispensed at the courts? Who has seen these terrorists sentenced and punished by the courts. My Lord is a member of the team and a terrorist extraordinaire; do not blame them. We stop hearing their names and about them (I mean the armed bandits and killer herdsmen that are captured by the self help of the citizens) once they have been car or truck lifted by the police to be rendered to My Lords.

In all, we merely have compartmentalised our insecurities within and without the government. While the government has a fair share of institutional crimes of diverse forms and in the security of the insecurity merchants and pedestrian terrorists, the street terrorists are having a heyday in daily dehumanisation of the people. So organ harvesting, kidnappings, murders, assassinations, human trafficking, terrorism, social destructions and mental illnesses and tortures are the order of the day. And again, our national dictionaries are bombed and fed fat with such lexicons as organ harvesters, kidnappers, murderers, assassins, human traffickers, terrorism and terrorists, crime and criminals, armed bandits, killer herdsmen and all sorts as such. They all live, cohabit, eat, drink and dine together with and between the gathering of the government personnel without any perplexing wind.

What is therefore left for the people is not resignation to fate or aloofness but a new mission to the retrieval of their will and its reassignment, if at all. The danger of this venture remains, however, inadequate prescription for such mission outside the systemized shackles called election which has been tailored by the same folks. Though this and many more make the mission a herculean and difficult task, they do not make it impracticable and/or impossible. The people must begin to initiate means and measures to ensure the trembling of the mainstays of all terrorists - institutional, regulatory and otherwise.