Darkness at noon on the Kaduna road

The Kaduna-Abuja expressway is one of the busiest in our country. It is the principal gateway from our federal capital of Abuja linking the entire North West and North East. A new rail line now links the two cities – faster and safer than going by car. But that has not in any way assuaged the heaviness of traffic on the 200-km route. The carnage on that highway has become a metaphor for our benighted times; a death-trap that consumes men and women, young and old, without discrimination.
A possible rival in infamy would be the Lagos-Ibadan highway. A fortnight ago I had an important conference to attend in Ibadan but had to route my flight from Abuja through Lagos. It had been ages since I went on that road. And I must say it was an extraordinarily frightful experience. The greatest danger was posed by heavy-duty trucks. They observed no speed limits whatsoever. Driving neck-and-neck, they were speeding away at over 140 km per hour. I leave it to your imagination to speculate on what might happen in the event that emergency brakes needed to be applied suddenly. Trucks by nature operate on hydraulics that cannot necessarily brake abruptly. It is no wonder that accidents on that route tend to consume dozens at a time when they do occur. Fire and brimstone.
A few days ago, precisely, on Tuesday 31st July, I woke up not feeling particularly good. I thought it might be on account of the federal-inspired anarchy in Benue. Nopes. Or perhaps the gathering storm of bad omens at the National Assembly. Nein. I have this old habit of taking cold baths in the morning, no matter how frosty the weather. It’s an immune booster and keeps away common colds. But this time around, the water felt truly cold.
Images of death. Visions of Bonhoeffer being led away to the gallows. My favourite theologian, the German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was only 39 when he perished in April 1945 for opposing the Nazis. The Holy Spirit commanded, “Pray!” I went on my knees. Barely an hour later, I received a call from Kaduna: “I have bad news for you — our Pastor was killed a few minutes ago on his way to Abuja.” The pastor in question was Reverend Livinus Sunday.
I try never to wear my faith on my sleeves. But I must confess that Pastor Livinus has been of tremendous spiritual help to my family and I; a clergyman infinitely wise beyond his 37 years. That Tuesday morning he was on his way to Abuja in company of two of his church staff, a man and a young woman. He was on the driver’s seat. The bandits killed him at point-blank range. His male companion escaped into the bushes, but the woman was taken away. The kidnappers called later, demanding a ransom of N30 million.
Livinus Sunday was just a young pastor living up to God’s calling on his life. He was like a member of my family; a true servant of the Lord in this evil and wicked generation in which we are fated to live. He was carefree and totally fearless; always high in the spirit and in the joy of the Lord. He and I had begun a project to give modest support to churches throughout the 36 States and the FCT. We would probably never know if this was a random murder or a premeditated assassination.
It is such nihilistic violence that leaves one with the feeling that ours is a desperately evil and wicked country. The soil of our forefathers has been drenched with too much of the blood of holy martyrs. It is a curse on the land.
Some of my readers would recall that in July last year Sierra Leone High Commissioner to Nigeria Major-General Alfred Nelson Williams (Rtd.) was abducted on his way from Abuja to attend an event at the Command and Staff College Jaji. It took the delicate intervention of the security services to effect his release. Earlier, in June of the same year, a businessman, Alhaji Shariff Abidu Yazid was gunned down to death on the expressway at Kakau Village while his wife was taken away. She was later released on the exchange of a hefty ransom. In September 2017 43-year old Hajiya Sarah Kindi Zauro, daughter of a permanent secretary from Kebbi State and her husband were shot at Gidan-Busa village. She died instantly while her husband was severely wounded but managed to survive. Those killed with Hajiya Saratu were a policeman and some military officers.
In the course of last year former Environment Minister Laurentia Laraba Malam and her husband Pius Malam were both kidnapped on the Jere road and were released only after payment of a large sum. Other prominent people involved in recent kidnappings on that evil route include Engineer Mansur Ahmed, an Executive Director of the Dangote Group and a member of the House of Representatives Garba Umar-Durbunde (Sumaila-Takai Federal Constituency, Kano State).
This year of 2018 has seen a resurgence of wanton criminality on the Kaduna road. In April, Shadrack Madlion and his wife and two sons were returning from Kaduna between Jere and Kagarko when their SUV came under a hail of bullets, somersaulting 4 times. They were taken away for a couple of days. Their abductors demanded N50 million but ended up accepting N10 million after a protracted negotiation. A couple that had been driving past on the other side of the lane as the initial drama took place were not so lucky. They were gunned down instantly. Late last month, Ms. Sadiya Akilu Idris, a former Commissioner from Kaduna State and a professor at University of Abuja was killed alongside several other victims. Among the unlucky ones were a military officer and his two children. The trigger-happy gunmen were said to have shot indiscriminately at their victims.
Earlier in the month a young medical doctor, Oluremi Alabi, was killed by bandits on his way to Kaduna. The National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) downed their tools for a day in a protest at the killing of one of their own. The Chairman of the union, Dr. Godday Akor, described the late Oluremi Alabi as “as a hardworking doctor in the surgical department with impeccable character who made positive impact within and outside the hospital”.
The tragedy of the whole thing is that the police and law-enforcement agencies seem powerless to tame this evil ogre. To be fair to the police, we were told they did engage local villagers in efforts to boost up intelligence that would lead to the arrest of the hoodlums. Unfortunately, their efforts were thwarted by informants. In July last year the bandits descended upon the sleepy village of Rijana killing 18 people whom they suspected of working with the police to apprehend their members. One of the victims was cut into pieces right in the presence of his wife and children. The idea is to instil fear and to shock everybody into despair and total resignation.
It would be unfair to the present APC-led administration to say the whole thing started with them. The monster had reared its ugly head before May 2015. But if truth be told, the spate of killings and abductions has risen exponentially under the present regime. Neither the government in Kaduna State nor the authorities in our Federal Capital seem willing or able, to do anything about it. The train service has done quite a lot to obviate some of the worst case scenarios. The promise by Transport Minister Rotimi Amaechi to bring in more coaches and to provide shuttles every 30 minutes will be an attractive alternative to many motorists. Some prominent figures have also put away their SUVs and other expensive vehicles in preference for old jalopies in the hope of not attracting any negative attention from kidnappers. A few others have gone as far as actually wearing tattered clothing and joining mass public transport vehicles to make them inconspicuous.
But we are told that the bandits have also upped their antics. When they waylay mass public vehicles they make it a point to study the faces of every individual and to ascertain if they are not in a camouflage. They go through phone text messages meticulously for any give-aways. They also make it a point of duty to interview their victims to ascertain their real status. God help you if they found out that you were merely play-acting and are not really a member of the unwashed masses as you claim to be!
The benighted motorists on that unhappy expressway face two tragedies: if it is not armed bandits it is the sheer danger of terrible accidents that claim lives on an almost daily basis. The noonday darkness on the Kaduna road is indeed a metaphor for life in contemporary Nigeria – a Hobbesian drama that is solitary, nasty, brutish and short. It is clear that the people in power do not care about the ordinary masses of this country. They overlook the fact that the primary duty of civil government is to secure the lives, properties and liberties of citizens. The social contract that exists between rulers and ruled is predicated upon this sacred duty of trust. Once government is in breach of that trust it ceases to earn any form of legitimacy in the eyes of the populace. To echo the English political philosopher John, rebellion under those circumstances becomes a bounden moral duty. The buck must stop somewhere: it stops with the occupant of the High Magistracy of our great federal republic. However one tries to package or whitewash or deodorize the mess, what stares us in the face is abject, stinking failure on the part of government.
I have no hope that the current crop of leaders understands the scale of the problem and the full meaning of such catastrophic failure to fulfil their most elementary duty. We need nothing less than a new leadership that will make the rule of law and national security the topmost priority. It is not enough to be chasing common political thieves predominantly from the opposition, all in the name of “fighting corruption”. That line no longer sells.
Tackling the menace on our highways and in the rural countryside is not quantum physics. It requires solemn resolve on the part of government. Technology such as drones and satellite imagery could be deployed to trail the murderous bandits and paralyse them on their tracks. Drones are already common-place technology in relatively less affluent countries such as Rwanda. We also need to deploy special crack security forces who can take on the bastards. We must hunt the hunters, pursue and bring them down by fire by thunder. Intelligence services should be boosted along the villages and highways. The firepower of the military and police must be upscaled to match the enemy.
I have strong suspicions that many of the scoundrels kidnapping and killing our people on the highways are predominantly foreigners. The venom and recklessness with which they ply their evil trade is evident that they have no fellow-feeling or any sense of attachment to our country whatsoever. If we had a serious government bold steps would have been taken to close off our borders. And we would reopen them only when our neighbours give cast-iron guarantees that they will collaborate with us to ensure that no violent criminals trespass our territory.
Enough of this madness!

Obadiah Mailafia