…..The Wisdom of Joshua Dogonyaro
by Moses Oludele Idowu
I must salute Bola Bolawole, noted journalist and editor, for having the courage to go against the grain of popular opinion in his piece on this subject. Although I have not read the article which he dropped in my box I could tell from the title that he disagreed from popular opinion, something that is rarely found among newsmen.
We have a problem on our hands and everyone is running away from the problem pretending it does not exist. We are trying to behave and act as developed and enlightened people when from all available evidence we are not. We are pretending to be “one nation and one destiny” when in actual fact we are two nations separate and unequal. built on two diametrically – opposed ideologies. Everyone is avoiding the right questions for fear of public backlash and loss of friends and platforms. But wrong questions won’t bring the right answers.
The arraignment of several teenagers ( we do not have access to their birth certificates and cannot even confirm whether they are teens) by the police has brought several knocks against the government and even the police that they have been forced to quickly retreat into their cocoon. The publicity it drew from the press and the public and even the international press forced government to hurriedly discontinued the trial and now a government that is not sure of itself and in dire need of popular legitimacy is stepping up probe pretending not to be aware that those teens were in its custody all along.
These were the “children” arrested in connection with the last protest on bad governance.
Let me make myself clear from the beginning. I take it to be self-evident that every citizen has the right to protest against a government and its policies, any time and any day. It is a fundamental right and woe betides that government in a democracy that seeks to abridge it. But the fundamental right to protest or express personal feelings and grievance has limits. It does not confer on the protesters the right to deny other citizens their own rights to stay away from the protest. Neither does it confer on them the right to deny other citizens their own rights to private ownership of property or right to life and pursuit of happiness because they refused to participate. These too are enshrined in the same Constitution. It does not confer on any protesters to loot public library built at great cost and deny future generations access to ancient collections. This is itself a crime against future generations who would use the library. And, less I forget, it does not confer the right to hoist the flags of another nation on Nigerian soil. That is high treason under any jurisdiction.
Sadly most of the comments I have seen on this subject by both Opposition politicians and commentators ignore these facts choosing to lambast the police and the government for following the letter of the law. Instead people dwelt on the fact that they were minors and minors should not be tried in an open court for, of all things, treason.
Let us now address the issues.
It is true that minors should not be tried in an open court for treason. But what do we do when minors habitually commit major crimes?
It is also true that most of those “children” do not know the legal implications of hoisting the flag of another nation. But ignorance is no excuse under the law as the Law itself states.
We blame the police for enforcing the Law but we are also the first to blame the same police for doing nothing while minors loot a whole library and could not make any arrest. Nigerians are a difficult people.
The issue of minor commiting crime is common in a section of the country and this is due to an evil and pernicious cultural system that has festered and nurtured for years and that has deprived entire generations of children meaningful education and opportunities in life. We all know it but everyone prefers to shy away due to Political Correctness. But culture does not grow from trees or spin out of the ground; they are nurtured by religion which animates social and spiritual behaviour.
The hardship inflicted by the ruinous economic policies of this government has been generally widespread across the land; the sufferings of the last one and a half years have been fully democratised. How come that it is only in a certain section that you see “children” engaging in looting of public property? Is it a coincidence that all these “minors” are solely from a section of the country – a section where a cultural system has ensured and even codified Western education as Haram in the hearts of many children of the poor. We can deny and we can continue to pretend but these “children” are the products of a culture that breeds almajiris, that is at the centre of poverty and insecurity of the North. And central to this culture is a religion. The wise will understand.
In the videos released during the protests we saw “children” carting away refrigerators, chairs, even roofing sheets and properties of innocent law abiding citizens who are also victims of the same neo- liberal economic orthodoxy to which a government has enslaved itself.
We have been here before. That is why this problem won’t go away unless we lay the ax to the root of the tree. This almajiri system must be eliminated or thoroughly purged of its obnoxious and traditionally- anachronistic accretions and reformed with modern educational skills that will give access to opportunities for these children so they won’t be found in this kind of quagmire again.
It is not enough to cry against government for trying minors and children. When minors commit major crimes should they go free? When children insist on sitting on adult chairs and wearing adult garment is it wrong to use maximum force to remove them or strip them? That is the reason and what has been reinforcing the culture of impunity for which Nigeria is now world famous.
The same Northern elites who are shedding crocodile tears over trial of minors are responsible for the plight of these children due to years of neglect of this children whom they have refused to educate as they do their own children. Because they use them for their religious and political agenda. They set up and finance koranic schools but their own children don’t go there because they know that is not the way to the future of opportunities in the modern world.
Muhammadu Buhari sent all his children abroad for higher education. Olusola Saraki sent all his children abroad for higher education. That is why they could become governor, senators, directors of bank etc. It is the same for most Northern elites. They know that the way to the future is sound and standard education. Yet they deny the children of the poor access to a fairly working education and refused to abolish this almajiri system that have become hell hole for the poor and their children.
This is the root of insecurity in the North – in the unequal access to resources and opportunities, in the millions of children who have been cheated in life and death because of a pernicious system that has outlived its usefulness.
I have a lot of respect for the Sardauna of Sokoto, the late Ahamdu Bello. He was a great man. If he had lived longer he would have done something to reform this system to give the children of the poor access to working education that would give them opportunities in life. He built many schools, standard school across the Northern region which the children of the poor could also go and they were.free. I am a product of one of those schools.
The new elites of the North do not think in that frame of thought. They are more concerned about their own family and care nothing about the education of the poor and their children. That is why I consider these people not only enemies of the North and even Nigeria but also my personal enemies too.
When you hear someone threatening his political foes that “the dog and the baboon will be soaked in blood”if his election was tampered with he was not relying on his children to lead the front but on these abused much- traumatized minors. They are the canon fodder, the storm troops and first army who lead the Northern elite’s undeclared war and agitation against the state and any government.
That is why hammering on the fact that they are children or teens doesn’t answer the question. It will only deepen it. If they are released now they will do another thing even worse as long as the real issue about their conditions are not addressed. There is what CIA calls “draining the swamp.” It does no good returning anyone, adult or minor to the same environment generating and sustaining the same conditions responsible for the crime for which he was accused. Returning a terrorist for example to the same environment where he would continue to receive the same indoctrination that encourages terror without first smashing that environment or “draining the swamp” is self-defeating. It is why for hundreds of billions and trillions spent the problem of insecurity in the North has not been solved. Because as long as Boko Haram and other groups have a ready source of recruits from the same minors and under age children – “children” who are not too young to kill but too young to die – Nigeria will remain in this hole.
Policemen were killed during the last protest and let us share a thought about these men too that they were the children of some persons and father of some children and husbands of some women. Or are we saying that the lives of policemen do not mean anything because they serve Nigeria? Try and kill an American policeman or, worse a British police man or woman and claim you are a minor.
Some of Boko Haram soldiers and even other terrorists are actually “children”, “minors” in the same age group like the ones under trial. They kill soldiers but when they are captured soldiers are forced to be lenient on them and to “de-radicalise” and even enlist(?) them into the force. That is one of the havocs Buhari caused this nation and we may not get over it.
When “children” commit adult crimes habitually what is to be done? When minors commit major crimes should a nation look away? Does being a minor confer immunity from prosecution?
This is at the root of impunity of many Northern states. It is one reason development eludes that part of the country. Because impunity is a setback, a false framework for development. Anywhere the Law is not free and Rule of Law is not supreme is not a place where progress will abide.
From 1982 till date the North has been assaulted with several religious and political riots, protests, violence, acts of terror leading to arson, murder of innocent people and destruction of properties running into hundreds of billions of naira. Usually these are carried out by these “children”, minors. They always lead the front for others. The almajiris have clerics who indoctrinate them and send them on errands of vengeance.
Yet for all these has anyone been brought to book? Has anyone been placed on trial? None. Possibly because they were minors.
Although they are minors and children in age they are sufficiently indoctrinated and “educated” to know their victims and targets and they could recognize people of different religions and houses of worship of other religion to torch. They know those from outside their zones to attack during riots and they have been responsible for murder of several people of other ethnic backgrounds during these eruptions. Yet they are always free.
They do everything adults do. During election time they vote and their sponsors don’t see them as minors at that time which is only a civic right reserved for adults. If they can vote like adults, then they can be tried too as adults. If children can kill, then children can be killed too.
That is why I asked that we are not helping ourselves by being dismissive, we need to go to the root of this. If they are released now they will do worse things and other children too will come and do worse things because there is nothing to engage them. Then the same cries will go up again about trial of minors. It is a vicious cycle.
This is why we may need to consider the wisdom of Joshua Dogonyaro. There was a terrible religious riot in 1986 in Kaduna leading to the death of many people mostly Southerners and destruction and burning of many churches and private properties. The army of rioters and arsonists were led by this same group of “teenagers” and “children” who know how to kill and torch buildings but are too young to be tried. This riot went on for days. Policemen could not contain it. Remember that this was under a military regime of Ibrahim Babangida.
Finally the soldiers were called in to restore order. General Joshua Dogonyaro the GOC of 2nd Mechanised Division ordered his men into the streets to arrest those torching buildings or maiming and if they resist arrest to shoot at sight.
Several were arrested by fierce – looking, gun- totting soldiers and some who were defiant were killed. Soon, order returned. Large army of ” children” and teens in the same age grade as the ones under review. They were subjected to military drills, ordeals, punishment and beatings; you know the way soldiers think.
It was here something happened. When a child commits a crime and he is arrested the one who sent him will show up. It was here the late Abubakar Gumi showed up confronting the soldiers and asking the arrested “minions” to defy soldiers. This infuriated the soldiers. He was nearly shot in the process. The soldiers refused to release them.
The same cries now going up about subjecting “children” to trial and military punishment for crime were raised then by the same people. It was here Dogonyaro said something that we need now to revisit. When he was accused of arresting and subjecting children to ordeal he responded with the same force, with the same ferocity and swiftness that soldiers send their bullets on errands against enemies: “Children who are old enough to kill, slit the throats of adults and set fire on buildings and watch the effect with joy are not children and would be treated as such with the full weight of the law.”
Here is the truth which you can cross check. From that 1986 onwards Kaduna enjoyed peace till another islamist mounted the throne. As long as Dogonyaro remained the G.O.C of Kaduna no further riots occurred until he was posted out of that city when Islamists fully seized the rein of government under Babangida.
In essence Dogonyaro was saying that by his own logic any child who could perform adult crimes, kill, set fire on buildings and enjoy the act is no more a child and can be treated as adult. Sure you can fault him but can you also fault his logic and can you imitate his success in Kaduna? Perhaps if his logic was not abandoned Kaduna would not have become a killing field in the last 8 years.
It worked for Dogonyaro. At least he ensured peace and restore law and order giving citizens from the other parts of Nigeria the rest of mind to live in Kaduna.
In conclusion let no one misunderstand me. The government has discontinued the trial of the “children” and as a patriot I abide by it. But that will not solve the problem. The same government and the public mob crying about under age children should do something about “draining the swamp” of Northern Nigeria where this calamity is daily incubated. Else, soon they will be involved in another acts of treason and the same cries for forgiveness will go up. This will reinforce the culture of impunity and immunity that is at the root of Nigeria’s underdevelopment.
Appreciation
I want to use this opportunity to thank all true friends and well-wishers and my fans who expressed solidarity with me during the unfortunate events of the last month when unknown men stormed my house and removed items from my dwelling. I must specially thank those who sent money to me to be able to replace the lost and stolen laptop, phones and other accessories. I thank you all. I am surprised by your gifts. Of special mention which touched me very deeply was the gift from a woman, a retired professor whose identity I must protect. I will remember this as long as I live.
Thank you all.
I am recovering but not fully recovered. However, I have sufficiently recovered enough to roar again.
Some people have appealed to me after that unfortunate incident to leave Nigeria alone and issues affecting Nigeria or government and concentrate on other things. But how can I leave Nigeria alone when Nigeria has not left me alone? I am affected by the ruinous economic policies of Government of Nigeria and every policy of Government If I leave Nigeria alone will Nigeria too leave me alone to attend to my passions?
That is why I will continue to speak till we have a nation of which we can all be justly proud.
I am back.
Thank you patient reader for your patience.
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© Moses Oludele Idowu
November 7, 2024
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