How much is the life of a Nigerian worth?

On Monday, 29th October 2018, over a dozen people were reportedly killed during a clash between Nigerian security forces and members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) otherwise known as Shiites.

The clashes too place within the Mararaba/Nyanya/Karu axis of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) that share boundary with Nasarawa State.

According to media reports, apart from members of the Shiites that were killed, many other passersby who were caught up in the face-off were equally felled by bullets allegedly fired by Nigerian soldiers while others were knocked off by vehicles driven by drivers desperately trying to get away from the danger posed by the fights.

Many were also reported to have sustained various degrees of injuries in the process.

The fracas was as a result of the insistence of Shiites members to march into the Abuja city centre in observance of their annual religious ritual as well as to protest the continued incarceration of their leader Sheik Zakzaky

who has been in detention since 2015 after the violent clash between his members and the Nigerian Army that led to the death of over 400 people.

Before the Monday clash in Mararaba, about four members of the sect were killed on Saturday 27th October along Zuba-Abuja expressway by Dei Dei junction when the same Shiite members on the same mission confronted soldiers and refused to back down from the procession into Abuja.

While these ugly incidences and the attendant deaths take place with the Federal Capital Territory, neighbouring Kaduna state has been boiling since last week due to initial minor clashes that later escalated into major ethnic and religious crisis,

leading to the death of over 60 people including the traditional ruler of Adara in Kajuru Local Government Area, the Agwom of Adara, Maiwada Raphael Galadima who was abducted together with his wife.

While the wife was later released by the abductors, an official of the Adara Development Association (ADA) later confirmed that the traditional ruler has been killed,

adding that the kidnappers collected an undisclosed amount of money as ransom before killing him and that his corpse was recovered and deposited at the St. Gerald Catholic Hospital Kakuri, Kaduna.

Some parts of the state has been placed under curfew by the state government as a measure to ensure peace in the areas affected.

Elsewhere in Plateau State, clashes between farmers and herdsmen in June this year claimed nearly 80 lives with the state government imposing a dusk to dawn curfew.

According to Plateau State Commissioner for Information, the curfew was imposed to bring back normalcy while Police and other security agencies in the state were put on alert to avert further escalation of the problem.

It would be recalled that on Saturday 24th March, 2018, a former Chief of Army Staff and former Defense Minister Gen. T Y Danjuma called the people of Nigeria to rise up and defend themselves from mindless killings and destruction of their farmlands and other sources of livelihood.

He was reacting to the killing of hundreds of defenseless people in his home state of Taraba as well as Benue, Zamfara and other places as according to him security agencies in the country are either unable or unwilling to stop the killings.

He made the call while speaking at the maiden Convocation ceremony of Taraba state university in Jalingo Taraba state capital and lamented that the unnecessary killings going on in the country is aimed at ethnic cleansing on the people of Taraba and Nigeria at large with a warning that such acts must stop.

“You must rise to protect yourselves from these people. If you depend on the Armed Forces to protect you, you will all die. This ethnic creasing must stop in Taraba, and it must stop in Nigeria.

These killers have been protected by the military. They cover them and you must be watchful to guide and protect yourselves because you have no other place to go. The ethnic cleansing must stop now otherwise Somalia will be a child’s play.

I ask all of you to be on your alert and defend your country, defend your state” he said.

A few weeks after Danjuma’s outburst, the Governor of Zamfara Stare Abdulaziz Yari said he was in support of the creation of state Police in the country as according to him, that is the only way of halting the wanton and unprovoked killing of Nigeria right in their communities by the so called unknown militia.

Yari who stated this while hosting senior journalists on democracy dividend tour of his state on May, 2018 accused security agencies of failing to protect his people from killers in spite of information made available to security officers,

adding that before communities in Zurmi Local Government Area of the state were attached, information was duly shared to those who should know, yet 39 people were killed by brigands, he said.

“Whatever was humanly possible that needed to be done, we as a government have done to mitigate this disaster. But it does appear that security agencies are failing in their responsibilities. On this particular incident,

we had intelligence reports 24 hours before it happened that the bandits were grouping and ready to attack. I alerted the security agencies but unfortunately, they sent inadequate personnel to confront these people,” Yari said.

Every day in Nigeria, there are several stories of scores of citizens dying, most being avoidable deaths. Apart from minor illnesses like fever, malaria, typhoid, dysentery, cholera, malnutrition, wrong drug prescriptions

and other medical occurrences through which Nigerian lives are snuffed out, more citizens are killed by their fellow human beings and mostly for flimsy excuses or completely unprovoked attacks.

In spite of the successes record by the Nigerian Army and other security agencies in the fight against Boko Haram, the terror outfit is still killing and abducting people on daily basis.

This is even as herdsmen and the so called militias said to be from outside Nigeria are raiding communities day in, day out bringing with them, death and destruction while hundreds of commuters are hacked down untimely due mainly to bad roads everywhere in the country.

Unlike what happens in other countries where the death of one citizen from unnatural circumstances is enough to provoke national and international outrage, the death of a Nigerian citizen is no longer an issue;

and the situation has become so bad so that even the killing of scores of people from one incident is no longer issue enough to make front cover news for most national newspapers.

So I ask how much is life worth in Nigeria?

Once you answer this question as a government or the governed you will come to terms that we have become a failed people, a generation that have failed our children, present and the near future.

Consciousness and realisation of our failures can help to recalibrate our senses that govern our actions to default mode of the sanctity of life the foundations of all our failures.