NIGERIA’S RURAL COMMUNITIES AND BANDITRY

As life in Nigeria has become even cheaper, rural-urban migration has soared, driven upwards by the desperation of many young people to escape not just the lack of amenities and opportunities in rural areas, but also creeping terror.

Many of Nigeria`s young rural citizens go through the paces in schools in their communities. Because they want to acquire basic education, they ignore the lack of amenities and opportunities. Once they bag basic education, they become a people in a hurry. They hurry to nearby cities, desperate to change the trajectory of life, not just for themselves and their immediate families, but for entire generations. Spurred on by the grinding poverty and inequality that is their lot, and supported by the prayers and best wishes of their families, they take to the nearest cities where they hope that their stories will change.

While some of them make it in the cities which always has scarce resources resulting in fierce competition, a lot of them fall by the way side, or through the yawning cracks of Nigeria`s brutally unequal system. While some of them stick around feeding off the craps of Nigeria`s unequal existence, others are forced to return to their communities to face the vengeful wrath of the conditions they had spurned by their courageous attempts to seek better lives. The hapless among them return as corpses to their wailing communities. The most unfortunate of them all but vanish, leaving their anxious communities to go through interminable days of watching the roads and reading the stars.

For over a decade, terror has become as much a Nigerian reality as constant power and water cuts. It is no grandstanding to state that like corruption, terror has become Nigeria`s grand partner in retrogression. Thus is the trajectory of Nigeria`s seemingly relentless march to disintegration.

Scandalously, it is Nigeria`s rural citizens often left with nothing that have been forced to watch the marauders march through their communities with reckless abandon. It is the rural populace who have become weary witness to the ruthlessness of unchecked and uninhabited terror.

It used to be a gift to live in Nigeria`s rural areas. Away from the bustle of the cities, the rural areas used to be havens where nature peaked. But not anymore. Not with mindless Boko Haram killers stalking bushes and farms. Not with killer herdsmen prowling forests and biding the opportune time to descend on nearby communities.

So, it is not just the cost of lack of access roads that rural communities have to count. It is not just the cost of lack of clean water that they have to count. They do not only have to lament the quality of education given to their children in dilapidated schools or their harvest rotting away for lack of storage facilities. Now, they must also count the cost of blood curdling and mind-boggling terror.

They cannot sleep with any of their eyes closed. They cannot go to their farms with any guarantee of their safety. They cannot travel to neighboring villages with any form of assurance that they will not be abducted along the way. They simply cannot encourage their loved ones to visit from the city.

There was a time when living in the rural areas was a crown of serenity and tranquility. Now, thanks to terror, it has become a curse. Nigerians must be sufficiently alarmed for the termites determined to rip away the fabric of the country are closing in from the rural areas.

Kene Obiezu,

Abuja