“CHRISTIAN GENOCIDE”: THE SHOE WEARER’S PERSPECTIVES

President Tinubu needs to do more to protect Nigerians, argues OLUDAYO TADE

Eníkànlómò (the shoe wearer’s perspectives) is a concept that helps us to understand the lived experiences of a person or groups of persons who face recurrent unfavorable life events and feel(s) threatened that their existence may be obliterated if nothing is done to remedy the situation. It is often used when people query the lived experiences of victims of negative life events. In response to the doubters, victims will groan and say – eni-to-kan-lomo (the person who wears the shoe knows where it pinches). This points to the fact that only those who are victims know what they suffered even if non-victims attempts to downplay their victimization experiences. There are arguments relating to the claim of Christian genocide in some predominantly Christian communities in Benue, Plateau, Southern Kaduna, and some communities in Taraba, Adamawa and Nasarawa which has led to the declaration of Nigeria as a country of particular concern by the United States of America.

In Benue State where my research team has done extensive research on the victimization experiences, thousands have been displaced from their ancestral homes and some have spent more than eight years in internally displaced persons’ camps. Their quest is to return home one day. They told our research team that they will only experience justice if and when they are able to return home. But in their absence, those who attacked them take over their lands and may even erect structures of their own religion to depict conquest and domination. The attackers have identity that is not hidden according to the victims – Fulani militants, Boko Haram or bandits. Most of the time when victims from these communities call for help, the response of the government is either condemnation of the attacks followed by an admonition that victims should learn to live in peace with their neighbors. They continue to suffer huge casualties and do mass burial. To the government, the insecurity and cries of victimization de-markets the administration as not doing enough. So, government pushes the narration that terrorists do not discriminate – true. They kill both Christians and Muslims but location matters. For instance, if ‘Islamist terrorists’ attack a largely Muslim dominated community in the north and commence their brand of sharia law, it will not be as problematic as it would be if the attack happened in Southern Kaduna, Benue and other Christian communities if the terror group erect their symbols to replace symbols of Christianity.     

The victims perceive such attacks as a grand plan to wipe them out in order to foist their (Islamic) religion on their people and take over their land. To them, the government does not have regard for their lives and considers them as disposables. The term, disposable emerged from Achille Mbembe’s “Necropolitics” (2003). Here, Mbembe argues that government and societies decide who is worth saving and who is left to die. When the life of a people is cut short, and their ancestral homes are taken over without government’s protection or arrest and prosecution of the invaders, the victims begin to consider themselves as ‘disposables’ and people of no significance to the government and the country. Then, they are forced to take the best approach to preserve themselves through the call for international assistance.

In his Sociological Imagination, American Sociologist, C. Wright Mills shows the importance of mobilization in transmuting personal problems to social issue and by extension, a topic deserving of public debate and public action. What the Christian communities and their advocates have done was to take their cries for justice and preservation beyond the seeming inaction of the Nigerian state to the international community. By doing so, they problematized their experiences with evidences of mass killings and burials.

The responsibility to protect lives and properties is on the Federal and State governments in Nigeria. The constitution does not say that the rich should be protected while the poor should be sacrificed to terrorists. But, this seems to be the trend. According to the 2025 report of the European Union Agency for Asylum, more than 100, 000 police officers in Nigeria were deployed to protect politicians and Very Important Persons. The estimated total personnel of the Nigeria police is about 371,800. The rest are to protect 200million Nigerians!

Thanks to President Donald Trump’s threat, the Tinubu government seems to have woken up and become more accountable to the international community. But does sovereignty stop international interventions where government of a country is unwilling or unable to check mass murder? The principle of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) was adopted in 2005 during United Nations World Summit. R2P, according to International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty is “the idea that sovereign states have a responsibility to protect their own citizens from avoidable catastrophe – from mass murder and rape, from starvation – but that when they are unwilling or unable to do so, that responsibility must be borne by the broader community of states”. With different forms of violence and insecurities facing Nigeria, has Nigeria with its federal security architecture demonstrated the responsibility to protect her citizens from banditry, terrorism, kidnapping, cattle rustling among others? Eni-to-kan-lo-mo!.  

Responsibility to protect rests on three pillars. One, it is the responsibility of a state to protect her citizens; two, the wider international community has the responsibility to encourage and assist individual states in meeting that responsibility; three, if a state is manifestly failing to protect its populations, the international community must be prepared to take appropriate collective action, in a timely and decisive manner and in accordance with the UN Charter. There are three responsibilities attached to R2P: responsibility to prevent (there must be political WILL to check transnational criminals from moving into Nigeria, poverty, unemployment and disarticulated youth population must be attended to. Roads must be saved from bandits and kidnappers); responsibility to react (States must respond swiftly not playing politics with the security of her people); and responsibility to rebuild (states must rebuild after every military intervention but at what cost to the national budget?)

Our politics is internationalized. Our presidential candidates fly abroad to present their manifestoes in the colonial headquarters to get supported. At home, some members of our National Assembly have in times past called on the federal government to ask for foreign support if she cannot tame the rampaging criminals and their evil actions. It is the failure of the current administration to show capacity to defend these vulnerable Nigerians that caused the call for international assistance. To the victims of crimes and mass murder, anywhere help comes from is fine. Many Nigerians cannot travel by road due to fear and risk of being attacked by bandits or kidnappers. Some have left Nigeria on account of insecurity. President Bola Tinubu needs to act more as the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces and secure Nigeria and Nigerians. No responsible government ought to wait until her people cry to the international community for help before acting. It will be difficult to extract patriotism from a people that we fail to protect. President Tinubu needs to name and shame internal members of his administration fueling insecurity or profiting from it. He must follow-up with his Service Chiefs to be on top of their jobs and secure the country or be fired. Internal and external sources of terrorists’ funding must be uncovered and stopped and financiers sanctioned. Our frontline warriors need presidential approval to destroy terror cells around the country. Terrorist moles within our security system needs to be fished out and sanctioned. Victims of terrorism needs social protection. President Tinubu must investigate and bring all war economy profiteers to book. Nigeria created the insecurity and Nigeria must rise up to protect her people because no external help will do that for us without taking other things in return. The President must rise above politics to protect Nigerians – because only those who wear the shoes of insecurity and criminal victimization know wear it pinches.

Professor Tade, a criminologist writes via dotad2003@yahoo.com