Blood flood in Jos: How to defuse the tensions

Again, hundreds of innocent lives – mostly of women and children – have been wasted away in Jos villages by ethnic bigots, who are banking on the failure of Nigerian government to secure citizens’ lives and properties. The over-a-decade of civil rule has meant the loss of over twenty thousand lives or more, to one form or another of communal, ethnic, religious and political strife. All this has again raised a big question about the viability of Nigeria as a country. In fact, the continuous debate about nationality question, a decade after civil rule, shows that there is more to the survival of a nation than the ritual of elections.

Many commentators have identified the failure of government to bring those behind the massacre to book as a catalyst for the continued hostility in Jos. But nobody has recognised that the failure of Nigerian government to bring the culprits to book reflects the culpability of government. How else will one show the backwardness of the Nigerian state than by the fact that, despite the massive militarisation of Jos, none of the communal crises has been stopped from happening? It should be noted that the military command in Jos is not meant for Jos alone but the whole region. That such military force could not contain the crisis in just one part of its territory reflects not just a professional problem, but also deeper the systemic social failure.

The Jos military commander claimed that he was misled, but it was glaringly obvious that he and his castes are half-sincere if they are serious at all. Is the commander saying that no one within the whole security set up – including the police, the SSS and the military – knows the terrain of Jos, such that the whole security set up will be misled for over five hours over the massacre? Were the squads sent to curtail the massacre only roving, and when it seemed there was no problem, they left the place within few minutes – or was there only one squad moving round the communities? Are the police and the SSS also deceived? When the commander got reports (through text messages), did he discuss these with other sections of the security forces – the police, the SSS and the state government (including the governor) – and what was their response? That the commander reduced everything to being deceived shows his high level of contempt for truth.

But in the real sense, what the military commander demonstrated is not just his individual nature, but a reflection of neo-colonial character of public officers. While senior military officers are prepared to defend the power and prestige of the ruling political class, they care less about public safety. That explains why, although the military will be prepared to undertake foreign military operation in the interests of the capitalist ruling class and imperialist forces under the guise of peace-keeping, it can hardly defend public safety. The same police that cannot stop crimes will smoothly repress peaceful protests against government’s anti-poor policies. According to the police command, more than a quarter of the police force is used to protect moneybags and the ruling class. Thus the military and police have continued the colonial policy of using public funds to build coercive forces amongst the people, to protect anti-poor government and imperialist economic forces.

The security forces, aside from being tailored towards the defence of the ruling class, are also undemocratically organised. This explains why it is easy for the military commander to just tell the public that he relied on text messages, and sent his men there.

This shows a total disconnect between the military commanders (and other security heads) and their rank and file (who actually carry out the field work) on the one hand, and the military forces and the people on the other hand.

The security forces are organised in such a way that a commander can take an absurd decision in a pepper soup joint, or can act on ethnic or racial instinct, without recourse to any democratic decision-making organ.

He only needs to settle himself with his superior. Under such an arrangement, the curtailment of communal conflict or even criminal acts will become a miracle. Thus, it is necessary to ask the people of Plateau State (including the Fulanis, Beroms and other tribes) to organise collective community security groups to stop this bloodletting and not rely on any security force.

Some observers are of the view that democratisation of the security forces will engender indiscipline and sabotage. But no coups organised in this country has ever been done through the democratic input of rank and file soldiers, but through coercion. Also, many of terrible actions of the police, including checkpoint bribe-taking, are not the product of the democratisation of security forces, but the lack of it.

If the security forces are democratised and made accountable to the masses, it will be hard for anybody to organise a coup. Rules guiding the activities of the security forces will be determined by the people, and the rank and file. Aside from the fact that such rules will reflect prevailing social conditions, it will be easy to implement. Public military training for adults and community control of the security forces and security arrangement will surely checkmate an illegitimate hold on power and thus control the use of public resources.

But, it will be illusory to expect the current capitalist, neo-colonial politicians who are gaining from current arrangement to undertake this reform. It will take a pro-poor government that emerges from a people’s movement to do this. The failure of the security forces to stop or curtail the Jos killings – and indeed the various killings in the country – is a reflection of the neo-colonial, elite-oriented, undemocratic character of the security forces, which itself reflects the failure of the pro-imperialist, capitalist class to move the country forward.

The state governor, Jonah Jang has tried to exonerate his government by putting the blame on the military commander. But the governor is criminally culpable. In the first instance, he claimed to have called the commander, after he was informed of the crisis, only to be ‘woken up three hours later that people are being hacked down’. But would Mr Governor have slept if it was the state house that was on fire? Despite the fact that the people being attacked are living close to the government house, the governor could not even send his security to undertake an independent security check. Someone jocularly commented that governor’s irresponsible sleep might not be unconnected to his name.

But aside from the governor acting truly to type of a typical political class in Africa (that cares less about people it claims to be representing than securing their economic and political interests), the massacres in Jos reflect the gross economic perfidy of the capitalist political class. Might one ask, since the latest crisis in 2008, how many schools, hospitals, public roads, mass housing scheme have been built, not only in affected areas but in the whole of Plateau State?

While it has been established that struggle for agricultural resources – especially land – is a major cause of the crisis, the state government has not deemed it fit to establish a pastoral village for herdsmen, or organise state farms (that will employ tens of thousands of youths and farmers) and agricultural villages, where farmers will be organised and provided with adequate facilities. If this had been done, ethno-religious crises would have been mitigated, if not completely stopped. In 2008, the state government closed down a state university under the guise of lack of resources to run it. But the same government doles out hundreds of millions of naira to politicians and contractors. Communities affected by these crises still lack basic facilities such as roads, hospitals and schools.

The Jos crisis is not a sign of ethnic backwardness as suggested by some commentators, but a reflection of economic depravity. Since the introduction of neo-liberal economic policies under SAP in the late 1980s, many communities have been dislocated economically and socially. Jos, just like every other northern city, used to have viable industries. Also, the presence of railways in many northern states created jobs for tens of thousands of youth and adults.

But with introduction of neo-liberalism, coupled with unprecedented corruption, public infrastructures and services have been destroyed, thanks to under funding and mismanagement with over 800 industries gone under. Thus a city like Jos, which has become cosmopolitan not only as a result of its geographical and climatic nature but also the presence of national facilities, is now reduced to a centre of joblessness, frustration and social tension. The civilian regimes since 1999 have only accentuated these.

Since 2007, the country has received no less than US$100 billion from crude oil alone, but this has not translated into increased living standards for the poor. Youth unemployment is estimated at over 60 percent, while more people find it impossible to afford higher education. In this kind of arrangement, expression of frustration through ethnic jingoism is not unexpected.

Worse still, those affected by the crises are not rehabilitated and given better lives. In a sane state, victims of communal crises will be given such treatment to help them forget past experiences. But with Nigeria’s treatment of the victims of these crises, recycling of social tension is assured. This is already clear from the nature of the Jos crisis. While the crisis started as a struggle for resources, it has developed into revenge, because those who have seen their lives in ruins do not care to destroy anything they see.

The response of the acting president has again confirmed the contemptuous character of the Nigerian ruling class. Rather than overhaul the security arrangement in the state, the acting president used the massacre to boost his political power, by using the crisis as excuse to remove his adversary in the political arrangement.

While the national security adviser was removed ‘because of the Jos massacre’, the call for the removal of the army commander – under whose control hundreds of lives were lost – has been ignored by the government. After the killing in Dogo Nahawa, another killing spree has been carried out in Rigim, under the watchful eyes of the security forces. Will Mr Jonathan remove the new NSA on this basis too? But Jonathan’s presidency is hanging in the balance; therefore it would be dangerous to attack the military hierarchy. This explains the boldness of the army authority in defending the Jos army commander.

The Jos crisis is also a manifestation of the colonial but undemocratic partitioning of Nigeria, to ensure smooth imperialist plundering of the colonial economies. In Nigeria, post-independence regimes have not altered this relation. The local post-independence pro-bourgeois leaders did not bother to address this conglomeration through a democratically convened sovereign national conference that will address socio-economic, cultural and ethnic bases of Nigeria’s existence or otherwise. Instead, these leaderships divided the country on regional lines, without the democratic input of the people.

As a result of the global popularity of the post-Second World War welfare states, some of the regional leaders like Obafemi Awolowo improved social infrastructures, but this was done without giving power to the people through community and trade union control of resources and development. While all the regional ruling classes were proclaiming federalism, ethnic minorities and communities were not allowed to express their democratic and political rights of decision-making. The failure to have a collectively planned national development led to serious struggle for control by various paternalistic regional ruling classes, leading to emergence of military rule and subsequent civil war.

The breaking of the country into various states and coercing people into a country without their political input not only localises the nationality problem but multiplies it. Each state is a conglomeration of various interests with ruling class at national and local level, using various methods of divide-and-rule to control power and resources. For instance, it is not uncommon see various state politicians creating policies along the lines of ethnicity and indigene-ship e.g. employment, taxation, school fees, etc. Also, federal government has made ethnicity a major policy through identifying people’s place of origin (not of residence) and the dubious federal character policy. These are done to veil government’s failure to provide basic necessities for the people. All this, coupled with a neo-colonial capitalist economic arrangement that isolates the working and poor people from ownership of the economy, has continued to make the country a hotbed of ethnic crises.

Thus unless the country is restructured in a democratic manner which will change the socio-economic and political arrangements which have made ethnicity a vital instrument of political and economic control, the various ethno-religious crises and centrifugal forces in the country will not abate. But the current political class cannot carry out this task, as this would undermine the rotten profit system on which they feast. How will you tell one percent of the population who control over 80 percent of the oil wealth to allow the over 100 million poor people to determine how public resources will be used to provide education, health, and social infrastructure? It is like asking them to commit suicide.

Thus, the labour movement, being the central organised platform of the working and poor masses, must start to build a national political platform that will raise the demands of the working and poor people for economic and political control. Such a platform will be built to wrest power from the current set of capitalist political marauders, by building the movement as a democratic platform from the grassroots.

In addition to demanding a sovereign national conference – made up of democratically elected representatives of the workers, peasants, petty traders, artisans, unemployed, youth, students, professionals, ethnic nationalities and communities – such a platform will build its programme around free and quality education and health, secure and decent job provision for able-bodied youth (with adequate living and working conditions). It will do this through massive public work programmes: extensive and integrated transport facilities (road, rail, water and air); cheap, mass housing; massive but safe and environmentally-friendly power and energy development; and mechanised, poor peasant-based, industrial-integrated but environmentally sustainable agricultural and food security system, among others. These demands and others at local and grassroots level will make such a political platform the natural abode of the working and poor people and defuse ethnic tensions.

To truly build this platform, there is need for the working class activists, progressive youth and students, socialists, left-wing activists and organisations to work towards rebuilding and restructuring the trades union movement at local, state and national levels by making them fighting platforms. This is the only way to save the country from the impending doom of ethno-religious cleavages. A responsible and fighting trade union movement and working class political platform will mobilise the anger of the people against the system and thus undermine the growth of ethno-religious centrifugal tensions (Niger Delta violence, Boko haram, Jos crisis, etc) that tend to tear the country apart. This is the major challenge as 2011 approaches.

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* Kola Ibrahim is an activist based at Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Enuwa, Ile-Ife, Nigeria.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.