By Jesse Ese
99.9% of those who have been caught red-handed in the act of criminality, terrorism, and the host of other dreaded activities always attribute the blame to government. They say that the government has refused to provide jobs, and social amenities that make life easy for mankind.
Some of them complaining of lack of employment have no qualifications that may enable them to fit into any relevant position in the society. A great number of those who engage in these negative deeds are illiterates.
There is no doubt about our government being a major cause of some of the unpleasant situations we are facing today. If we go by this, then we can all assume, without restraint, that the government is really warring against the innocent and law-abiding citizens in the country.
But, that aside, if someone who says that the policies of the government are appalling now picks up arms to make a living out of the sweats of another innocent man, then there is double wahala for the living.
Even the terrorists who say they are fighting against the government are all out there to make life more difficult for the law-abiding. In the real sense, the law-abiding are like live baits in the hands of the government, the lawbreakers and the law enforcers.
When they want to hit at the government, they kidnap, maim, and kill the innocent average citizens who are struggling to make a good living from the little that has been given to them by God.
When the government retaliates, it is the innocent citizens that bear the losses. Whenever there is mayhem in a place, the law enforcers go when the situation is calm and arrest the innocent citizens in the name of ‘raid,’ pack them like sardines to the stations and demand huge sum of money from them before releasing them, though bail is free.
There were a lot of world acclaimed freedom fighters who accomplished their aims without shedding blood – like Angela Davies, Martin Luther King, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Fredrick Douglas, William Wilberforce, Olaudah Equiano, Rosa Parks, Desmond Tutu, Thomas Clarkson, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Malala Yousafzai, Mahatma GandhiLech Walesa, and Shirin Ebadi.
Though they suffered persecution, they never gave up their course. But in the most populated Black Country in the world, the reverse is that case. Our government has played a major role in the sustenance of lawlessness by giving great comfort, respect and recognition to those who unleashed mayhem on the innocent and law-abiding in the society.
It called be recalled that when some unemployed graduates embarked on a peaceful demonstration in the early months of 2013 in a major state in the Niger Delta region, they were arrested by the government and locked for several. Some were tried in court, but were later found not guilty of the charges brought against them.
This occurrence happened barely two weeks after the ex-militants embarked on violence protest in the state in regards to their unpaid allowances as part of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP). During their selfish protest, they blocked some of the major roads, burnt cars and other properties worth millions of Naira, but were not arrested.
This has propelled even the timid youths who are hopefully and patiently seeking for employment with their certificates in one office or the other to pick up arms against the innocent (not Government) for them to be called and given their handsome reward by our rulers.
While the average innocent and law-abiding Nigerian is poised on how to live a responsible life – forsaking all the illegal shortcuts to wealth, fame and power, he also has to be on the sentinel for sea pirates, militants, kidnappers, terrorists, cultists, ritualists, fraudsters, assassins, armed robbers, pocket pickers, police, taskforce, touts and thieves.
During the culmination of militancy in the Niger Delta region, humans were traded in the name of emancipation! Those who claim to be fighting for good governance, peace, freedom and rights of the people were kidnapping the people whom they claimed to be agitating for. In most of the cases, government intervened and the captives were set free, while some unfortunate hostages lost their lives due to government’s negligence towards the wellbeing of the public.
Many people have turned our beloved country (Nigeria) into a place where
anyone who is not contented with the policies of government unleashes error on the innocent and law-abiding. They forget that these innocent Nigerians are also not satisfied with these same principles that incentivized them into criminality.
But, here is the fact, while you were propelled into leading deadly crusades against the people created in the image of God by your own greed – claiming it was bad governance, the other man whom you are now oppressing was able to live up to the challenge, he forsook immorality, and made his own life meaningful to himself, his family and the society.
The man who chose the path of impartiality didn’t do that because he was stupid or couldn’t carry arms against the innocent! He did that because he had respect for God and mankind, and was mature enough to handle his troubles.
That law-abiding Nigerian was able to let go of his pride, go to the dust bins and pick up rubbles, refined them and sold to those who hand need of them. That was how he got that money you have vehemently taken from him.
While those poor policies by government made you to buy arms with your last kobo to unleash menace on your fellow Christians or Muslims, it made that innocent and law-abiding Nigerian to use his last kobo to buy pepper and salt to sell to make more money to be able to cater for himself and family.
The war against the innocent which the Boko Haram sect is fronting at the North-Eastern part of the country is a pure demonstration of evil. How tactful the Federal Government handles the issue will determine if another rebellious group will ever rise and rain down destruction on humanity in the name of freedom.
If they decide to grant them pardon and empty the coffers of our nation on these harebrained illiterates, there is high tendency that other insurgent groups will rise. And when this happens, there is nothing, but trouble for the innocent and law-abiding.
The one which occurred in the Niger Delta region that was named ‘militancy’ also claimed scores of lives. Though the Federal Government has intervened, there is still high level of militancy in the creeks of the Niger Delta – the south.
At first, there was the first phase of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) initiated under President Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua’s government. In no distant time, there was the second phase, now, the third phase of the amnesty.
Ab initio, the Presidential Amnesty Programme was a show of shame to the
security operatives in the country. Those who have faithfully served our beloved nation as policemen are now serving as escorts to those who
have left many people destitute, homeless and orphans. Many of those who
were killed by these desperados were policemen – recall the case of the
11 policemen who brutally lost their lives in an explosion in Bayelsa
State in 2013.
After the so-called desperados were given amnesty, they started moving around the best hotels in the country with police escorts, service men now answering ‘yes, sir!’ to people of no value.
That aside, the day to day warnings which these miscreants give to government concerning the Niger Delta if the PAP meets it doom without their requirements being met only mean more trouble for the innocent.
If they decide to fully return to the creeks, who suffers? Pipeline vandalism is a minor issue when compared to the rate of those who lose their lives in the day to day operations of the bad guys who call themselves sons of light.
The South has been known for militancy, the North – terrorism, but the East and West are left out in these troubles. If the government decides to encourage Boko Haram by granting them freedom, then, there is doom for Nigerians.
A killer is a killer, and a thief is a thief! If it is a very good thing to air your views by taking lives, try and take that of your biological brother or sister, father or mother –by that, your agitations will be heard faster.
In whatever illegal quest that you are fronting to make your life meaningful by unleashing terror on the innocent, whether as a sea pirate, militant, kidnapper, terrorist, cultist, ritualist, fraudster, assassin, armed robber, pocket picker, police, taskforce, tout, thief, a public office holder, or a night crawler, and you feel the government is the one to blame for your sins, repent.
You are only involved in this because you are lazy, and your heart is
filled with evil. That is why you find yourself doing it. Nelson Mandela once said that: “Difficulties break some men, but make others. No axe is sharp enough to cut the soul of a sinner who keeps on trying – one armed with the hope that he will rise even in the end.”
The fact that these hooligans call themselves servants of God does not make them holy. Their hearts are as black as evil – having no respect for God whom they claim to serve. They claim to be fighting against government, but whenever they want to strike at government, they go to motor parks and other places usually occupied by innocent citizens and detonate their explosives.
Are they claiming to be ignorant of the events that our prominent politicians who are the ones making these laws attend? If their fight was against government and not the law-abiding, why didn’t they go to political campaign grounds and ignite their bombs?
The Holy Bible says in the book of Proverbs 6: 16-19 that: “These six things doth the Lord hath: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: a proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, an heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.” (KJV)
Having this in mind, know that you are doing God no favour, you are only
heaping more trouble on your head in the day of recompense. And God will so deal with you that you would regret ever terrorizing his innocent and law-abiding children (Nigerians).
Instead of thinking of how to add more troubles to the ones we already have, we should start building our future, making life more meaningful by doing that which we all know is right. Don’t forget, if you don’t equip yourself with the required education, your voice may never be heard – no matter the level of innocent souls you kill; which you must give account of.
