ON Tuesday this week, in yet another tragedy that speaks to Nigeria’s dysfunction, foreign criminals enabled by the Federal Government set Bodija, a high-class area in Ibadan, Oyo State, on fire. The explosion caused by the outlaws left hundreds homeless, 77 persons injured and five people dead, although frantic searches for bodies are still on. The explosions occurred at Deji Oyelese Street, Adeyi Avenue, Bodija, and their effects were felt as far as Ologuneru, New Garage, Apata, Ringroad, Basorun, Ojo, Akobo, Sango, Eleyele, and Imalefalafia areas. Amidst the confusion as millions of residents speculated about bomb/gas attacks and earth tremors, the Oyo State governor, Seyi Makinde, rose to the occasion, leading the rescue efforts, providing alternative accommodation for survivors in hotels and taking care of their bills, the medical bills of those in hospital and, most importantly, giving timely updates to the people about developments as they unfolded. His response has been phenomenal.
As Governor Makinde indicated, the conflagration was the handiwork of illegal miners who had stored explosives in residential areas. The miners are notorious for terrorizing residents using Nigeria’s uniformed services. There was a fire outbreak before the explosion, said reports, and the outlaws ran out of the house with their families before the area was buried in smoke and dust. For Nigerians, all of this sounds eerily routine. On January 27, 2002, Lagos, Nigeria’s economic capital, erupted in thick smoke as a large stock of explosives accidentally detonated at a storage facility in the Ikeja Cantonment. Buildings in the area came down with destructive force as the explosion triggered tremors felt more than 50 kilometres away. At least 1,100 people died while over 20,000 were displaced from their homes. As it turned out, the Nigerian Army had failed to properly maintain the base or decommission it as it was instructed to do in 2001. An agency of the authority called Federal Government had caused the tragedy.
But that, strangely, was not even the big story. The big story was that, for 21 years after, residents of Ikeja, Osodi-Isolo and the adjoining areas lived under the same threat of extermination without even realizing it! In October last year, the Nigerian Army flagged off what it called Exercise Clean Sweep to clear out remnants of unexploded bombs at the Ikeja Cantonment. Said the army chief Taoreed Lagbaja: “The recent discovery of some Unexploded Explosive Ordnance at the site of the 2002 blast raised the need for the Nigerian Army to carry out a follow-up clearance exercise in Ikeja Cantonment and its surroundings.” Wedding ceremonies, street parties, religious occasions, etc—in short, the business of life—had gone on for 21 years in the face of certain death and doom, and if an eagle-eyed soldier had not discovered danger and alerted his bosses, there would have been yet another tragedy!
On March 28, 2020, an explosion cut off the ever-busy Akure /Owo road and left many people injured. The now late Ondo State governor, Mr. Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN), linked the blast to improvised explosive devices being conveyed in a vehicle to a nearby state. According to him, “security personnel and other individuals transporting the ordnances noticed smoke from the vehicle. After several attempts to extinguish the resulting fire failed, the vehicle and its consignment ignited, causing a massive explosion that was felt in Akure and its environs.” Death walks with the child, lament the Yoruba, and the child is unaware. This death is Nigeria’s federal system which actively castrates the subnational governments, leaving them helpless as destruction hosts them to a dinner. Fatai Owoseni, Governor Makinde’s security adviser, alluded to the helplessness of state governments in curbing illegal mining when he indicated this week that the perpetrators always brandished licenses obtained from Abuja. When the Federal Government wields power, it does so leaving no space for the lower authorities which have to contend with the fallout of its murderous hold on power, enabled by the hastily crafted forgery called the 1999 Constitution.
Let’s go to Plateau State for a moment. In that theatre of perpetual bloodshed, nomadic terrorists slaughtered 195 innocent villagers on Christmas Eve 2023, burning 1,290 houses houses in Bokkos town alone. For decades, terrorists have laid Plateau waste with the state government rendered prostrate by the federal powers. And that’s my point. Sticking to the absolute powers it acquired under military rule, Nigeria’s Federal Government continues to be a threat to the lives of Nigerians, failing to protect life and property while actively undermining state/regional efforts to do so. The result is that, as the Irish poet WB Yeats wrote, “mere anarchy” is loosed upon the states. Think about it: Nigeria has an estimated $700 billion in commercially viable minerals, including barite, bitumen, iron ore, lead, zinc, coal, limestone and gold, but it is foreign criminals acting in cahoots with its federal (wo)men that enjoy most of it.
For years, illegal mining has festered in the face of the massive corruption that leaves these outlaws as free men on our streets. Nigeria has gold deposits in Malele, Tsohon Birnin Gwari-Kwaga, Bin Yauri, Iperindo, etc, but the host states can never extract them because the powers in Abuja who oversee Nigeria’s wealth have their gaze firmly fixed on their corrupt destinies. In June 2020, Maurice Ogbonnaya, Senior Research Consultant, Institute for Security Studies (ISS) Pretoria, wrote: “Collaboration between politically connected Nigerians and Chinese corporations in illegal gold mining drives rural banditry and violent local conflicts in some parts of Nigeria.”
Of course, the corruption at the state level will not disappear with a restructured Nigeria where security architecture is decentralized, but at least the capacity to respond to threats will be heightened. The legal icon, Barrister Niyi Akintola, (SAN), one of the eminent Nigerians who lost properties in the Bodija explosion, has instructively asked the Federal government to hand over the regulation of solid minerals to the respective state governments. Hear him: “With the geometric discovery of solid minerals in practically all the states of the Federation, the issuance of licence to import explosives should be left to the state governors who will know what quantity of explosives enter their states and when. Today, no state government knows when a licence is issued to our new colonial masters called Chinese who import explosives into the country with reckless abandon. Those who stored the explosives in Bodija Ibadan were said to be Chinese who are engaged in solid minerals exploitation in Oyo state.”
A silver lining: President Bola Tinubu appears willing to unbundle the structure of desolation that has held Nigeria down for decades. He has constituted a committee to review the laws guiding the control of explosives in the country in the wake of the Ibadan tragedy. Hope this works.
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