Someday, we will wake up to see that Nigeria is no more if —Bishop Dachelem

Most Rev Dr Hillary Dachelem is the Bishop of Bauchi Catholic Diocese including Gombe. In this interview, he bare his thoughts on burning national issues concluding that Nigeria is currently a collapsing entity, a country in anarchy which needs a sovereign national confab in order to remain an entity. ISHOLA MICHAEL brings excerpts. 

 

It is no longer hidden that so many Nigerians have been speaking out, all pointing to the direction that Nigeria is sick. Do you subscribe to that?

Are you not sick? Are we not sick? Ah? Don’t you think you are sick yourself? Then, we are sick. Nigeria is really sick because it does not carry what a corporate nation should be. When we talk about sickness, let us look at the word sickness that you used. We should go back to its synonym, which is illness, and also in the French origin, sickness, malade, which means something is bad, la malade. You know it means something bad; something that is not okay. So, is Nigeria okay? Is it okay? Just say it by yourself. You are interviewing me, and we are all Nigerians, is it okay? Answer me. Is it okay? Is it what it should be? Something is wrong somewhere; something is definitely wrong somewhere.

 

Was this the Nigeria that you knew when you were young?

You want me to repeat myself again with an interview I did with Herald newspaper. This is certainly not the Nigeria that used to be. We are facing a different Nigeria, a very different Nigeria. The Nigeria we used to know was free; it is not as if there was no crime, but the crime was minimal, okay. It wasn›t at the alarming rate that it is now. It wasn›t as if there were no pockets of issues; there were issues but the issues were not too overwhelming. Those into crime and criminality were very insignificant compared to nowadays. But as it is now, I don›t know whether the majority of us are criminals. I said the majority of us, not all of us. So it seems from every indication that a lot of things have changed. If you want, we can pick them from different angles so that we can analyse them. The security issue is what comes to your mind first. If you look at the area of security, in Nigeria, in the past, it is not as if there was no robbery, but I tell you in the former Nigeria,  you could go to anywhere in this country at any time. We had pockets of issues related to armed robbery, but they were very minimal and insignificant. They were not prevalent as has become the order of the day nowadays, so much so that even governors are afraid of travelling. A governor was attacked by bandits, a governor who has all the paraphernalia of security at his disposal. If we don›t do something about our security situation, we know that we are already heading for it.

 

But how did we get to this point?

Well, a lot of factors are responsible for getting us to this point. Generally, as I have always said, both the led and the leadership have their own fault. So I will say 60 per cent of the fault goes to the leadership. First is incompetent leadership and then, secondly, I don’t care attitude and this ‘start little by little’ [approach]. Just like you having your child at home, you taught him how to wash hands and to do some basic things. After washing hands, you asked him to sit down and pray. So one day, the son was so hungry that he just pounced on the food and you allowed him without correcting him. Then the next time again he just pounced on the food without praying again, but this time he just went straight to the food. Maybe the other day he didn’t wash his hands but he prayed… this is how crime aggravates. So, there was a serious laxity; there was serious I don’t care attitude. There was serious neglect. Serious crimes like [banditry, kidnapping, etc] shouldn’t have been neglected. They say what goes around comes around. When one is affected, all of us are affected,  that’s what people don›t know. When somebody is suffering, the globe is suffering. So when things were happening people were thinking they were only happening in this geographical location; they were not affecting everyone, but now we have come to notice that it is affecting everybody.

 

You just mentioned that once one person is affected by criminality, it is going to affect everybody. Right now in Nigeria, killing has become a daily affair…

It is inverted, you know. One thing with culture is that it’s a habit. So, people have gradually moved from the culture, now people no longer appreciate life because we have not decided to explore the true values of life. We have not exploited the benefits of life and so because of that we have gradually shifted, there is a paradigm shift from the culture of life. If you on the TV now, people begin to say where are the people that have been kidnapped, who and who have died. Ah! How many? This is the anxiety people are all after because we have suddenly acculturated ourselves with that and it is sad and that is to tell you about the collapse of the nation. What else? If we are to continue this way, certainly one day all of us will wake up and there will be no Nigeria.

 

Are you saying that the nation is collapsing and the leaders are not doing anything about it?

What do you think? If it is not collapsing, let her handle the issues. You are annoying me here, because in this very matter that you are asking whether Nigeria is collapsing, if your child is one of the ones in the Greenfield University, I am sure some have two children there or more, if you are among the parents whose child is in the University of Agriculture, Makurdi, you wouldn’t be asking me the question whether Nigeria is collapsing. Do you understand what you are saying? It is collapsing. It is almost a nation in moribund, the way it is going.

 

The issue of kidnapping has become normal…

Yes and politicians always speak from both sides of their mouths. So, about ransom and negotiations [with bandits], I wish to take an objective view about this. In all honesty, this is what has made kidnapping to continue. If negotiations were not done and ransoms not paid, kidnapping won’t be a lucrative business. So, I don’t know or who said it is not okay to negotiate or pay ransom and I don’t know in what context and I don’t want to get argumentative or say simply because this person said so, therefore I will go against him. All of us in different context sometimes can say the right thing. At other times, we don’t say the right thing in different context. But I feel if negotiations and ransom make kidnapping a growing business, especially when government enters into it.

Again, let’s look at the compassion side. People will analyse it from the two-fold effect, and the lesser effect the principle, you say, well money is now the solution. Rather, you know life comes first before money. There are many ways to make money; people don’t have to kidnap to make money. What about other nations that are making it without involving criminal acts, even Nigeria was making it before without kidnapping. Kidnapping started in the last decade and the main reason is the failure of our institutions to provide job opportunities for the young persons.  All these kidnappings you see everywhere are done by young people who have graduated and cannot find jobs to do. Those going into kidnapping are mostly young persons from 16 years and 45. The issue is that we must pay attention and we must also listen. I keep saying there is the need to listen to various agitations. What statement are they trying to make and I keep coming back to the issue of social contract. Governance is about social contract. To rule me, I need to give you my consent, you can’t rule me without my consent in this modern age, and this is what social contract means. You come, I come, we come together and give our consent to let us say, Garba take our will. Now, Garba becomes the sovereign, the system becomes a sovereignty system, then we collectively say, now, you work for us, make sure we are adequately taken care of democratically by providing the basic needs of a true virile and vibrant nation, help to develop us, help to protect us, give us the basic needs, let us see the dividends of life. This is the contract. And when we agreed that this is the system and you flout the contract and you go. There is a budget in this country and the budget is supposed to take care of every Nigerian, if eventually you flout this contract unilaterally, then I have the right to agitate. I have the right to say why? Was this what we agreed upon? Was this what we said we want?

In modern days, the best way to go about it is to use dialogue. Now if we try dialogue and it does not work, then we have to try other means and probably that is what is happening here. Some are using other means. So, all those pockets of agitations are very indicative of something. So, there is a kind of dissatisfaction somewhere by some other groups, some of these agitations need to be addressed.

 

What do you think the government should do?

We are in anarchy. There are many ungovernable areas in this country, the ungovernable areas are more than the governable areas and if the ungovernable areas are much more than the governable areas, what do you expect? I will never be surprised that anything happens, bearing in mind what we are seeing today. All these things that are here. How do you know that it is going to rain, when the cloud is gathering?

The way out, I keep saying it, is a collective effort. I wouldn›t just give blame to one side or the leadership only, because for instance, it is not a governor that does kidnapping. Do you understand what I am saying?  So, the way out is that, first and foremost, these various agitations from these pressure groups ought to be listened to, create a forum to listen to them first, open up some channels of dialogue. Because these same people are capable of understanding and they may agree. So the first thing I feel should be done is there is the need to listen. Let the government calm down, it is not humiliation, but calm down, open up some channels of communication with various agitating groups, give them the opportunity to speak. That is number one.

Number two, I don’t know whether the provisions of the former constitutional conferences or national dialogues have been applied.  Let me tell you, don’t think that Nigerians are stupid with those recommendations. Could this be an offshoot of the non implementation of the recommendations or the implications of that? When Nigerians came together to sit in that conference, everybody poured out his grievances, were they attended to? So I am sure we can fish out something or call another conference of Nigerians and listen. Leave the National Assembly alone, call another conference of stakeholders in this country, let them pour out their grievances and let the discussions be honest. Now, you will ask me what will be the weight of the discussion and then what legal power will that kind of confidence have? That will also be deliberated in the house. But the thing is that we should not be afraid because to get peace, to get a virile nation today, is not on the basis of force but by dialogue and dialogue is the only way that we can sit down and talk about those things, listen to one another and say okay, can we adopt one or two things.

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