‘Southern Kaduna, metaphor for what a nation state should not be’

Afis Oladosu, a Professor of Middle Eastern, North African and Cultural Studies, Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies, University of Ibadan, speaks with SAHEED SALAWU on the crisis in Southern Kaduna.

What is your take on the crisis in Southern Kaduna?

Southern Kaduna is a metaphor for what a nation state should not be; it is an unfortunate reminder of the abyss into which a nation state should not descend. However, for the past three decades or so, since 1980s, Southern Kaduna has shown how ‘beautiful’ hell could be and how easily centres of civilisations could become epicentres of barbarism.

The reasons southern Kaduna has held us up as hostage to its barbarity and barbarism are the very reasons Boko Haram has held North-Eastern Nigeria hostage to unwarranted brutishness and brutality.

Stakeholders in the area have alluded to religion and the issue of lands as reasons for the crisis. What is your view?

For me, the issues in Southern Kaduna are as simple as those in Borno: violent pursuit of political-economic power that has been robed and packaged as genocidal campaign against supposedly “religious” majority. Southern Kaduna should remind you of the Boko Haram’s slogan years when it declared that the North-East belonged to them and that non-Muslims should leave the region otherwise they should prepare for Armageddon. I think the same script nests at the bottom of the crisis, no, crises that we have seen in Southern Kaduna.

In other words, whenever a ‘religious’ or tribal group lays claim to a land, whenever you erect borders of hatred and engage in infantile game of tribal superiority, you end constituting yourself as an authority with more wisdom than the Almighty who created the world in the manner of a rainbow; you posture as if you know better than Him.

So, the bloodletting has continued in Southern Kaduna because the initial causative agents for the inanity and insanity in the area have not been addressed. It has continued because there has been no good governance – governance that would establish justice and punish evil and its bearers.

Southern Kaduna has become a jungle simply because no saint is prepared to impose order on the disorder in the area. In the jungle, violence pays, sale of guns and other means of violence thrives; in the jungle it is either you eat or you are eaten.

Do you subscribe to the view that there might be some level of complicity from the government? And what do you think is the way forward?

To say government and security agencies are culpable in the crisis is to say the obvious. When there is commotion and chaos in the house, you ask the simple question: where is the man in this house? That’s the reason I said lack of good governance is key in the crises.

Is there hope Southern Kaduna would not be ‘birthed’ once again? Would this be the last time anomie would prevail in the area? I have my doubts. It is in these and from these crises politicians derive arguments in support of their interest. How many Nigerians could afford an AK 47, which costs nothing less than $400? The solution to the problem lies in its causes; the same way cure for certain ailments inheres in their causes.