How Benue Youths Fight The Wrong Battle — Run From Bandits, But Fight Harmless Peter Obi

By Ike Abonyi

What a tragic irony Nigeria has become: young men who run for their lives when bandits enter their villages suddenly discover courage when Peter Obi comes to mourn those the bandits have killed. When the killers arrived, they disappeared. When their people were being slaughtered and maimed, they fled. But when an unarmed presidential candidate came—not to campaign, not to fight, but to commiserate with grieving families—they were suddenly mobilised to become political thugs by a government headed by an ordained Catholic priest, Rev father Hyacinth Alia. What a shame. What exactly are we defending? And whom are we defending it against? If these young men had mobilised with the same determination against the bandits, perhaps some of the victims whose graves they now mourn would still be alive. If they had shown half the courage against insecurity that they displayed against a fellow Nigerian offering condolences, their communities might be safer today. This is the tragedy of political manipulation: a generation whose future is being stolen by insecurity is being recruited to protect the very political interests that have failed to secure that future.

Peter Obi did not come to challenge anybody’s authority. He came to stand with Nigerians in their darkest hour. He came because the dead were Nigerians, the wounded were Nigerians, and the grieving families were Nigerians.

Yet some youths were apparently made to believe that stopping him was more important than asking why their communities remain vulnerable to armed criminals. This is how politics destroys a people—when the victim begins to see the sympathiser as the enemy and the real enemy is allowed to remain invisible. Let our youths wake up. The bandit does not care whether you are APC, PDP, NDC, LP, Muslim or Christian. The bandit sees a vulnerable Nigerian. The bullet does not check your party membership before it kills. So why should a young Nigerian allow himself to be used against another Nigerian simply because of politics? If you have courage, use it to demand security.

If you have strength, use it to defend your community. If you have a voice, use it to demand accountability. And if you have a PVC, use it to choose leaders who will secure your future. Do not allow anyone to turn you into a political weapon today and leave you unemployed, insecure and abandoned tomorrow.

A governor who can mobilise youths for politics but cannot mobilise them to defend their people should be ashamed of himself. Nigeria’s youths must graduate from being foot soldiers for politicians to becoming owners of their political destiny. The real battle is not Peter Obi versus Nigerian youths. The real battle is Nigerians versus insecurity, poverty, corruption, unemployment, and the political culture that keeps exploiting young people while their future burns around them. And perhaps the most painful question of all is this: How can you run from the people who came to kill you but stand boldly before the person who came to mourn with you? That is not courage. That is a tragedy of misplaced loyalty.

 ■Ike Abonyi is Editor @Large.