There
is no sexy way of putting this. Our government has failed the
indigenous people of Abuja. We could easily extend this to say our
government has failed the people of Nigeria, but that is for another
day.
In September 2013, the Federal Capital Territory Administration in response to several complaints and demands set up a ministerial committee to investigate what appears to be infanticide in over 40 communities in and around the Federal Capital.
One could easily get carried away with graphic descriptions of the allegations: how community elders would snatch an offending baby, feed it with water in which a very poisonous root had been soaked, causing it to slowly shrivel up and die, or binding a living baby to the corpse of its mother and burying them.
One could spend time squirming at how barbaric the alleged reasoning behind these killings are: babies who grow upper teeth before lower teeth, babies born as twins, babies born with defects, or babies whose mothers die within three months of delivery, all of whom are said to possess evil spirits.
But none of these concerns me as much as the more serious question of how these crimes could be going on in communities in our Federal Capital in the year 2013.
The real issue is not the backwardness of the Gbagyi Yama or the Bassa Komo. It is not the fact that the people of these over 40 infanticide-practicing communites are steeped in fetish practices that enable or even sometimes require them to murder babies.
The issue is squarely a failure of government at the municipal and the federal levels.
I ran into the coordinator of a civil society organization at an event this week who mentioned that he was on the said committee. When asked why, three months after the bloated committee (made up of so many ‘high-powered’ individuals one can see why work is so slow) was set up no report had been received from them, he replied: “…the rains.”
The answer of the committee member, while unacceptable, at least exposes how complete the neglect of Abuja’s indigenous communities (upon whose lands our flashy concrete capital lies) is by our government. That there are communities which the light rains of Abuja can cut off from visitors is a weeping shame.
Early in 2013, Channels Television produced a short documentary on these alleged child murders. None of the communities they showed had pipe borne water, roads or electricity. Abundant evidence of at least the killing of twins was shown. More abundant however was evidence that our government does not take these people seriously.
It is a shame that while children are needlessly and gruesomely murdered, only a few hours away, we are investing millions on the harassment of women at night in the name of fighting prostitution, purchasing bullet-proof luxury cars, proposing a city gate worth billions and casually (and shamelessly) declaring that amounts like 50billion dollars of oil money have developed wings and gone missing.
Only in Nigeria do we not understand what an emergency is. Sadly, one of the few things that propel our government(s) to action is extreme public violence. Little wonder then that most of the struggles and agitations that have received full government attention have been militant.
But we cannot afford to run a system that responds only when a people take to the streets or take up arms. No amount of military hardware can protect a country from the effects of social injustice. No amount of prayer to any of the deities we believe in can prevent the sure natural reaction to economic and social violence. Sooner our government realized this, the better for all of us.
P.S.: Dear FCT committee on infanticide, where is your report?
In September 2013, the Federal Capital Territory Administration in response to several complaints and demands set up a ministerial committee to investigate what appears to be infanticide in over 40 communities in and around the Federal Capital.
One could easily get carried away with graphic descriptions of the allegations: how community elders would snatch an offending baby, feed it with water in which a very poisonous root had been soaked, causing it to slowly shrivel up and die, or binding a living baby to the corpse of its mother and burying them.
One could spend time squirming at how barbaric the alleged reasoning behind these killings are: babies who grow upper teeth before lower teeth, babies born as twins, babies born with defects, or babies whose mothers die within three months of delivery, all of whom are said to possess evil spirits.
But none of these concerns me as much as the more serious question of how these crimes could be going on in communities in our Federal Capital in the year 2013.
The real issue is not the backwardness of the Gbagyi Yama or the Bassa Komo. It is not the fact that the people of these over 40 infanticide-practicing communites are steeped in fetish practices that enable or even sometimes require them to murder babies.
The issue is squarely a failure of government at the municipal and the federal levels.
I ran into the coordinator of a civil society organization at an event this week who mentioned that he was on the said committee. When asked why, three months after the bloated committee (made up of so many ‘high-powered’ individuals one can see why work is so slow) was set up no report had been received from them, he replied: “…the rains.”
The answer of the committee member, while unacceptable, at least exposes how complete the neglect of Abuja’s indigenous communities (upon whose lands our flashy concrete capital lies) is by our government. That there are communities which the light rains of Abuja can cut off from visitors is a weeping shame.
Early in 2013, Channels Television produced a short documentary on these alleged child murders. None of the communities they showed had pipe borne water, roads or electricity. Abundant evidence of at least the killing of twins was shown. More abundant however was evidence that our government does not take these people seriously.
It is a shame that while children are needlessly and gruesomely murdered, only a few hours away, we are investing millions on the harassment of women at night in the name of fighting prostitution, purchasing bullet-proof luxury cars, proposing a city gate worth billions and casually (and shamelessly) declaring that amounts like 50billion dollars of oil money have developed wings and gone missing.
Only in Nigeria do we not understand what an emergency is. Sadly, one of the few things that propel our government(s) to action is extreme public violence. Little wonder then that most of the struggles and agitations that have received full government attention have been militant.
But we cannot afford to run a system that responds only when a people take to the streets or take up arms. No amount of military hardware can protect a country from the effects of social injustice. No amount of prayer to any of the deities we believe in can prevent the sure natural reaction to economic and social violence. Sooner our government realized this, the better for all of us.
P.S.: Dear FCT committee on infanticide, where is your report?
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