Benue signpost as 'Shock Therapy'

For many, signpost erected at interment site of seventy-three persons killed on New Year’s Day in Benue state, Nigeria, came like a sudden splash of chilled water to their face, shocking their sensitivities. And it’s got them talking, in resistance. 

The green metal planted on the sandy site, indicates dates of attack and burial, and further states the ‘massacre’, in both Guma and Logo local government areas of the state, were by ‘Fulani herdsmen.’ 

It’s the latter that’s caused online comments like “fanning embers of hate”; “incitement against the Fulanis”. Admittedly, this reaction mirrors mine at gauche ‘Islamic terrorists’ in a 9/11 memorial at Owego, New York. But, for Benue, it would seem inelegant language has had a benefit. 

Before kidnapping of Chibok girls, and global empathy this elicited when celebrities and world leaders amplified hashtag #bringbackourgirls, no other atrocity in recent times Nigeria had lasted a 72-hours news cycle. Even as grave as an entire town being flattened and rid of its young men. New Year’s Day killings in Guma and Logo making headlines, three months after atrocity, is another rarity. And it’s gradually becoming clear that what has kept both traumatic incidences in the news, thus, on Nigerian minds, is ‘shock therapy’.

The term was used by best-selling critic of capitalism and its social effects, Naomi Klein, in her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Her thesis being the irony of ‘free’ market ‘forced’ upon societies, Klein details how, on the back of crises – 1973 coup in Chile; 1982 Falklands War; 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union; Hurricane Katrina in 2005 – deregulations bonfire, sale of national assets, and deep welfare cuts, which the people would’ve resisted in peace-time, were slyly made when the people were disorientated. This was called ‘Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP)’ in Nigeria. Indeed, ‘Free Market’ high-priest and Nobel-winning economist, Milton Friedman, had taught his students who implemented those policies to exploit ‘crisis’ to make societies think anew.

To be clear: Bring-Back-Our-Girls co-convener, Dr. Oby Ezekweseli, and Benue state Governor, Dr. Samuel Ortom, haven’t clandestinely applied ‘shock therapy’ to make Nigerians wake up to their human responsibility of standing in solidarity with those who mourn and demand justice. But, that in both cases, the principle has worked, nonetheless. 

Fist-pumping women clad in red t-shirts, red berets and hijab, daily gathering at an Abuja public park, demanding that the teenage school-girls abducted from their dormitory be brought back to their distressed parents, was beyond an unusual reaction; local online platforms that ran countdowns, too. This jarred minds of some Nigerians who accused them of politicisation. But due to this unrelenting pressure from Bring-Back-Our-Girls protestors and, by extension, local and international media, the government of the day paid special attention to the Chibok girls, releasing their names and photos, unlike kidnaps prior. This belated response by that government, many believe, contributed to electoral loss suffered. Eventually, after two years of hardly leaving the news headlines, a first Chibok girl was found and release of a few more negotiated subsequently.  

Likewise, communities were torched and inhabitants killed in Benue before Guma and Logo. But when, this time, Governor Ortom did the unconventional by holding a state mass burial at the IBB Square, Makurdi, a change was signalled. Hundreds of Benue residents, the Governor, traditional rulers and United Nations representatives, all wearing black apparels, surrounded row of 73 coffins and uniformly condemned the New Year’s Day killings as a genocide by ‘Fulani herdsmen’ and demanded justice. 

Despite overreaching and, frankly, insidious government stands on ‘hate speech’, that has caused self-censorship and cognitive dissonance among Nigerian media, the Benue state burial was repeated hourly on Television. Images of brown and gold emblem coffins of those murdered in Benue were etched on consciences of their compatriots. So overwhelming was the media coverage that Governor Ortom was accused of ‘drama’. And although there have been subsequent murders in Benue, conversations around that of New Year’s Day has stayed on newspaper front-pages: its latest reincarnation being the ‘Fulani herdsmen massacre’ signpost. And the new president, as if resuscitated by a defibrillator shock to the heart, has now realised that the game has changed, like the people of Chile, Britain, former Soviet Union and United States did after their crises when faced with massive job cuts due to privatisation of national assets. And like his predecessor, tardy attempts by the president to check killings in Nigeria’s Middle-Belt region will cost him electorally, next year.