Making the perpetrators pay for their uprisings

By PAUL ARHEWE 25/05/2011 00:57:00

The spate of political and religious violence in the country in recent times actually calls for concern, even as carnages from such uprising keep mounting and have left many Nigerians families in sorrow. Many incidences in northern parts with recurring toll in places like Plateau, Borno and Bauchi where the proclivity for killing is taking an unprecedented dimension require more daring and drastic measures. Our government has continued to set up committees upon committees to probe past uprisings without much remedy to arrest the growing monstrous situation.

Recently, another of such panels was set up to look into the causes of the post-election violence last month, and as expected, nothing tangible is expected from these seeming futile efforts; as disagreements over who leads the panel has highlighted the foreseeable failure in the whole exercise.
Last week, an international human rights watch stated that about 800 lives were snuffed out during the mayhem, even as our government is keeping the death toll to its chest to prevent further reprisals. One way to get these nonentities to stop the spate of killings is to make them pay directly or indirectly for the destruction of lives and properties each time this madness takes place.
How can this be done? Simple, when a church or mosque is burnt down during an uprising in a particular area the monthly statutory allocation for the local government and state where the unrest occurred is deducted by the federal government and a better worship structure is put in place for the one that was destroyed. Also, the aforementioned should be applied to any public infrastructure or private properties destroyed. When this practice is put in place, and the youths and elderly in a rancorous locality see that all allocation for their local government or state is persistently used to service debt from their irrepressible uprisings, they will have no choice than to make recourse to self-motivated effort in curtailing future reoccurrence. Their traditional rulers, local and state governments would be forced to embark on intense campaign against behaviour that spurs bedlam in their locality. Not only would these leaders campaign to dissuade those rascals from perpetuating further destruction, they will constitute a force to fish them out.
More knocks than kudos followed the emotive palliative of President Goodluck Jonathan to the ‘NYSC 10,’ where five million naira was given to each family member of the deceased. Many see this subtle benevolence as inadequate. For me, state governments and local governments in areas where these killings took place should be made to pay heavily to compensate these families. Those traditional leaders, heads of clans and communities, in my view have not really contributed enough to arrest the incessant spate of violence and mayhem in their communities.
Hence, when communities statutory allocation, meant for development and to cater for the welfare of the people, are continuously used in serving the notoriety of few in a community, then majority of them in that same locality would be forced to team up and handover the bad eggs among them to security forces. The time for treating these evil perpetuators with kid gloves is over. Since they don’t mean well to our common heritage called Nigeria, they should be prepared to receive fire for fire. In situation where their excesses lead to loss of any life, those who are culpable should be made to pay the supreme price. No amount of money is enough to pay for a single life that is lost.