Normalisation of nonsense in Nigeria

Pictures of dead bodies in Sokoto being loaded into trucks for a mass burial hit a raw nerve within me.
Sokoto seems to me as one of the most relatively peaceful states in northern Nigeria.
But not anymore.
Scores were killed, without any resistance from any kind of security structure, at the national or subnational level.
And so, Nigeria seems to be turning into one huge mass grave.
Zamfara has consistently been a war zone for the better part of the last 36 months.
At a point, according to Senator Kabir Marafa, who represents the state at the Senate, Zamfara became an occupied territory, occupied by militias who were as bloodthirsty as they were unrelenting.
It is to the eternal shame of its governor, Abdulaziz Yari, that he is the chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, an ambiguous body that has neither focus, direction nor relevance.
When the killings in Zamfara got quite unbearably high, Yari finally summoned courage to speak out, asking bereaved residents to pray unto God.
He didn’t tell residents to hold him accountable for his inaction, partly due to the fact that sparking a debate on the killings might rub off negatively on President Muhammadu Buhari, a man whose second term ambition is the most important project presently which mustn’t be derailed.
Herdsmen, who have always been regarded as the fourth deadliest terror group in the world, are living up to their billing.
Almost unhinged, they have carried out mass killings in many parts of Benue, Taraba, Plateau, Nasarawa and Kogi.
Thousands have been killed in the so-called “Herders-farmers clashes”, but which look anything but a “clash”, rather, resembling a premeditated orgy of fatal violence being meted out in pursuance of a land-grab agenda and ethnic nationalism drive.
Killings of innocent persons on a large scale didn’t start today. It started with Boko Haram, a bloodthirsty group that sought the implementation of strict Shari’a in parts of the North. At least, we knew that was a war. A war on terror that rightly attracted global attention.
At some points, a state of emergency was even declared in the most affected states.
Death tolls were depressing, but they were sadly expected.
And we all looked forward to the end of the crisis. But while Boko Haram attacks have gladly receded, it seems fatalities have just refused to go.
People are still being killed continuously. The tragic thing about the bloodshed we are grappling with now is that, while it is going on unabated, there is denial at the highest levels of authority on whether it is happening at all in the first place.
Just the way Goodluck Jonathan pussyfooted in the moments immediately after the mysterious kidnap of the Chibok girls, leading to a heavy cloud of denials and uncertainties hanging over the entire scenario, the Buhari administration has refused to admit that the killings going on in the country are abnormal, and that they require a tough approach.
Perhaps, the greatest tragedy of the Buhari administration is the unfortunate normalisation of the gruesome killings going on in parts of the country.
During the thick of Boko Haram crisis, every report of bomb blasts or death tolls sent chills down our spine.
Protests, both offline, and online, were spontaneous to the killings.
We all thought it was abnormal that our country could become a hotbed of terror, a bad advertisement for all citizens.
We tried to force the government to do the right thing: end the killings, or step aside.
It was an apparent decider in the elections of 2015.
However, things have changed. The online protests have ceased.
The streets are carrying on as normal.
We know people can become protest-weary, but our problem isn’t that we are protestweary.
We are simply told to see the killings as normal.
The newspaper headlines are silent on deaths of innocent citizens. There is a quiet normalisation of the murders.
When we scream about it, we are told to stop heating up the polity. When we keep screaming anyway, we are called politicians.
What’s worse? The Presidency even goes as far as claiming we shouldn’t shed hypocritical tears about the killings by herdsmen as more people died under several tragic circumstances under the previous administration.
So, we are required to sit down, and accept the deaths in good fate.
We all would die one day anyway.
So, we shouldn’t see the deaths of people in the Middle Belt, whose time has simply come, as anything unusual.
And, as the defence minister also said, if we keep blocking the routes of grazing cattle, do we in our right senses assume we wouldn’t be killed? And, as Femi Adesina opined, if we get tired of open grazing, shouldn’t we consider that donating our ancestral lands to herdsmen for ranching is better than allowing them to kill us? So, we know what to do to avoid the swords of the herdsmen.
And if we refuse to do it, and they strike, we are to blame.
Getting outraged over deaths we caused in the first place then, is sheer hypocrisy.
This is Nigeria.
Sadly.
Olufemi Oluwaseye writes from Lagos 09034706835