(20): Northern Nigeria; A Hobbesian Anarchy with Social Contract.

MA Iliasu.

Imagine the scene; two nights before a cultural festival, a team of youths - neither of which breathed quarter of a century, gather to go hunting. During the gathering, a consensus was reached, that individually a person can only catch one rabbit. But if the hunt is carried out collectively, three Buffaloes can be captured in two nights at ease. On top of that, it was argued that collective hunting eliminates the chance of any hunter getting harmed by wild animals, for night wandering is presumed to be the culture of the animals at that side of the world. The latter suggestion was all agreed, and the following night the hunters marched to the wild. Upon entering the wild, darkness consumed their hearts. Several hours into the wild and not a single buffalo was on sight. A reason that strikes fear into an aspect of the hunters, enabling them to begin exercising the thoughts of breaking away from the agreement. After all, if they march to the way of rabbits, at least some of them would have already have something to take home, as opposed to staying which guarantees nothing. Before long, a large number of them couldn't withstand the darkness, and so they begin to disappear from the team. Few of them would remain, a number that won't be enough to capture a boar let alone a buffalo. The few begin to protest by reminding the majority of the agreement reached before marching to the wild. Yet the majority wouldn't care, causing emotions to intensify. You know the attitudinal anger of hunters. They keep arguing until morning when the animals stop wandering. And before the following night, which is the final for hunting before the festival kicks in, some of the majority begin to believe that not only would they not be able to capture a buffalo, rabbits themselves wouldn't be found, and the embarrassment that comes in marching back home from hunting empty-handed during an eve is clear of being born a bastard. So moral corruption strikes. The majority kill the few. Taking over their belongings to showcase as the spoils of hunting.

Why is this tale relevant?

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), a social contract theorist, believes that for the society to exist in harmony, there must be guarantees that people will not harm one another, and people must be able to rely on one another to keep their agreements. In his humble, yet spot on philosophical assertion, Hobbes in his theory, believes that only a government can provide that. Therefore, we need a government. In establishment of which, people give up some of their personal freedom (the freedom of anarchy, such as it is) and give the government the authority to enforce laws and agreements. Those living under a government are parties to a social contract. Each person agrees to follow the laws of the state on the condition that everyone else does the same. That way, we will all relatively be safe from each other and we will all benefit from the other social goods that will result. However, in an instance in which a party refuses to honor it's agreement, that which forces it not to abandon it's freedom and urge for anarchy, the government, as the legal trustee, must be there to protect the party which honor it's own end of the deal. And protection in this regard means safeguarding their lives and properties, with further obligation of eliminating the threat out of existence, to prevent further upset in the future.

The team of youths in the first paragraph suffered from lack of government - any enforcing figure that'll force everyone to honor the agreements. Which means that the youths falls victim of anarchy - the state of nature in which people gets inherently selfish, nasty and brutish. A violent endeavor survival of the fittest. And consequently, a considerable number of hunters died of such anarchy. And if a decision was to be reached to march to another hunting, the same will happen, until there is an enforcer of the rules. All things being equal.

The fascinating thing about the hunters is that when they're optimistic, the optimism is self-fulfilling and self-perpetuating. Likewise when they're pessimistic, the pessimism is also self-fulfilling and self-perpetuating. And like Jean Jacques Rousseau's story of hunters, the pessimists in the group know that by continuing the march, they may at best, end up catching the buffalo, or at worst, catch the rabbits, even though they opted to rather not agree with the former by technically giving in to their pessimism. Why? Because the environment wasn't favorable for them to be optimistic. Because the asymmetric intuition between them and their optimistic counterparts is very wide, neutralizing not only their moral sentiment but fueling their moral corruption. The optimist may be wrong too. But the cost of them being wrong would only come in bearing the shame of going back home empty-handed, with no one losing his precious life. And that's why the pessimists are wrong, and would always be wrong. Their moral sentiment and moral corruption, even when proved right, would ignite them to commit something that'll disrupt the social order, such as murder, burglary, theft, etcetera.

But then a question need to be asked; would the pessimists do the same had there was an entity capable of making the atmosphere favorable for their optimism to blossom and win over their pessimism? Would the same happen if we assume that the entity fails at making the atmosphere favorable, but then it's equipped with physical force to keep the moral sentiment and moral corruption of such pessimism at bay? I would humbly believe absolutely otherwise. And so would John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Baron de Montesquieu and Mercilius of Padua, among other social contract theorists. And that's where the allegory ends while Northern Nigeria begins. 

Like a team of hunters who gathered to give up their individual pursuit of rabbits in agreement to capture three Buffaloes, Northern Nigeria is a social gathering of people who gathered to abandon their individual pursuit of selfish materiality in favour of chasing greater goal in the form of peace, harmony, security, progress and vanity. And inherently as it was the case during the state of nature, an aspect of northerners, some of them compelled by the dictates of unfavorable sociopolitical and economic atmosphere, just like hunters with darkness and missing buffaloes, allow their selfishness, nastiness and brutish-ness to win over the oaths they sworn in agreement to be their brothers keepers. Turning them into bloodthirsty terrorists, kidnappers and bandits in the region, who by the day kill their own northern kind in cold-blood barbarism.

In a way, they are so indifferent from the hunters whose self-fulfillment and self-perpetuating decision-making convinced them to murder their hunting-folk, to save self from the shame and wrath that comes in leaving and coming back home as the same nothing and nobody. So indifferent from Jean Jacques Rousseau's story of hunters. Yet in another way, so different because in Northern Nigeria there's a government who is in charge of making the sociopolitical and economic environment favorable, so as to proactively prevent the atmosphere from dictating people's instincts into allowing their pessimism - which is dictated by moral sentiment and moral corruption, to take over, along the line forcing them to helplessly break the social agreement. And where the government fail to do that, it's entrusted with the protection of people's lives and properties against the army of radical bloodthirsty pessimists that would surely come back to siege the walls of their castles, and cast dark shadows upon their heads like angels of death. But the latter similarity overwhelms the former. Northern resembles state of anarchy like Roseau’s story hunters more than anything modern. And it's trapped down to the faults and failure of government. 

As the keeper of social contract, the current handling of Northern Nigeria by the government is synonymous to the greatest fraudulent effort in 21st century. It has never been more easy and convenient to be a criminal in anytime in history and anywhere in geography as it's currently in the region. Terrorists bomb where they want, kill who they want, kidnap who they want and at the time they want. Kidnappers pick who they want, fix the ransom price they want, release who they want and kill who they want. Bandits siege villages or towns of their own choosing, raid what they want, rape who they want, kill who they want and at the time of their choosing. All to fulfill their personal selfish interests. And closer to nothing is being done, fueling the brutish and barbaric approach of the perpetrators. Kidnappers arrogantly walk on people's streets with the kidnapped like the Sicilian Mafia in Mario Puzzo's epic crime thriller. While Bandits raid people's houses with entitlement unmatched by the owners of the houses themselves, just like Ragnar Lothbrok's Heathen Army. In short, Nigeria is reproducing fiction in a way even the authors of fiction would be wowed. All thanks to fraudulent government.

When trial and error is tried on political economy - an endeavor in which committing an error is more costly than a surgeon forgetting a scissors inside the belly of patient, poverty and unemployment - the socioeconomic parasites which fuels income inequality, reduction in GDP, shrinking in welfare, unfavorable balance of payment, disastrous national income accounts, inflation in crime, hyperinflation in social disorder, peaking of instability, maturity in ignorance and absolute bombardment of general drivers of the society - would refuse to disappear. And therefore the government would have to endure taking care of problems that are beyond it's solving capacity - poverty-stricken and instability-inflicted disasters beyond the impacting of government's social intervention, criminals and outlaws that'll outnumber the law enforcement agents, among other problems undermining the society that attention is yet to visit. Which is technically declaring the government nonexistent. Not that it literally doesn’t exist, but because all the self-acclaimed effort the government say they’re putting in place is being cancelled by it’s own earlier negligence. For now, amidst the rife of the damage, ruthless measures must be put in areas that need urgent attention. Emergency situation calls for emergency measures. The death tolls being recorded in Zamfara, Sokoto and Katsina as a result of banditry is a national security problem as big as Boko Haram itself. That must not continue. Otherwise we'll just dive deeper into the state of anarchy, breeding further problems which the tenure of government may not survive to handle.

On one hand, the immediate past administration was judged upon the failure to protect the lives of citizens from the barbarism of terrorism - which is just one amongst the factors signifying the possible existence of atrocious anarchy. On the other hand, the current administration too risk being measured on the same weight, and this time with not one, as the past administration, but with countless signals that are only found in fictitious tales or state of nature. Ranging from terrorism, banditry, kidnapping, thuggery, social distrust, overwhelming inequality, rising redundancy, collective pessimism, among others. And it's only right that people demands for the immediate and effective tackling of the problems. Mainly because it's the primary duty that brings the government into existence. Safeguarding the lives and interest of people, without any strings attached, comes first. Any other thing comes second. And where strings are bound to be employed as people become more helpless, the northern region and northerners owe both moral and political debt upon the current administration. Because it's their overwhelming votes that brings it into office, after enduring hurtful ethnic name-calling, uncalled cultural stereotypes, ludicrous tribal animosity and jingoism. All because they opted for their own choice. Is it any right or agreeing with the dictates of sanity that such choice now ignore them when they're helpless, and are in need of help the most?

The citizens are being failed, and they're saying so despite making peace with, and accepting the fact that government's failure in Nigeria is the culture, tradition and norm. Regardless, surely like any other human being's on the planet, as dictated by the declaration of Human Rights in 1940s, a closest pact to global constitution, we tell the Nigerian government that #NorthernLivesMatter. Therefore we demand that it gets treated as such.

MA Iliasu writes from the ancient city of Kano.

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