By Mideno Bayagbon
TheNewsGuru.com recently did an extensive report on the massive “invasion” of the Southern states by people euphemistically described as almajirai. Truck load after truck load, busloads after busloads, in suspicious motorcades, have been intercepted from Kwara to Edo, to Delta, to Enugu, to Cross River and so on, filled with young men, on missions no one has been able to decipher.
At first it was convoys of 18 seater buses that caught the attention of those who were enforcing the lockdown nationwide in the southern states. In some instances, as many as ten 18 seater buses, in bumper to bumper motorcades, mostly late in the night and early in the mornings, were intercepted.
In what appears a well coordinated mass movement of these youths even the usual food trucks and Dangote trailers joined the train, in ferrying them, with most of the young men hidden in between cows, tomatoes, yams and some other perishable items. When the various state lockdown task forces grew wise to this, the convoys left the highways and diverted to bush paths. Curiously, most of the young men intercepted, when interrogated, speak neither Hausa, English nor any known Nigerian language.
In its highly acclaimed investigative report titled: TNG SPECIAL REPORT: Unveiling sinister motives behind planned, mass intrusion of ‘almajirai’ from North to South during lockdown, “ TheNewsGuru.com (TNG) noted with concern that what started briefly as mere intra-deportation of underage almajirai by the northern governors as one of their responses to the COVID-19 fight in their region has now developed to a full blown mass intrusion to the South, a region in Nigeria alien to the Almajirai system…
“Sometimes numbering over 500 in a 40-feet trucks, these so-called almajirai who are old enough to have fathered several offsprings, according to the tradition in that part of the country, move like they are on a mission. Those who are not bold enough to travel alone hide in between their cows to escape the prying eyes of the law enforcement agencies stationed at the various inter-state borders. Their movement is not restricted to a particular time of the day as arrests have been made in broad daylight and at night.”
The Guardian newspaper too, last week, did an editorial on the same issue titled “Almajirai’s provocative exodus to southern Nigeria”. According to the Guardian editorial “It is indeed curious that the northern governors decision to relocate the Almajarai to their states of origin to control the spread of a pandemic has become an anti-climax. The ostensible logistic is to contain the spread of COVID-19, which might spread by the nature of living of the Almajiri with no fixed address…The exercise still on going has virtually turned arbitrary beyond the reciprocity of repatriation of Almajirai among the states of the North. The trend is that they are now being relocated to the South and Middle Belt that are not native to this social practice in the country.
Truth be told, those among the thousands of young men and a few women, who are Nigerians, have the constitutional right to freedom of movement and to abode in any part of the country they so wish. What is curious, and which the TNG (TheNewsGuru.com} report unearthed, which raises the eyebrow of the people in the south, is the seemingly clandestine, but coordinated, ferrying of these thousands of youths across the many state borders between the northern states, say Kano and Cross River state, at a time there is a nationwide lockdown on movement. Why are they conveyed in convoys; and when that failed, why in goods trucks?
What is their mission at this time the nation is fighting to curtail and defeat the coronavirus pandemic, a time movement across states will jeopardise the efforts? If these are indeed Almajiri being deported to their home states, as the agreement among the northern governors seems to suggest, why the mass movement to the south where there is no tradition of almajiri? Who is coordinating these movements, who is paying for them, and what is the purpose, at these times?
Before now, it was commonplace to see trailer loads of youths being ferried from the north to the south with each coming with brand new motorcycles to commence, ostensibly, “okada”riding business. To the chagrin of southerners, most of these youths, assumed to be from the northern states, are later discovered to be from Niger, Chad and so on. As the experience in Lagos, in recent years, has shown, it is from these groups that security agencies have discovered sleeper cells of boko haram, ISIS West Africa and some kidnapping gang members.
As my own personal experience with armed robbers who invaded my home in Lagos sometime ago shows, all the robbers were non Nigerians, but they had a Seriki, who though also not a Nigerian, has lived in that part of Lagos state for more than 10 years. They nonetheless had identity cards supposedly issued by some local governments in the north, which turned out to be fake.
Over time, it has been commonplace to see that jobless youths from across the West African sub region, in a quest for a better life, slip into the country from the ever, and some say deliberately porous northern borders, from where, possibly, well organised human trafficking and recruitment gangs, ferry them to the south,
deemed a little better economically than the north, to come and hustle for a living; legitimate or otherwise.
But the current movement, coming during the lock down, at a time we are told that Boko Haram and the other terrorist gangs who currently hold the northeast of Nigeria hostage, in a bloody, gory vice grip, are in total disarray and running for dear life, should raise the worry ante in all who truly love Nigeria.
Yet, the collaborative, greedy hands of the hundreds of various security men and women, along the thousands of kilometres, from the north to the south, are easily compromised. The situation is even more scary given that there are usually no consequences. The various breaches of the law, the instigators of the mass exodus of this questionable “almajiri, easily perpetrated through the greased hands of security men, go unchallenged, uninvestigated, and unpunished.
As usual, both the federal government and its armada of security forces turn a blind, seemingly unconcerned eye to the exodus of these youths to the south, ignoring the obvious implications. Leaders on both sides too are keeping an uncomfortable silence, repeating the same mistakes they made when the violent felons masquerading as herdsmen started invading the south and the middle belt states. As it will be recalled, the leaders in the south became kidnap targets while their towns and villages became easy targets for the marauding herdsmen. Northern leaders, some of whom own the cows and are therefore complicit employers of the heavily armed herdsmen, initially felt unconcerned and some even condemned those who dared raise a voice of condemnation of their uncontrolled activities. Not until it hit their doorsteps did they suddenly realise that we were all in serious trouble.
The fulani herdsmen having found an easier route to wealth beyond just herding cattle, initially dived into cattle rustling and eventually into the more lucrative business of kidnapping. Today, the criminal elements among the herdsmen have totally taken over the north. And northern leaders, for the first time since this attempt at democratic rule, can’t go home, as they won’t anymore, until a reasonable action is taken to arrest the very troubling development. No interstate road in the north is safe from the kidnapping gangs. Even going to spend a weekend in the village or to attend the usual ceremonies has become a foolhardy expedition.
Like southern leaders, Abuja and Lagos have become their cities of refuge. Mecca, Lebanon, Qatar, UAE, London and select cities of Europe are now the holding cities for the wives and children of the northern and southern elites. That way they delude themselves that they and their families are safe.
My fear, post COVID-19, is that when all this is over, we will all live to regret the unchecked, instigated mass export of these youths, supposedly from the north to the south. My gutsfeel is that there is more to these movements. A mastermind, or group is at work. They seemingly have collaborators in the various security arms. My fear is that, like with the Fulani herdsmen, who unleash mayhem on farmers in the South, the security collaborators will provide a shield, a cover for whatever nefarious intentions these new groups of “Almajiris” flooding the Southern states might have. It could be religious. Maybe, aggravated criminality.
Plain disillusionment over their rising expectations about a better life in the South, leading to rising frustration will ensue. This is even more so, given the expected harsh economic realities, the South and indeed the entire country will be embroiled in. We should brace up, begin to prepare, for a rash of insecurity, of bloody encounters, of possibly sectarian clashes, of a Hobbesian life that is brutish, harsh and gory.