Prince Justice J Faloye
Hundreds of indigenous Africans were killed by Afro-Arabic terrorists in Plateau State on Christmas Eve. The following week Ondo State rural dwellers had to flee their homes when the unarmed Amotekun were reported to be overwhelmed by Afro-Arabic herdsmen and terrorists. All across the country Nigerians face constant terroristic killings and kidnappings, yet all we hear over the last decade are promises of increased army deployment by the political leaders and agitations by political activists for restructuring to bring about state police..
One can’t but wonder what type of social contract deprives two hundred million Nigerians of their basic natural rights of self preservation and freedom. It becomes disconcerting when you realize that for the last 500 years under different types of governance, the people of this West African region have been the world’s most traumatized, terrorized, enslaved, colonized and neocolonized. Is this a case of not properly analyzing the problem to provide the solution to our lack of natural rights of self preservation and freedom?
The current social contract is shaped by the adopted US constitution model, whose framers like James Madison proposed and ratified the Second Amendment Right to bear arms in 1791 to empower the masses to protect their democracy and popular sovereignty from tyrannical governments. This ensures that Coups can never take place in the USA since the citizenry would turn up at Capitol with their guns to fight the usurpers.
The 1791 USA Second Amendment of right to bear arms was influenced by the 1689 British Bill of Rights following the deposed King James II, who had armed Catholics and unfairly disarmed Protestants. However, the focus of the US right to bear arms laws shifted in modern times, especially by the 1980s Gun Lobby, from protecting democracy to protecting life and private property. Considering the above justifications of the rights to bear arms, we can apply the problems and solutions to Nigerian’s democracy.
Like with the British monarch that armed Catholic supporters while disarming Protestants, allegations that Afro-Arabic Fulani herdsmen are armed by the government against Indigenous African farmers can’t be discarded as scaremongering in what is civilizational imperialism. It is obvious that the killings across the Middlebelt are Afro-Arabic civilizational ethnic cleansing, while peoples of the Original African civilization are being prevented from self defence.
The question arises what social contract exists between the governed and government. The social contract between the masses and government has been found to be wanting in every aspect of life. However while the goverment has failed to provide us essential social services, making us provide our own water from private boreholes, electricity from private generators, private education, buy Jeeps for bad roads, we are being prevented from protecting ourselves.
The best of the political class call for restructuring of the existing constitution to allow state police, but their antagonists raise the prospect of tyrannical state governments, especially since the citizens are disarmed. A formidable 250 Afro-Arabic terrorists attacked Plateau State villages, so whether federal or State Police, the truth is we can not afford the financial and human resources to guard every village across our huge landmass with 250 policemen each, as even USA can’t guard its own internal landmass and thus arms its citizens to protect their natural rights of self preservation. If the God of government can’t protect me, let him leave me to protect myself.
Just like our Political Economists leave the obvious solutions adopted by White nations to industrialize and uplift their people economically, and instead prescribe neo-liberal economic policies known to have failed in every Black nation and adopted by no White nation, one can’t but wonder why African politicians are not adopting the obvious solutions included in their adopted Western constitutions.
Although the USA constitution allows state police, it is not a secret that the ultimate protection of their democracy is in the second amendment that gives the right to bear arms. The people are armed to protect their private and collective properties against external and internal aggressors, but our political class are scared to empower the people since they as a neocolonist class are imposed and scared of losing power to the masses. If the masses are armed, it would prevent stealing of ballot boxes, voter intimidation, as well as coups and state capture by external and internal usurpers.
For the last five hundred years, we Africans have suffered slavery and ethnic cleansing under different governance types, from traditional democracies to Western political systems. Yet, African leadership and elites continue to promise a change under proposed new governance types, without arming the multitude physically and intellectually.
This all started between the late 1400s to early 1500s, when Europeans arrived on our coast and usurped our traditional political systems and leadership with arms, to put in place a pro-slavery leadership that allowed millions of Africans to be shipped into slavery in an arms for slave trade system. The psuedo leaders were made to believe that their people would be better protected if the leadership could obtain weapons by enslaving and selling other peoples outside their territories, but in reality were only pushing an arms race between all African territories.
Following three hundred years of slavery induced terrorism, the psuedo African leadership were either convinced or militarily coerced to sign to European protectorates from slavery. Due to the bloody Haitian revolution that made Europeans realize that they couldn’t continue to import African slaves into the Americas and resulted in their decision to colonize African territories where they can still make Africans to produce the raw materials.
However, due to centuries of dumping 400,000 guns on our coast every year to provoke wars whose captives were sold as slaves, European colonists had to wait for fifty years after the Haiti revolution for the mid-1800s development of the machine gun. The European offer to protect African territories from the slavery terrorism that they funded led to colonization, whereby the entire African territory was subjugated and colonized for about fifty years during which the masses were disarmed and a new Eurocentric leadership class was created and indoctrinated.
The new political class that were essentially a neocolonist guard were to convince us that they could provide better solutions to our economic and sociopolitical needs than what the European colonists were offering. With the masses disarmed by the colonists, since you don’t arm your slaves, they left behind armies that were armed and indoctrinated to safeguard their colonial interests, so when the neocolonist political elite took over power and tried to go beyond their indoctrination to empower their people, they were overthrown by the foreign armed military class. This led to a class of people, especially the military and their political friends, being over and above the law, thereby making a mess of democratic principles and rule of law.
The simple solution of rights to bear arms is rejected by the neocolonist guard that resort to scaremongering that it would lead to increased crimes and murders, when in actual fact the criminals, ethnic cleansers and cultists have free access to guns while the good citizens are constitutionally disarmed and left defenceless. The possibility of irresponsible youth commiting crimes is not as social destructive as the threat of ethnic cleansing and tyrannical governments. To prevent a negligible minority with criminal intent from settling scores in the drug trade with guns shouldn’t be done by preventing farmers and law abiding citizens from protecting themselves from being wiped out. We would rather have criminals cancel themselves out than for entire Middlebelt ethnicities being wiped out.
Ultimately, as the Chinese revolutionary leader Chairman Mao stated that ‘power comes from the mouth of the gun’, if our democracy is truly power to the people, then the people must be allowed to arm themselves to protect our popular sovereignty as well as their lives and private poverty. Otherwise what we have is an open slavery, whereby any armed thug, armed soldier or armed terrorist can deprive us of our lives, property and popular sovereignty.
Would someone in Finland be able to declare a sit at home and prevent a whole market from opening, if we were all armed? Would armed robbers be writing to whole neighborhoods to prepare for their raids or waylay an expressway if every citizen could enforce his rights of self preservation? Would an Agbero be able to extort me if there is a likelihood that I am armed. Would someone just jump a queue? No, because nobody will have absolute power and we will all have to respect our rights to live and let live.
So the solutions to this uncivilized democracy is obvious but unfortunately the struggle for our rights of self preservation will be sabotaged since our psuedo elite will see it as a threat to their foreign imposed tyrannical grip on power, unless power is matched by overwhelming power in a class struggle.
