PART 2

By Toyin Falola

We must now count the number of bodies in each region. How many Christians were killed last month? How many Muslims were killed in February? How many were kidnapped in the Southwest? Who survived in the Northeast? How can you travel in the Southeast? How many cities must you avoid on your journeys across the country? Have you hired security to protect your guests at your daughter’s wedding?

In consolidating our democracy, the most telling figures are not those on the elimination of poverty but the number of the dead, the kidnapped, and the dispossessed. If you cannot watch the yams you planted at night, don’t plant them in the day. The day is no longer safer than the night. Darkness and light have merged. And if you lament the decline of politics, you must be a critic who does not want your country to succeed.

Nation-building in postcolonial Nigeria faces structural and ideological problems, not because of the deep-seated mutual contempt among groups brought together by a colonial project. While this mutual dislike is part of our open sore, the deepened antagonism among the geographies of culture today owes its resilience, in part, to aggressive desires for internal colonization and control. Of course, this is natural among the human family, for humans are intuitively territorial, always seeking every opportunity to dominate and control the affairs of their subordinates or subjects. Rogues and kidnappers have a context to operate.

For the project Nigeria, there has always been enough tragedy to go around, especially during every election cycle, because elections in the country not only determine who holds power and how it is distributed, but also, by default, create an economic imbalance in which opportunities are unevenly distributed among citizens, largely based on the ethnic identity to which they are affiliated. You use thugs during elections, and the thugs consolidate crime economies to make a living. People in search of easy money have discovered a path to an alternative way of life. Kidnap and fix the human value; make your money enough to live well for half the year.

Sadly, on that road of self-actualization and provincial power by politicians and their thieving brothers who operate in the informal underworld economies, wrestling is a constant experience of moral vicissitudes that manifest in the mismanagement of public funds, the practice of patronage politics, and, most disturbingly, the mindless and endless kidnapping and killing of defenseless people who simply strive to live and witness the hands of the clock go round for many more days. You and I are now victims living in ungovernable spaces. Your Oba in local communities is praying for those who will give cows to translate into calves; the Chairman of the Local Government, who will release his shares; the politicians who will line his pockets to collect votes. The one who distributes the N10,000 to poor citizens to buy their votes must pocket his own millions. We must then suffer the sorrow and pain.

I am interested in the slaughter of Michael Oyedokun and what this means to us. It is not the aim of this piece to x-ray the political system of the country and provide an opinion based on the omniscient tragedy that has enveloped the country for a long time. I have contributed my quota on how we can solve the problems of our insecurity challenges:

The Toyin Falola Interviews – A Panel Discussion on Nigeria: Insecurity Problems
https://www.youtube.com/live/kcGvGxA_8Os?si=BPh1FJqc6hlu_EkE

The Toyin Falola Interviews: A Panel Discussion on Trump and Nigeria
https://www.youtube.com/live/CrClIrWeJ6k?si=ZAYp3QQaOENSzyWC

What I want to focus on is the curses the country piles up while believing it can force itself to build a nation respectful of its people. Anyone grounded in world history would admit that the road to building a solid nation is always littered with corruptible undertakings, some of which may influence how they shape the realities of life. Interestingly, however, nations that thrive without respect for human lives are only accumulating their challenges, for those will come at moments when they least expect them. Oriire has witnessed its own strategy. Who is next?

Nigeria is bleeding because the teachers, who also make painstaking efforts to consciously mold the lives of the younger ones, are exposed to security risks and dangers that leave them vulnerable. The recent brutal treatment of both teachers and students kidnapped in Oyo State by bandits marks a dark moment in our collective history, as the shedding of the blood of these innocent individuals has detrimental effects on our psychology. Oyedokun has been wasted. Others may soon be wasted.

Teachers are the undeniable pillars of the country’s elongated survival; the human capital deployed to rebuild the future of the nation by depositing the right form of knowledge and ideas into the minds of young children. Apart from the un-lucrative nature of teaching, teachers are commonly not appreciated enough for the efforts they put into teaching. Now, we have announced that they can be killed for ransom.

Need I emphasize that despite the spiraling changes across nearly all strata of life (family, social, political, and even financial), teachers are core members of the category who must endure suffering but never share in the supposed wins the country records, no matter who is at the helm of affairs? Unfortunately, teachers and even their students—the entire elementary and secondary education ecosystem in Nigeria—are the first to bear the irreparable damage of power struggles. From the Chibok girls kidnapped from their schools to the helpless NYSC members, and most recently, the students kidnapped in the Oriire community, certainly, teachers and students are now exposed to daily security risks.

Let us not sugarcoat the fact that perpetrators of these morally reprehensible actions want to bring the country to its knees through their horrendous actions and engagements. They understand perfectly that a functioning nation is measured by how it caters to the vulnerable, and believe me, the teachers and students in such an environment are indeed the first among the helpless. Many teachers cannot even defend themselves in emergencies: papers and pens are not weapons. Do not get it wrong: the perpetrators’ perennial success is evidence of failed leadership. Leaders lose their ability to account for the lives of the most vulnerable citizens. Of course, we are right to see our leaders as passive accomplices in the crises of our daily lives.

Students are meant to have their minds shaped by values and ideas that would give their own vision the clarity it needs to transform the resources available to them. Once teachers are caught in the psychological warfare that engulfs them, it stops students from functioning. In the recent gory experience of Michael Oyedokun, I see the disappointment of a man betrayed by the nation. Such disappointment is not silent; it is loud in its unraveling because it indicates that our lives can be sacrificed at any time.

Mr. Oyedokun left his home in the morning, hoping to do his normal job, only to face a fate so disastrous that it sends shock waves down our spines. Oyedokun’s death represents everything that is wrong with Nigeria. It does not appear that such a tragedy of national import will stop anytime soon, yet his death suggests that the issue of unity in the country has brought more problems than meaningful impact. The death of Oyedokun has reopened the conversation about the unity of Nigeria. Masterminds and beneficiaries of heinous atrocities always send a very strong message, not by pen or by postcard but by death. Rogues and money seekers kill innocent people in the conviction that it will send a signal to those in control. The consequences for the country are brutal. Kidnapping has become a tool for extracting money.  In Oyedokun, we must all see ourselves. My dirge cannot be a short one:

Teacher of Light, Victim of Darkness

They took a teacher
from the chalk dust of the classroom,
from the gentle labor
of shaping tomorrow
with tired hands and patient words.

They dragged him
from the road between hope and home,
into the mouth of fear,
where mercy had forgotten its own name.

Michael Oyedokun,
Your crime was kindness.
Your weapon was knowledge.
Your calling was the quiet miracle.
of teaching children
how to read the world
beyond hunger and pain.

In the villages and towns of Oyo State,
The wind now carries mourning.
Blackboards stand silent.
Empty desks grieve.
The bell of the school rings.
like a funeral hymn
for a man who gave his life
to the future of others.

What kind of land
slaughters its teachers?
What darkness rises
against those who plant wisdom
in the minds of children?

The kidnappers came
with cruelty in their veins,
Their hearts are colder than midnight iron.
They did not merely kill a man;
They wounded a community,
they stabbed at learning itself,
They spilled fear
upon the fragile dreams of the poor.

Tonight, mothers weep quietly.
Students whisper your name.
as though speaking too loudly
might awaken another tragedy.
Colleagues lower their heads.
beneath the unbearable weight
of helplessness and rage.

Yet death cannot erase you.

For every child
Who remembers your lessons?
You still breathe.
For every mind you awakened,
You still walk among us.
For every life you touched
with dignity and patience,
Your spirit survives
beyond the violence of wicked men.

May the earth receive you gently.
May justice hunt those
whose hands are stained with innocent blood.
May Nigeria remember
that a nation dies slowly
When its teachers are abandoned
to terror and despair.

Sleep now, Michael Oyedokun,
faithful teacher,
fallen guardian of knowledge.
The classroom mourns you.
The nation should mourn you.
And history will remember.
that even in a season of darkness,
You carried light.