It has been reported that at least 30 people were killed and several others taken away after armed attackers raided a village in Nigeria’s northern Niger State, police confirmed on Sunday. The incident is the latest in a series of violent attacks affecting communities in the region.
According to police, the gunmen struck Kasuwan-Daji, a village in the Borgu Local Government Area, on Saturday evening. The attackers reportedly opened fire on residents, killing many people on the spot. They also set fire to the local market and destroyed several homes.
Nigeria has for many decades experienced these kinds of incidents, (remember the Chibok Girls of 2014?) and in almost all cases, the government has remained paralyzed in finding a solution. Indeed, so paralyzed has been the government, that it has allowed the group Boko Haram to become entrenched. That was the group that kidnapped the Chibok Girls of 2014. As at the writing of this piece, ten years after the incident, 82 of the girls remained missing and are presumed captive or dead. Some of those rescued say that some of them died in captivity. It is heart-rending, but it seems that the government of Nigeria (all governments) lack the ability and will to combat this state of constant insecurity.
The Nigerian situation is not an exception.
Many African countries suffer from various situations which are simply too bizarre. This is a continent where we have the largest number of life-time Presidents. This is a continent where the military often overthrow civilian governments, and where the concept of military strongmen converting themselves into civilian democratic leaders have been developed into a fine art.
This is a continent with some of the highest illiteracy rates, and in spite of having probably the best agricultural lands on the planet, this is a continent that is unable to feed itself.
In the 21st century, disease is rife and rising, unemployment and poverty is on the rise, and many Africans, given a choice, would rather live anywhere else on the planet than on their home continent.
Some African countries have chosen to go the democratic way, but even then, it is all too clear that we are just playing lip-service to the concept.
Take the case of our country, which is divided right down the middle by partisanship. Everything one side of the divide does is right, and to the other side, wrong. An example is our position of LGBTQ (and whatever nonsense it is called). When the New Patriotic Party (NPP) was in power, the parliament at the time was pressured by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) to pass a law criminalizing it. The then President refused to sign it into law. The NDC is now in power, and the NPP has adopted the opposite stance that the NDC should promulgate the same law and sign it.
Of course (no surprise) the NDC is vacillating on the point. It is clearly now opposed to passing the law. Lost in there, is the question of whether or not this nation even needs such a law; it doesn’t.
What I am saying, in all this, is that it seems that we are unable to govern ourselves and behave like human beings with our minds and able to choose objectives that work for us, and carry them through.
And for so long as this is so, we would continue to allow idiots like Donald Trump to come here to drop bombs.
Have a great year.
(PERISCOPE DEPTH of 5th January, 2026).
