OUR OWN COMMUNITY POLICING

Let me first commiserate with the families of the two Jambutu bomb blasts; the one at the new Jambutu jumu'at mosque and the ever bustling vegetable market/tipper garage. The lives and property lost are irreplaceable. The evil acts have created more orphans, more widows, to the already social problems facing the entire Northern Nigeria due to a large absent bread winners, guardians and role models.

My condolences also goes to the victims of the Kano farm center carnage. Those behind it do not represent the mainstream Northern culture, religion or values. An average Northerner, whether Muslim or Christian, was not inclined to violence, or mass murder that we are witnessing today in our different communities. At what point did we turned off the good road? How did we become like this?

While I was growing up in Yola, my parents and neighbors often eat together, especially dinner. Sometimes up to five parents would gather round, each with his own dinner, to eat together; there was so much peace at the neighborhood you would think all were related. I used tease at my dad that how does it taste to mix okra soup, miyan kuka and miyan alayyaho? He would always defend that whether or not you mix it from the dish they get mixed up in the stomach anyway. We would always laugh about it.

I was traveling to Yola from Abuja some few months ago and we stopped over in Gombe to eat. There were so many almajiris around, there were milling around starring at our faces as we ate; one could even think they could snatch the food from ones hand. There was a particular boy, about eight or nine years old, who was really looking disheveled, unkept and hungry. He stood right in front of someone eating an apple. I think the man felt pity for the child and handed him a piece of that one apple that he was enjoying. As the boy extended his tiny hand to grab at it, someone from the eating crowd jumped out and shouted, " so you are one of those people that kidnap our children using apples to lure them! What ensued was total madness. But finally the police appeared and took the man away. Such is how our societies became; we have become victims of our own distrust! It has become so bad that we can no longer trust each other, each one of us is a potential villain.

You can no longer 'dash' money to your neighbor's children (they would probably not accept it these days anyway). Neither can you give sweets to small children playing in the neighborhood. We have become so much isolated from our communities which have opened doors for wicked people to take over. The evil ones among us have succeeded in dividing us and have made us suspicious of each other. All of us failed to lift up their heads, think effectively, organize ourselves in a functional way to curb all the threats to our lives and security. We have failed to draw strength from our unity, from each other, in order to defeat our enemies.

I bet a lot of us do not know where our neighbors work, if they do that is. We do not care to get closer to find out what kind of life styles our neigbors live. We have embraced the alien culture of individualism and do not care, or even see, what happens around us. We dont know who our neighbors are, or care what happens to them. You may have a bomb carrier/maker right opposite your house, but because you don't care, he would one day end up killing you and your children in the neighborhood mosque, church or market.

We do not have to wait for the uniform security men to do those jobs that we can do ourselves, after all they are human beings like us. We must begin to care who stays by our sides, back or front. Whether around our houses, around our business areas and even in our worship places. Let's begin by sincerely finding out how each one of us slept last night, and how our neighbors fared during the day. Let's show each other love, care and respect.

The idea of getting closer to each other is to quickly and surreptitiously detect if your neighbor is becoming a deviant, whether in the workplace, market, or in the worship centers. Sociologist advocate that lack of love and compassion may lead to antisocial behavior. Getting closer to individual friends, neighbors or even our children may be key to unlocking those behavioral patterns that leads to getting entangled with bad people.

You would be doing yourselves a great favor if you would care to find out whether your neighbor has eaten today or not, even if you can not solve his problems, sharing them could help. And your prayers could save him too.

Lastly, if the government is too busy, or handicapped, yo provide us with adequate security personnel and security devices in our worship places, work or markets, we can come together as a community to task ourselves for our protection. We have unions in our markets and workplaces, we have leaders in our worship places and neighborhoods, it is now more than ever that their wisdom is needed. Let's all get creative in defending our lives and wealth. As they say, necessity is the key to creativity.