-Blank NEWS Online (NIGERIA) – By Austen AKHAGBEME:

One of the most embarrassing phenomenon in Nigeria today is the continued display of bravado and reckless impunity by the ravaging Boko Haram sect and their equally deadly Bandit variant, in their nefarious operations in Northern Nigeria, despite the government acclaimed superiority and control over the crisis.

It is a shame of a nation, nay a people, who boast often of their cultural and religious homogeneity to lord it over the rest of us when it comes to political leadership and electioneering.

Even with the recent massacre of harmless farmers and the feared kidnap of their wives and children, no prominent northern elite is bold enough to cry out to the powers that be. Why is there a conspiracy of silence amongst the hitherto vocal northern elites when their backyards are gradually turning into massive killing fields?

Why is it that nobody is bold enough to call to question, the integrity of those Northern sons and daughters whose hands lies the onerous responsibility to protect life and property in the north specifically and the country in general?

Where are the retired Generals and military goons that often masquerade as Kaduna mafia, Langtang Mafia, Arewa think-tank et cetera? Why is the politically controversial Arewa youth that often issues ultimatum to other “lesser” tribes to vacate the north at the slightest provocation suddenly go mute in the face of the wanton destruction of lives in their region?

Why are the northern governors silent and abandoned their colleagues in the north east to face their predicament alone? Where are the rumoured numerous northern presidential hopefuls today?

It is very obvious that the ordinary man in the north has been shortchanged, bamboozled, deceived and abandoned by their hitherto noisy, manipulative and overbearing elites who never have their thoughts at heart but often resort to them for political and pecuniary gains.

From the banditry and kidnapping in the north west to the menace of the Boko Haram in the north East, northern Nigeria has never had it so bad in terms of insecurity. The painful paradox is the fact that the nation’s security architecture is wholly manned by people from the north, yet nobody raises eyebrows.

It is understood that security is the responsibility of everyone irrespective of the region you come from. And that the other regions are not eldorados or as crisis free as it should be. But the wanton spilling of innocent blood in the north and the awed unity at playing the ostrich by the northern elites, is conspiratorial and highly condemnable.

Let the north speak out against the ongoing annihilation of her people by heartless anarchists and reject the conspiracy of silence of their deceptive and predatory elites. Or else, it might be too late.

• Austen AKHAGBEME is a Columnist with Blank NEWS Online