The news arrives with the grim inevitability of a Shakespearean tragedy: retired General Idris Alkali, kidnapped weeks ago by unknown assailants, has been found dead. The British security experts, ever watchful from their insulated perches, monitor the region with the detached concern of Victorian naturalists observing a distant colony. But let us not pretend this is merely a Nigerian problem. It is a symptom of a global disease, a failure of governance that would have made the Romans blush.
The general’s death is tragic, but predictable. When a state cannot secure its retired military leaders, what hope for the ordinary man? The rot begins at the top. Nigeria, like many post-colonial states, suffers from a chronic weakness of institutions. The British, who once ruled these lands with efficient cruelty, now send experts to monitor. Monitoring is cheap. Action is expensive. And so we watch as the empire of chaos expands.
The parallels to the fall of the Western Roman Empire are uncomfortable but apt. Rome, too, had its generals kidnapped by barbarians beyond the Rhine. Rome, too, paid ransoms that only emboldened the enemy. Rome, too, watched as its peripheral provinces slipped into anarchy. The difference? Rome eventually fell. We are merely witnessing a slow-motion collapse, carefully managed by NGOs and security consultants.
What is to be done? The usual prescriptions: strengthen local governance, address corruption, improve intelligence. But these are the palliatives of the comfortable. The deeper issue is a loss of faith in the idea of the nation-state itself. When the state cannot protect its own, the citizen looks elsewhere: to ethnicity, to religion, to the gun. It is the old story of social contract dissolving into Hobbesian nightmare.
And what of the British experts? They will file reports. They will advise. They will collect their fees. But they will not save the general, nor will they save Nigeria. That salvation must come from within, or it will not come at all. Until then, we are all hostages, waiting for news of our own captivity.
