Nigeria is once again draped in mourning, a familiar shroud that smells of cordite and spilled gin. Retired General Umaru Sani, a man who had traded his fatigues for a gardening trowel, met his end not in a bed of honour but in the fetid pit of a kidnappers’ den. His captors, a gaggle of bargain-basement terrorists, had held him for a paltry sum, a mere whisper of the billions they demand for oil executives.
The UK, perched on its moral high stool, has issued a stern condemnation of the 'terrorist ransom model,' a phrase that sounds like a PowerPoint slide in a circle of hell. But what else is new? The world tuts, Nigeria buries, and the kidnappers count their naira, each note stained with the blood of a general who should have died with his medals intact, not with a gag in his mouth.
The Foreign Office in London has declared that paying ransoms 'only fuels the cycle of violence,' a statement as obvious as the fact that the Thames is wet. Yet in Abuja, the same government that tuts at the West for demanding oil has a clandestine slush fund for just such emergencies. The general's family, of course, was told to keep quiet, to not 'embarrass the nation.
' But embarrassment is the least of it. This is a moral abscess, lanced by a rusty bayonet. The terrorists, you see, are businessmen.
They have a model. A ransom model. And like any good business, they have diversified: oil theft, kidnapping, and the occasional dashed hope.
The UK's condemnation is a shot fired from a water pistol. What is needed is a sledgehammer, but who has the stomach for that? The general is dead.
His ghost now joins the long queue of Nigerian souls whose lives were traded for a briefcase of cash. And the world, that great and glorious theatre of the absurd, looks on, sips its tea, and condemns the terrorists. Again.
As if words could mend a broken spine or a shattered family. Biff Thistlethwaite, signing off. I need a drink.
A large one. With a sliver of rage.
