So here we are again. Another general kidnapped. Another general killed in captivity. The UK Foreign Office wrings its hands and warns of ‘rising instability’ in West Africa. One almost expects a Roman senator to step out from behind the curtain, toga flapping in the tropical breeze, and intone solemnly: ‘The barbarians are at the gates.’
The murder of this Nigerian general is not merely a tragic footnote in the continent’s seemingly endless cycle of violence. It is a symptom, a portent, a bellwether for a region sliding into a new dark age. Let us not mince words: the Nigerian state, that great behemoth of West Africa, is rotting from within. Its military, once a source of regional pride, now appears porous, compromised, and fatally vulnerable to the very forces it was meant to suppress.
Compare this, if you will, to the late Roman Empire. There too, generals were captured and executed with alarming frequency. There too, the state’s monopoly on violence eroded, replaced by fiefdoms of warlords and bandits masquerading as political factions. There too, the centre could not hold. The question we must ask ourselves, with all the intellectual rigour we can muster, is whether we are witnessing the final collapse of the post-colonial order in West Africa.
The British Foreign Office’s warning is a classic exercise in diplomatic understatement. ‘Rising instability’ – as if the corpse of a general were a weather report. The truth is far more unsettling. We are looking at a region that has lost the plot of modernity itself. The institutions built with such pomp and circumstance after independence are now hollow shells. The rule of law? A punchline. The civil service? A sinecure for the well-connected. The military? A revolving door of coups and counter-coups.
And yet, we in the West cluck our tongues and propose more ‘capacity building’ and ‘good governance initiatives’. As if a PowerPoint presentation could paper over the cracks in a failed state. The Victorians, for all their imperial sins, understood something we have forgotten: that some societies, when confronted with chaos, require a firm hand. They called it the ‘white man’s burden’. We flinch at that phrase now, but the burden remains – only now it is carried by the victims themselves, without the benefit of colonial administration.
I do not advocate a return to colonialism. That ship has sailed, for good or ill. But I do insist on honesty. The Nigerian state is failing. The death of this general is a signpost on the road to Mogadishu, to Monrovia, to a dozen other graveyards of national ambition. The Foreign Office can issue warnings until its ink runs dry. The only real question is: who will be next?
History, after all, is a wheel. And right now, it is crushing West Africa beneath its weight. We may not like the parallel, but the fall of Rome did not happen all at once. It happened incrementally, in a series of humiliations, assassinations, and surrenders to forces that should have been contained. Each step was rationalised. Each retreat was framed as a tactical necessity. Until one day, the empire was no more.
We are not there yet. But the smell of decay is unmistakable. The general's blood, spilt in captivity, is a stain on the future of an entire region. And the only thing more dangerous than the chaos itself is our refusal to see it for what it is.
