Reading through the front and major news pages of some mainstream newspapers, such as The Guardian and Daily Sun this particular day, brought tears to my eyes. It reminded me that, indeed, existential philosophers were right to conclude with the founding fathers of scholarly philosophy that, in life, the only permanent phenomenon is change.

You may want to know the source or cause of this upsurge in the emotional upset I experienced. It was the photograph of hundreds of children, women and young persons in Plateau State, queuing for their turn to receive plates of food from the emergency relief services.

These were persons hitherto happily doing their farm work in their different villages in Plateau State prior to the sudden invasion by well-armed Fulani militia, who slaughtered over 200 persons and drove them forcefully out of their ancestral homelands. That was not all. The invaders had the temerity to settle down in those “conquered territories” and have begun to rename them as it suits them. And, yet, there are both the State and Federal Governments that are silent as this unpardonable crime against humanity goes on.

As soon as yours faithfully took a contemplative look at the front page photographs showing fellow citizens with plates waiting to be served food as internally displaced persons, some thought flashed through my subconscious. One of such thoughts was to ask what the essence of government is, if the ordinary people are slaughtered in their prime and in great numbers by some other citizens who are privileged to be armed and to have some high-level supports within the top echelons of government.

Another thought was to interrogate the import of government, borrowing from the profound leadership thoughts of fathers of philosophy of politics, such as Aristotle (384 -322BC); Thomas Hobbes (1588 -1679); Thomas Aquinas (1225 -1274); John Locke (1632 -1704), among others. These great men were of the opinion that the primary purpose of government is the protection of life and property of the citizenry. Thus, the framers of the Nigerian Constitution also adopted this locus classicus into the framework of our supreme body of law. What this, therefore, means is that the written and unwritten social contract existing between the people and those officials elected into offices for specific tenure is that we, the people of Nigeria, have agreed to donate to you the legitimacy to exercise governmental authority provided that you will abide by the primary tenet of this social contract: which is the protection at all times of the lives and property of all citizens. The consequence of a willful or negligible breach is the resignation from such offices and prosecution of the officials, if found to have conspired with mass killers. We will look at what some of these philosophers affirmed as the central reason for the formation of governments in human societies.

For John Locke, the essence of government boils down to the unbiased enforcement of the rule of law which, to him, was the basis for man to have transited from his original state of nature whereby he had unbridled freedom to do as it pleases him.

He stated that the best way to understand political power aright and derive it from its original, is to to compulsorily and compulsively consider what state all men are naturally in. That is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.

John Locke affirmed: “A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another. There being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank - promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature and the use of the same faculties - should also be equal one among another without subordination or subjection, unless the Lord and Master of them all should by any manifest declaration of His will set one above another and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.”

He then proffered fundamental opinion to explain the why of enthronement of government in human societies: “But, because, no political society can be, nor subsist, without having in itself the power to preserve the property, and, in order thereunto, punish the offences of all those of that society, there, and there only, is political society, where every one of the members hath quitted this natural power, resigned it up into the hands of the community in all cases that exclude him not from appealing for protection to the law established by it.”

The thinker further explained when there is a willful transition away from a state of nature: it is, because all private judgment of every particular member being excluded, the community comes to be umpire; and by understanding indifferent rules and men authorised by the community for their execution, decides all the differences that may happen between any members of that society concerning any matter of right, and punishes those offences which any member hath committed against the society with such penalties as the law has established.

The grundnorm of a human society, he argued, is to ensure equality before the law and to practice equity as the hallmark of exercising governmental authority over the citizens.

Thomas Hobbes puts it in a much more profound way, by asserting that in a state of nature only the strong survives. He argued that in a state of nature life is short, brutish, uninteresting and, in fact, survival is by the fittest and the strongest. Also other contemporary philosophers say that one distinction that marks out the state of nature is that “Might is always right and that injustice and inequity are elevated as statecraft.”

Sadly, that is what the serial violent-and-blood-cuddling terror attacks by armed Fulani herdsmen against farmers and Christians in the North represents. And given the conspiratorial silence of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration to these acts of terrorism is that Nigeria is gradually returning to a state of nature, and the nation is being turned into one huge internally displaced people’s camp. That the world refuses to intervene to save Nigerians from these state-supported attacks by armed Fulani herdsmen makes it the more ludicrous and, indeed, questions the essence of such bodies as the United Nations Organisation.

Reading through a piece posted on www.eldis.org, we were told that basically, Nigeria has, indeed, turned to a monumental internally displaced person's camp. This supports my affirmation that the Federal Government is actively working to return Nigeria to a state of nature.

The researchers explained that in Nigeria, with a history of ethno-religious conflicts, the past year(s) has (have) witnessed an alarming upsurge in the level of violence, and its impact on civilians. Three years back, some researchers found out that the armed Fulani insurgency in Plateau State left possibly more than 1,000 people dead and 258,000 temporarily displaced; many of those who fled still too scared to return.

In the executive summary of a research paper which this writer read from the above website, the researchers assessed the causes and consequences of such mass displacement of people. The study looked at obstacles preventing the return of people to their homes, and weighed up the humanitarian response to the situation.

The general findings include:

i.Whilst the immediate needs of the IDPs were adequately addressed, their long-term needs have been given scant attention.

ii. Médecins Sans Frontières is the only relief agency present in the area, providing basic health services as well as trauma counseling.

iii. Assistance for return and reintegration is the most pressing need of IDPs in Nigeria.

iv. Help should include not only physical rehabilitation of homes, public buildings and infrastructure, but also support for peace and reconciliation initiatives, especially at the grassroots level.

v. The area of training for improved emergency response is, therefore, crucial and should be a priority for donors.

vi. Addressing the root causes of conflict-induced displacement, thus avoiding the types of humanitarian crisis currently plaguing several of its neighbours, must be a key priority for the Nigerian government.

Tried as much as they could, the researchers left a lacuna: which is their failure to call a spade by its name and desist from attempting to hoodwink unsuspecting public that the attacks being masterminded by armed Fulani herdsmen is a conflict between farmers and herders. The violence is simply and purely an act of terrorism, which amounts to grave threat to national security of Nigeria.

Why, for instance, should the security forces not be deployed to combat these attacks and killings of innocent civilians by armed Fulani herdsmen? There is a growing suspicion that these killers are supported and sponsoredby top government officials.

By the way, under the current political disorder of Buhari's administration, all the strategic national security offices are headed by Fulani/Hausa Moslems, who are kinsmen of the President.

The way to stop Nigeria from returning fully to a state of nature is for President Buhari to become not a northern Moslem leader, but to truly exercise his powers as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, bound to keep to the provisions of the Constitution by obeying the Federal Character principle in appointments; and to stop assigning all strategic national security offices to only one section of Nigeria, in a multi-ethnic and complex nation.

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