Katsina, Niger and many Northern States have adopted an unusual if not unconstitutional policy or at least the practice of blockading own citizens who are returning from Lagos from entering their home states.
This blockade which has been adopted as a COVID-19 curtailment measure does not have any medical protocols involved in it. It is a total and outright about-turn to whatever direction the hapless travellers were spotted to be coming from.
Kaftanpost reporter has observed that there are no COVID-19 tests to determine the status of those being interdicted and turned away. There is also no provision for 14 day isolation or observation. It is a simple case of turning people back and no discussion. The other options adopted by the more desperate of the travellers involve trekking long distances across bush paths adjacent to some of these notorious checkpoints.
These treks are arduous, dangerous and exhausting for many of the travellers. It is not for the faint hearted and only the diehards complete the detour before rejoining their trucks or lorries or hitchhiking along the highways in between checkpoints.
Many observers lament that if this kind of outright rejection and discrimination was meted out to Nigerians in a foreign country, the outrage would have been global. It is shocking that a country whose Speaker was publicly berating the Chinese Ambassador on national television a few days earlier is mute and blind to worse maltreatment taking place on her own soil.
In Niger State, there is no prevarication, decoy or deniability. It was no less than Ahmed Matane, Secretary to the Niger State Government, who personally turned away about 50 exhausted travellers from the State without regard to where the travellers would put up or how they were expected to return all the way through Kwara and Oyo to Lagos, over 200 km south of their point of interdiction.
There are similar reports from Katsina and other Northern states confirming that total rejection and denial of entry is a common policy in many Northern states of Nigeria. If this barbaric and crude methods are allowed to take hold against all civilised humanitarian instincts of mankind, many unreported treks reminiscent of the Great Trek of the Zulu in apartheid South Africa and the Trail of Tears of Native Americans known as Amerindians in the time of Andrew Jackson as the president of the United States might be going on in the sahelian hinterland of Nigeria and the savanna fringes between the North and South of the country, in this season when the relentless heat from the sun heralds a hesitant rainy season, seeming unwilling to berth in these plagued times.
A constitutional lawyer approached by kaftanpost posits that there is no legal basis for a Nigerian to be turned away from any part of Nigeria, moreso their home states. He further states that any restriction against the freedom of movement of a Nigerian citizen in Nigeria must be based on reasonable grounds including a lawful arrest, detention or imprisonment or a temporary isolation under a public health measure meant to prevent infection, such as proper housing in a COVID-19 isolation centre or a hostel used for quarantine.
Back on the Trail, at Gidan Kwano, Adamu and Bilyaminu who say they are brothers from Ibeto told kaftanpost that before they were turned back by the Niger State government, they were heading home from Ibadan where they had been displaced to from Lagos earlier in the year when the Lagos State Government banned commercial motorcycles. Aminu who looks much older than Bilyaminu identified himself as a veteran with over 20 year experience in the operation of “achaba”, a Hausa term for a motorcycle taxi, which he rode for years in Kaduna, Jos, Abuja and eventually Lagos.
It was in Lagos, Adamu continued, that luck shined on him and he upgraded to driving a “keke”, a Yoruba term for tricycle taxi, whereupon he invited Bilyaminu from Minna to Lagos to take over Aminu’s old motorcycle. Asked further about their life in Ibadan and whether they could return to Ibadan now that the have been barred from their home state. Bilyaminu wistfully said he would ordinarily prefer Lagos where he made the most daily income but life was rough, especially living conditions at their accommodation at Ketu.
Ibadan was more comfortable in terms of accommodation at Ojoo area of the city but this came with three quarter reduction in daily income. The fear of being caught off from their families for months during the lockdown without any meaningful work and Adamu wanting to see his wife and children and Bilyaminu his mother are the motives for returning home for the time being.
“I am not a destitute. I can feed myself. I take care of my parents and my wife’s parents as well. We are not in Niger to beg for food” , Aminu said.
Bilyaminu wondered aloud why ‘megidas” (big men in Hausa) could drive through the checkpoints and go to wherever they are headed and those who have no cars but had to travel by lorries and trailer trucks are treated as criminals.
“Walahi! I’m ready to take the injection and wait for the result. I need to see my mother. I need to go to my house even if government wants to keep us for one month to know that we don’t have this corona sickness”, Bilyaminu affirmed.
As both men repaired to pray, in the Islamic tradition, starting with the regulation water ablution, curiously it was Bilyaminu the younger of the brothers who led seven faithfuls, including this reporter in prayers.
Beyond Assalam Alaikum, by which one wished all and all wished all peace, every man prayed silently after the causes and petitions of their hearts. For Adamu, Bilyaminu and the hapless rejects of Niger State, softening the hearts of the powers that be in the “Power State” to permit their lowly compatriots enter the home State in peace and rejoin their families, even after the medically advised period of quarantine must be one more unnecessary petitions to be added to an already long litany of earthly concerns awaiting heavenly relief.
