The incessant killing in some parts of the country and other socio-political breaches have become major challenge for the authorities. The Resident Electoral Commission, Cross River State, Mr Mike Igini reflects on the situation.
Mohammed Yusuf, the late head of Boko Haram is credited to have started his propagation of Salafism, a branch of Islam- widely regarded in Saudi Arabia as Takfiris, if they subscribe to extremist violence- by appealing to the suffering that ordinary Nigerians endure in Yobe state and other parts of the North, hence he easily won some appeal. On Wednesday April 26, that grundnorm, that hypothetical construct of appeal for social repression lost its essence in the attack of his sect followers on the very foundation of free speech in Nigeria; media houses the main bastion against repression in Nigeria.
When Mohammed Yusuf died under conditions that negated the values that we promote  in our fledging democracy, it was the Nigerian media, which took the Nigerian authorities to task, despite the glee in many quarters that the bloodletting of Yusuf sect was deserving of even extra-judicial impunity. The Nigerian media questioned the degradation of our democratic values in the exercise of the powers to accuse, judge and execute judgment from the barrel of the gun of security officials.
That act, for which the followers of Yusuf had advanced much grouse, has been repeated by them on so many occasions now too many to recount. But on Wednesday 26th April, any pretension they may have had for association with the basic laws and charter of respect for human rights and the obligations of one free citizen to others, has been thrown to the dogs, for the bombing of newspaper houses in Abuja and Kaduna is an exceptional nadir, the lowest any group, association or sect has ever gone in actualizing any cause on our fcheckered
The Nigerian media has borne a disproportionate burden in the fight for freedom of expression in Nigeria.As president James Madison, said ‘’the media despite its chequered challenges, the world is indebted for all the triumphs of humanity over oppression’’. Dele Giwa lost his life for daring to write the truth, Senator Anyanwu lost full vision in an eye, Nduka Irabor and Tunde Thompson lost their liberty over an extended period. But in all these cases, like the fight of the people against the Ordonnance Moulins of 1566 in France, they fought the hegemony of the state, and like all states evolving from the dependency of coercion and force, the Nigerian people have won growing freedom of expression through the endurance of the Nigerian media against sustained onslaughts.
In addition to the endurance of the Nigerian media, the Nigerian state apparati, under democratic governance have come to gradually accept the correctness of the assertion of Gugliemo Ferrero, that ‘a legitimate government is a power that has lost its fear as far as possible because it has learned to depend as much as it can on active or passive consent and to reduce proportionately the use of force’, thus  ‘a government is legitimate if its power is conferred and exercised according to principles and rules accepted without discussion by those who must obey’.
It is therefore a dark day for democracy in Nigeria, that as we retreat from the mindset of military era under a democratic government that exercise  power without force to assert legitimacy, we are now witnessing, the rise of non-state actors that now repress the press and freedom of expression by exacting indiscriminate violent attacks on media houses.
It is very easy to loose the essence of a cause, such that the collective aspiration of a group, or a collective of people, becomes the dangerous and narcissistic project of a few people intent on only interminable pyrrhic victories, which worsens the human condition, for which the cause, assuming it was noble ab initio, was advanced. In instantiating this point, it must be pointed out that most of those ordinary Nigerians who were counted as expendable collaterals by the recent and past violent attacks and killings perpetuated by Boko Haram, have no grievances with anyone, their only aspirations were to leave in a peaceful country, prospering at peace with their neighbors, but their lives were taken from them, because a few people, sat in a conclave, and decided that their lives were not worth anything, in that respect, Boko Haram might have  killed Yusuf Mohammed without trial, because their actions are not dissimilar.
There is no cause too grave or profound that it cannot abide negotiations and reason with other men, and there is no war that has been won by a perpetual battle, worse still, no man or cause have ever fought against the right of men to express themselves freely, and won ….by attacking media houses, Boko Haram has embarked on a dangerous journey against one of the pillars of democracy, it is a journey against the zeal of mankind to freely express themselves…it is time to reassess their cause and the course it has now taken to ask the fundamental question… how does this course of action advance its goals and the progress of Nigeria?
Mike Igini is the REC, Cross River
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A dark day for democracy in Nigeria