By Àyánníyì Taíwò James
If anything, the one thing I do not like about the movie ‘The Herd’ is that it fails to give a governmental face to the sponsors of banditry. I expected the writer to tell the full story, exactly as it plays out in reality. You see, the guns used for these attacks are not items anyone can pick up on a supermarket shelf. Someone is arming these bandits with pump-action rifles. And before anyone mentions that they purchased it with ransom money, there is a clear difference between having the money to buy something and having access to buy it. I do not believe people confined deep in the forest have the means to purchase such sophisticated weapons unless someone is taking those weapons to them. That said, people like Bashir Ahmad are intellectually dishonest. And the hypocrisy is loud. I do not understand how the movie ‘stereotyped’ the entire North.
In fact, a northerner and a Fulani man were immediately exonerated in the first few scenes after the road attack when the officer said the owner of the cow was also a victim. But people like Bashir, without even watching the movie, are already protesting. Everyone wants to protect their own sentiment and parochial image. Meanwhile, in the same movie, Yorùbá Christians were portrayed as human organ traffickers. They were even arrested inside a church during service, and nobody is shouting ‘stereotype’. Imagine if that scene happened in a mosque; social media would be on fire by now. An Igbo man was also shown forging signatures to steal from his company, yet the Igbo community didn’t interpret that as a collective insult because they know it doesn’t represent them as a whole. But somehow, Bashir sees himself reflected in the bandits. Why? Isn’t what was depicted in the movie exactly what survivors of bandit attacks have narrated for years? So the story should now be told differently just to soothe the fragile emotions of people who protect those responsible for kidnapping and killing their fellow humans?
If Bashir is uncomfortable with the movie, maybe he should sit down and examine his stance on terrorism in this country. Because in that movie, a normal, sane person will focus on the victims: the newly married woman whose husband was brutally murdered, butchered, and sold like a goat just hours after their wedding; the parents who lost their son immediately after blessing his marriage; the sister who lost her brother; the security officer who had to rush out of the hospital while his wife had just delivered a baby; and the countless innocent people living in fear every day.
If none of those tragedies move you, and all you see is a threat to your tribal or religious ego, then maybe you are also a gunless bandit because the same spirit drives both of you.
Post a Comment