The Economics of war

In pidgin English, there is a saying, ' the thing wey man sabi be like

medicine'. What it means is that when you show your knowledge, it looks like magic.

A story was once told of how a psychology Lecturer was able to identify, a student who whistled in his class.

As the story went, the lecturer began by telling the students how he met a beautiful girl, who informed him she had a student studying Psychology in his University. Furthermore, she told the lecturer that her family had a trait of always whistling. As soon the lecturer said that, all eyes turned to the boy. Just like Magic and the relieved Lecturer, explained to the students that it was not for nothing, that he had a Phd.

That was the magic of learning.

This piece was inspired by the report of the arrest of the woman supplying women of easy virtue to Bandits in Kaduna State.

One of my teachers in the University, the zoologist and philosopher, professor Anya O Anya once said, ' the mark of a genius is that once he says something, you wonder why you did not think of it first'.

So is that report. To think that such a thing had been going on for long and the security operatives are just announcing an arrest.

All wars invariably enrich a number of people. Just like William Shakespeare says that ,' war is a begetter of bastard children'.

In any war, there will be money to be made from supplying weapons, to supplying food and medicines to the front lines.

With wars come instruments of warfare like barricades and sanctions. I recall that during the Nigerian Civil war people made money from trying to evade blockades and sanctions to supply scarce commodities. The Ecomog war also enriched people not the least some Nigerians close to the Nigerian Military authorities.

If bandits, kidnap men and women and still patronize prostitutes, sure Boko Haram too would be doing same.

When are we going to make an arrest of their different suppliers?

I believe it is not only women they need. Who supplies them Food, arms, ammunition and power?

To know these is to know their lifeline.

Cut them off and they will be brought to their knees. But are we ready?