One thing that many of us have yet to come to terms with is that our country, #Nigeria, is a very violent country. https://link.medium.com/UfAsTNzLS6 

When you have a situation where your army is deployed in all but one state of your federation to fight crime, then you are at war, forget anything.

This is where we are.

If there are army units deployed all over the place, but yet they are unable to keep a lid on the violence, then how much longer before the various groups have the cojones to take on whole military formations?

Already, we have had situations where "unknown gunmen" have attacked, and killed soldiers then disappeared. In Niger, in Zamfara, in other places.

The drip-drip effect means that it will become more common as we see more soldiers deployed on internal policing duties.

This isn't about sitting in Lagos or Abuja & pretending that shit happened 2 weeks ago and has been settled.

It's about facing up to the truth that in places like Kajuru, Degema, Gadzaru, Benson, Ezza, Mandirari.

You can't have all these fires in one country and expect peace.

All of this war has led to a situation where our country has the seventh-highest number of internally displaced people on God's green earth.

Four years ago, we were number nine on that infamous list.

Eight years ago, we weren't in the top 15!

At this rate of acceleration, I foresee us overtaking everyone bar #Syria and #Colombia by 2025 if nothing is done.

This is why I want to talk about one situation that is really building up.

Zamfara.

The situation in Zamfara is nothing new and has been building for years since the state adopted Sharia law as a placebo to respond to economic challenges.

Zamfara is one of #Nigeria's poorest states, and there is circumstantial evidence that some of the perpetrators of the current violence may have been part of the enforcement brigade of Yerima's political Sharia law almost two decades ago.

The seeming escalation is indicative of the wider issue in #Nigeria where there is less money to go round and a larger number of people are struggling for dwindling resources.

This leads to more and more conflict.

It also brings up the issue of financing.

One of the many failures of the Nigerian state in conflict resolution is bringing the people who sign the cheques to book.

Here are the prices of some weapons in our country.

Look at these and tell me who can afford them.

Unfortunately, in #Nigeria, we love our binary fixtures - Muslim versus Christian, Igbo versus Fulani.

Most of us can't process anything outside those binaries, and since Zamfara doesn't fit any of these and is our equivalent of black-on-black crime, it is largely ignored.

The unsexy Zamfara, not Kaduna or the Middle Belt, is our laboratory for conflict resolution.

How #Nigeria resolves it, if we can resolve it, will determine whether we can resolve the other conflicts in our country.