The major reason for the existence of the sovereign according to Thomas Hobbes is the need to preserve the life of those who gave their individual consent to the Monarch.
The idea of preservation of life which is the primary responsibility of government is not a simple concept. The preservation of life is not compatible with:
1. The killings going on in Benue, Kogi, Zamfara, Plateau, Bornu, Taraba, Rivers, Delta and Kaduna states. These killings are occurring at a regularity that indicates the failure of Hobbes’ Leviathan or Nigeria’s state. Remember that in Hobbes’ conception of state of nature, life was nasty, brutish, and short.
Hobbes identified several reasons why life in the state of nature turns out to be ‘dog eat dog’ type of life:
A. Man is driven by the instinct of self preservation.
B. Competition for scarce resources become fierce and deadly.
Today in Nigeria, competition for available resources has become as intense as in the Hobbesian state of nature. This is one interpretation of why we have unending killings in Nigeria.
2. The preservation of life is also not compatible with killings associated with religious and ethnic extremism. This is where Boko Haram is reprehensible.
I am now leaning towards community soldering as a way of wiping out mass killings in Nigeria. The idea of community soldering should not be novel I guess.
Community soldering is about:
1. Mobilizing each community into a military chain with no weak point.
2. Arming each community to repeal aggression.
3. Making sure that communities are better armed than any violent intruders.
4. Citizens are mobilized and given military training to defend their communities.
Moving forward with the desire to end mass killings in Nigeria, means that no stone should remain unturned.
The reality now is that conventional soldering is inadequate to curb the wanton killings in Nigeria.
I expect intense discussion of this proposal.
