Actor Victor Edogun Writes Novel On Terrorism

Veteran actor, Victor Edogun, has written a novel on the rampaging terrorism situation in Nigeria. The novel, tentatively titled Save Today, will hit the shelves in a couple of weeks. The insightful and blunt piece x-rays the genesis and remote causes of terrorism in Nigeria, and the reasons it seems insolvable. Aside beaming its searchlight on the activities of the dreaded Boko Haram sect and how they can be permanently curbed, Edogun also enumerated the different types of terrorism that are plaguing Nigeria.

According to Edogun, the different types of terrorism include corporate terrorism, societal terrorism, jungle justice, social terrorism, colonial terrorism, moral terrorism, financial terrorism, family and government terrorism. 

“We all are individually guilty of terrorism except you have never exhibited any of these tentacles of the evil. For instance, corporate terrorism is indiscriminate/mass sacking of staff, often cloaked as downsizing/retrenchment,” Edogun hinted.

He added that in a country where resources are scarce, the pace of intergroup competitions increases. “This is because each group rests its survival and consequent development on the available resources. Where such competitive conditions pervade among inter-group relationships in society, a behavioural pattern is exhibited whereby competition for scarce resources breeds mutual mistrust. Each group tends to distort its own position and, on occasion, even falsify it. Each group sees the other as the ‘enemy’ and forms its own stereotypes of opposing groups.

“As conflict increases, individual groups become more cohesive as they band together to defeat the ‘enemy’ moving away from the perceived basis of relationship, each group resorts to group consciousness and the society is no longer seen as an ‘organism’ with parts operating to preserve the whole.

“Thus, while there is no moral justification for terrorism, as humans are expected to harness reasonable avenues for ironing out disagreements and crucial differences, it is deducible that the incompatibility of individual group interests is stemming from the unequal distribution of wealth, power or security in society where inequality prevails. This presupposes the inevitability of conflict,” Edogun posited.