Arise, O Compartriots!

There are two issues that are topical in this harmattan season that has dominated the commentary and opinion pages of our newspapers and airwaves. These are the twin issues of insecurity and the unwarranted in the pump price of petrol (PMS). These two issues that ushered in the year 2012 brought the country to the edge of the precipice and nearly sent us over just in the first week of the first month of the year. So much has been said and written on the two issues, particularly the increment on the price of petrol, that whatever one may say will just be gratuitous. This one issue has succeeded in uniting and bringing out Nigerians on the streets for the first time despite the contrived religious crisis that is tearing the country and personal relationships apart. For the first time, the political class in Nigeria failed to gauge the mood of the masses correctly by imposing such crass hardship on a citizenry already overburdened by poverty, insecurity and uncertainty. A citizenry getting to grips with the fact that the leadership is not ready to provide basic necessaries of live like schools for their kids, hospitals, potable water, etc. because the political class take their kids abroad for schooling and travel abroad for such ailments like headaches and stomach discomfort.

With Jonathan’s ill-advised increase in the pump price of petrol, he has unwittingly introduced another dimension to the sufferings of the people and has further compounded everything by projecting a “to hell with you attitude” to the same people he claimed voted for him 99% just seven months back. He refused to even glorify their protest by keeping aloof from the melee of strikes organised by labour and civil society to remonstrate his high-handedness. Apart from a colourless and uninspiring speech he delivered through the Goebbels era look-alike NTA, the only other time he deemed fit to come down from his Olympian height to talk to us was in a church, where he told a partisan congregation that Boko Haram has now taken over his government. With these two evils bedevilling the land, Jonathan has missed a chance to be ‘president’. Rather he chose to be an Ijaw Christian leader in the mould of Tompolo. Asari Dokubo and Ateke. Though the increase in the pump price of petrol affected all Nigerians that are not political appointees, the man has resorted to making it an ethnic issue, inviting ethnic thugs like Asari Dokubo to threaten nationalists. I was of the mistaken opinion that Jonathan is the president of Nigeria and not that of the Ijaw ‘nation’.

This leads us to the heightened level of insecurity. Jonathan’s conduct and style of governance, in my view, is directly responsible for the impunity by the murderers now marauding the northern part of the country. In the past two years since he took over as acting president through the campaigns and the subsequent massively rigged 2011 elections his conduct has been that of deception camouflaged as timidity and dovishness. But beneath this veneer of timidity lies a calculating mind that is proving to be very dangerous for the corporate existence of the country. Sadly enough, there are no elders around Jonathan to tell him to change course.

A pattern is emerging from the madness of Boko Haram that is fast becoming a part of our existence where, in one breath Jonathan asked Nigerians to learn to live with and in another told us that the movement has taken over his government. What are we to believe and act accordingly? The emerging pattern is that some people, apart from the followers of Mohammed Yusuf, have taken over the brand name and patented it for their motives. A Christian woman, Lydia Joseph, was arrested in Bauchi in the process of burning the biggest Catholic Church in the town. Four months on, the only explanation we got to hear is that she had a problem with one of the congregants and therefore decided to burn the church. How plausible is that? Then in December last year another Christian, disguised as a nation muslim complete with a turban, was arrested in the process of burning another church in Yenagoa, the capital of Bayelsa State, Jonathan’s home state. Must he be disguised to settle his score with the Church’s leadership? Again Nigerians were told that the man had a problem with the church, this time the pastor. Much earlier, about two years ago, when a Christian in Calabar attempted to ram his car at an aeroplane at the Calabar airport, Nigerians were told the guy was a loony. In July last year, Yakubu Bitiyong, a member of the Kaduna State House of Assembly and a former commissioner in the state was arrested for terrorists related activities and the case just fizzled out without any explanation. But when a person of indeterminate pedigree accused a sitting Senator of the federal republic, the lawmaker was picked up pronto with a compliment of photojournalists and branded the masquerade behind the terror campaign in the land. What message is the government and its backers sending to the populace? That some people can commit murder and go scot free while others cannot?

We have just seen Nuhu Mohammed, an alleged boko haram sponsor and his son paraded before media men by the military authorities, in handcuffs and a display of things recovered in his house, in the same Kaduna where Bitiyong was arrested and many cannot even tell you how he looks. What message are we sending to the citizens of this blighted nation? That justice is Janus faced?

In the heat of the petrol pump price increase imbroglio, Jonathan commissioned some old men, claiming to be elders, from his south-south geo-political zone to meet and issue threats to the rest of the country on a matter that affects the whole nation. Jonathan has taken the nation to its lowest point by playing this divisive card on Nigerians who rigged him into office. While campaigning across the country, he didn’t mention anything like being a president for the Ijaws or the south-south zone. He craved for trust by Nigerians with his “I was not born rish” slogan. Some people genuinely bonded with him, but even then I had my reservations for a man who repudiated an agreement he signed simply because he want to contest the presidency. Again I was not comfortable with the way he manipulated the issue of zoning at his party level to make it look as if northerners are against him simply because he comes from the south and not because as a ‘gentleman’ he should make his word his bond. Anyway, Nigerians irrespective of whether they voted for Jonathan or not really went through hell the past week.

The most dangerous game played by Jonathan is the issue of insecurity in the land. I am not sure, but my reading of the situation is that insecurity in northern Nigeria is rising directly proportional to the rise in peace in the Niger Delta. Is there is a correlation? I don’t know. Recently in Adamawa State, one of the most peaceful states in the country, a spate of killings racked the state from Mubi in the northern part of the state to Yola the state capital. While the killings in Mubi was discovered to be among rival Igbo businessmen, the one in Yola had to do with a pastor transferred from his church for financial recklessness. But since it was convenient to lay the blame on our current bogeyman – Boko Haram – mum is the word on the true position of things. Is that how we are going to progress. To heap insults on the collective psyche of Nigerians, some people from Jonathan’s region are threatening to secede simply because the rest of the country had the sense to oppose a senseless economic policy by their “son”. Is secession the agenda? Why wasn’t we told before the election?

My advise to the rest of the country is to prepare for such an eventuality which may come before 2015, the year the Americans predicted we will disintegrate. With the way things are going, I am sure we won’t disappoint the Americans. My Christian brothers and sisters from the north should be well advised to disregard anyone telling them that they don’t belong with Muslims in the north. For those who do not know, there is no state in the north that has no substantial number of adherents of both Islam and Christianity. The script is unfolding a page at a time. Let us all give it the desired attention verse by verse not to miss the next instalment.

FLIPPANCY OF OUR LEADERS – ORITSEJAFOR AS A SHEPHERD

Let me begin this piece by extending my condolences to those who lost their loved ones to the many bomb blasts and gun shots across the country and also congratulate the remaining living on the unprecedented new year gift by our shoe-less president – the doubling of the price of petrol. This gift is from a president who we were told we can trust with our lives; a man that was touted as a listening man because of his humble background. We can now definitely wait for the rest of the gift from fellow Nigerians who provide services and goods to take a cue from Goodluck Jonathan. For sure, the rest of us will be transformed into the living dead.

I had always hesitated to comment on issues that border on religion or ethnicity but this government is sure to make the deaf talk. Though the government came to office illegally, but I thought they would use the dubious legitimacy conferred on them by the courts to be just and fair to all. It has become clear to all that the government is not ready to be a government for all but for a select few. Emerging events like the government’s actions, pronouncements and those it associates with doesn’t give one the confidence that a better Nigeria will be realised in this eon. I am now scared that the promised “fresh air” may after all may turn to be asthmatic. The symptoms for a fragmented Nigeria are emerging daily, though we appear to be playing the ostrich. The result of the divisive campaign of the PDP is gradually coming home to roost. With political turning a blind eye to atrocities committed by their “supporters”, while religious stoke the embers of hatred in the name of ‘protecting’ their herd.

The spate of killings that ushered in the Jonathan government graduated into bombings and indiscriminate destruction of lives and properties by faceless groups loosely called Boko Haram. No one as yet has claimed meeting the leadership or representative of this killer group, therefore for all we know it can be anybody or any group from any part of the country. The bombings and killings are mostly concentrated in the North East corner of the country, with Maiduguri and Damaturu, predominantly populated by Muslims, bearing the brunt of the group. Political, religious and even traditional leaders in these two cities and environs were targeted, mostly in broad daylight and killed while our security men looked on helplessly. The deployment of soldiers to these areas only heightened the spate of killings and insecurity. No one is safe in these two cities. While the killings were going on, nobody deemed it worth his trouble to either condemn the killers or compel the government to act decisively with a view to bringing to an end the massacres talking place around the north east and to some extent, Plateau state, another theatre of war that refused to end since 2001. Through all these years, not one person was arrested, prosecuted and punished according to the laws of the land. This attitude from the government emboldened the killers to start killing people in worship places like what happen at the Eid praying ground in Jos when Muslim faithful were massacred while praying. Nobody of substance came out to condemn this dastardly act. Again they struck at the St. Theresa Catholic Church, Madalla. This time around the cacophony it generated in terms of condemnation was unprecedented. The Sultan of Sokoto, the Jama’atu Nasrul Islam (JNI), the National Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) all came out to condemn the reprehensible act in no uncertain terms with the Sultan going to Abuja to restate his fealty to Jonathan.

Then came Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, the President of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN). When the pastor visited Jonathan, he was practically frothing at the mouth while threatening the nation with a retaliatory act against the Muslims for an act that was universally condemned by all and sundry, irrespective of religious affiliation. The pastor’s logic for holding the Muslim community responsible for what happened in Madalla left me wondering if the spate of killings in the North East had his imprimatur. I cannot remember him coming out to condemn the killings, maiming and wanton destruction of properties in the northeast or condemning the Niger Delta militants when they held the country hostage before the amnesty programme extended to them by ‘Yar Adu’a. Another thing was that right after Oritsejafor made his threat, two explosives were thrown into an Islamic School in Sapele, in Oritsejafor’s state of origin. Will Muslims then be right to hold him responsible for this barbaric act, going by his reasoning? What are we to assume from the arrest of a man from Delta State dressed in kaftan and turban, a dress code associated with the northern Muslim, attempting to bomb a church in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State? Are Muslims, Oritsejafor’s subjects of hatred, to assume the would-be bomber is one of the pastor’s soldiers?

It may appear that Oritsejafor’s threats worked because a day after his tirade, Jonathan declared a state emergency in four northern states. Ironically, on the day the emergency was declared two communities in Ebonyi went to war with each other purportedly over land dispute where at least sixty people lost their lives while properties worth millions of naira were destroyed. Mum was the word from the CAN president. I thought we would hear the now well-known acceptance of responsibility from the Boko Haram.

As long as our leaders can give tribal marks or religious affiliation to violence in whatever form, then Nigerians will continue to be in trouble. The 2011 elections begot the violence that we are condemned to today with all Nigerians sleeping with one eye open or not sleeping at all. The recent violence unleashed on the populace is the increment in petrol prices, which is threatening to snuff the life out of our living dead. Am yet to hear Oritsejafor condemn this inhuman act that may put over 90% of his constituents into a life of penury and servitude. And if his statistics are to be believed, then majority of Nigerians will bear the brunt of Jonathan’s provocative act.

Before I am verbally lynched, I want us to ponder certain questions and give ourselves honest answers. Does the fact that Jonathan, Azazi the National Security Adviser (NSA) and Oritsejafor all come from the Niger Delta, has anything to do with the exponential rise in violence in the country? Does this fact confer immunity on the perpetrators and therefore their impunity? Lest we forget, Azazi was the one indicted by an Investigative Panel set up to unravel how weapons got missing from the Armoury of 1 Division, Nigerian Army, Kaduna while he was the General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the Division. It was the biggest theft ever of arms and ammunition in the military and all the weapons were traced to the Niger Delta militants. The man resurfaced as the NSA without answering questions raised by the findings of the Panel under his kinsman. To complete the troika, Oritsejafor emerged the leader of the Christian faithful in the country.

The demographic configuration of northern Nigeria is drastically different from the southern part. Of the fabled 250 ethnic groups in the country, over 240 should be found in the north, with practically every tribe having adherents of either Islam or Christianity. It is not unusual to see siblings belonging to different religions. This therefore calls for restraint among and between us. It is on record that a month after the convocation of a conference of “ethnic minorities” in Jos in 2001, communal violence broke out and ten after, peace is yet to return to this once destination of choice. If some people succeed in igniting a religious war between adherents of the different religions in the north, only God knows when, how or where it will come to an end. Retreating to either our ethnic or religious shells won’t help us out of the material poverty we find ourselves in. let us tarry awhile, think deep and try to unravel in whose interests these killings are taking place.

We should all come together to fight the poverty elevation of the Jonathan administration, its educational apartheid policy where you have over six thousand people from the Niger Delta are currently in various countries undergoing one training or the other while not a single person from all the three political zones in the north, Muslim or Christian, is considered worthy of being trained or educated. The unemployment and lack of opportunities ravaging the north does not discriminate religion or ethnicity. If you go through the list of projects the Jonathan said they will execute with the ‘windfall’ from the petrol price increase, you realise 90% of the projects are to be located outside the north.

How does fighting each other improve our educational level or employment opportunities or even reduce our poverty situation? It is time we sit up and realise we are in this for the long haul. Our common enemy is the government and not Muslims or Christians among us.