Barr. Gideon Kpoobari Girigiri
While the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan, Awolowo, Amadu Bello Jonathan was addressing Nigerians at Nigeria’s village square (Eagle square) as his first such address on such occasion and in such capacity some rifrats were detonating bombs few metres away, killing, maiming and destroying. Apparently, such terror has not been experienced inNigeriabefore that day. So no reasonable Nigerians was left in doubt that some aggrieved powerful Nigerians from the north were prepared to make the administration of Goodluck Jonathan ungovernable so that Nigerians would have the impression that he is a weakling. Of course, they fought him from becoming President in the first place.
Then the zoning controversy was rife and many people who doubted the way God works vowed that Jonathan would certainly fail. The IBB (Independence Bomb Blast) of 1st October, 2010 was thus a satanic signal that some people would do any thing or stop at nothing to ensure that a particular people ruled. Without missing words, the current Boko Haram Brouhaha is an offshoot of this manipulation.
It is another Independence Day, the 51st Anniversary of Nigeria and one year anniversary of IBB.
Unfortunately, since the IBB, there has not been a break recess in the spate of bombing and upsurge of violence in the country especially from the north.
The renewed hostilities and constant orgy of violence is a stratum of the whole episode. The grouse in Jos is the inability of some northern elements to submerge the entirePlateauStateinto a particular religion that is presumed to be holding sway in the north. To these elements, it is a challenge that Plateau andBenueStatesare being in allergic to this seemingly religion in northernNigeria. For this stubbornness against the so called northern religion this city ofJosmust boil to 900. But this is the whole gospel truth. They tried this inBenueStatebefore through cattlemen during president OBJ’s tenure but did not succeed.
The Jos crises is now a fight to finish Jihad
Let us come back to the Boko Haram imposed crises. Why was there no Boko Haram during Late President Yar’Adua time? Why should terrorism of bombing emerge as soon as Jonathan took over the mandate of leadership? Why was the orgy of violence as soon as Goodluck Jonathan was declared elected in April, 2011? Why are the northern leaders keeping a criminal silence over the Boko Haram and post election violence?
These are big issues that beg for an answer. Let us take them one after the other. As soon as Jonathan, a southerner and Christian was returned, the kind of violence that has not been visited onNigeriacharacterized the announcement. The violence was displayed only in the northern states ofNigeriaand no stat in the entire southernNigeriajoined the crisis. If the violence had no ethnic and religious undertone why didn’t other people from other religions and ethnic groups, join the show of shame. The youths were committed this crime was visibly mentioning the name of the party to which they owed allegiance and the candidate that they acted for. Before the election, the same category of youths inGombeStatehad set ablaze a particular political party office ablaze.
Eventually, it was no other party than that having Dr. Goodluck Jonathan as its candidate. When all accusing fingers went to the same direction unequivocally, a presidential candidate of the Northern People Congress came out to apologies to the then Governor of the state, Alhaji Mohammed Dajuma Goje.
Unusually, upon the defeat of a defeated northern at the PDP presidential primary the defeated northerner disappeared and never saw any fairness in the election even when all of us who kept wake to watch the event saw transparency and fairness.
Perhaps. A northerner is destined to win all the time even if he is a goat or camel or nama. A Niger Deltan should remain a fetcher of water and slave. Abi? The Maradona who feels he is the Gadaffi of Nigeria had to stoop too low to arrange a consensus congress for northern consensus candidate to ensure a northerner became the president and not necessarily any good Nigerian from any zone not a Nigerian from any religion. You can imagine the one you called statesmen openly embarrassing himself at a consensus conference where he was voted out by his own kinsmen. Imagine those you have respected carrying the flag of ethnicity and religion when the chips are down.
When all these did not stop the presidential train of Dr. Jonathan, an amoeba called Boko Haram with an al-queda colouration is now the newest strategy to frustrate President Goodluck Jonathan.
Yet it has not occurred to these so-called statesmen in northernNigeriathat everything about Boko Haram is an open secret. It ha not dawned on them that the Boko Haram is an embarrassment to their acclaimed toga silence by northern leaders who only pretend after every bomb blasts to condemn it, is embellished with so much criminal imputations. Why are these boys who are claiming that western their past leaders in the north not only encouraged western education but also enthroned same? Why have they not issued any statement to express their displeasure over the way and manner these northern leaders misruled the country to their detriment? Why are these people or leaders who are not in anyway living by the ordained dictates of Allah not confronted by the dreaded Boko Haram? Why are they killing innocent citizens if the Boko Haram is not political? Why should Mohammed Yusuf, the late leader of the sect be released during Yar’Adua time? Why was he hurriedly and summarily executed after his re-arrest? Was it not to stop him from confessing their masterminds and sponsors. Why was Babakura Fugu killed as soon as he began to open up for dialogue with former President Obasanjo? Is it not to foreclose avenues of unveiling the sponsors and operations of the politics behind the entire artificial western education is evil (Boko Haram)?
What are we pretending not to know? What are we trying to hide? Big names? Imagine that as soon as the president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces ordered the military to bring back normalcy to Maiduguri statesmen and elites from the north reacted by saying that the army or military be withdraw from the city of Maiduguri. And I like what Governor Shetima said ofBornoStatetold them. He said let them come and offer a better or alternative solutions. Where were they to proffer a better solution before the federal government intervened?
When you once became a leader or head by force or violence there is every tendency that you will be thinking that force and violence are the only panacea to leadership. Their thinking is that overthrowing government is the best way to power if the ballot cannot give you power.
But I pray that they wouldn’t succeed beforeNigeria, our beloved country experiences a war against everybody or aLiberia. Frankly speaking, I am yet to know the angle from, which Boko Haram is coming. I don’t know the kind of struggle they are into. They are not saying that they have been marginalized as a people when their leaders ruledNigeriato frustrate every other people and ideal. They are not saying that they want the control of their economic resources because, with due deference to them, they have none. So what is their grouse all about? Nothing in the uppercase, except that they are being trained and sponsored to frustrate Jonathan. And I venture to say that their sponsors have no conscience at all. Sponsoring them to kill innocent people? If they no longer interested in the Nigerian project, they should say it and it is ok we all sit down to see a way of saying goodbye to them. Afterall, who is happy to belong to a state where nothing seems to be working and where crime is business, where impurity is a culture, where tribalism is a virtue and where violence is a way of life. But is any tribe or zone a monopoly of violence? Book Haram can be found everywhere.
If we have to go our different ways shall we go in peace and not in pieces? But Dr. Jonathan should not fall into the traps of his ethnic enemies who pretend that they are friends. The only panacea is to provide efficiency security, unveil the sponsors of this violence and thrash them according to law. ###
