One truth about this country is that we shy away from the truth so much. Nigerians like dodging the obvious. We like beating about the bush. We rigma role too much. We go second locutus. This is why we are very economical with the truth. Even leaders pretend too much. What is big deal about calling a spade a spade? What is big deal about seeing beyond our noses?
Ghadafi, the late former leader of Libya said last few years that Nigeria should be divided into two on religious lines. Muslims on the one side and to the other, Christians. Before he even finished saying so, Senator David Mark, the senate president of Nigeria, a man I hitherto had tremendous respect for started calling Muammar Ghadafi a mad man right there at a plenary session of the upper chamber. I think David Mark went too far. Muammar Ghadafi, the Libyan could not have been mad simply because he expressed his own individual opinion on the recurrent decimal in northern Nigeria. After all he was right. Will David Mark, a northerner himself say that there is any form of love lust in the north? Will he wait for Ghadafi to tell him that all is not well with his people of northern Nigeria. Or is it because it was Muammar Ghadafi that said it this time. Many of us have said it before and we are still saying it that this thing you call Nigeria is a farse, a fiction and a non-existent epithet. It only exist at the behest of those who feed fat on that name using it at the instance of the people they callously forced together to milk dried.
If the way Ghadafi wanted it divided is the headache of David Mark can Mark himself suggest the way he feels the devil can best be slashed? Since the so called independence the name-Nigeria or in the name of Nigeria many lives have gone to their early graves. In the name of one Nigeria even children where bombed, women slaughtered like goats, men forced to go to war. A war they knew nothing about. And in the end millions just got perished like that. This was between 1967 to 1970. In the name of one Nigeria, tribal killings, ethnic killings and the most painful, religious killings have taken over discussions in the country. Can David Mark tell me that since independence, it has been well with this country? Is he not aware that even the international community and organizations have stated it categorically clear that in the next 12 to 15 years Nigeria will disintegrate? And if that happens eventually what is wrong with that?
Most we just remain big seize and continue to kill ourselves? What is big deal to allow a group that wants to go to do so? This craze of bundling everybody together to select and kill, is that the idea of what the country should be? Is it not better to know that Kano or Kaduna is a different country so that if I go and die there I will know that I was looking for their trouble? If the Plateau is now a human slaughter table is it not good to know that it is a different country so that they do not send innocent souls there to die in the name of one Nigeria NYSC?
Good to know that the one that fought to kill in the name of one Nigeria when he knew that we even have over 5 Nigeria is the same man whose village or town is being threatened to extinction. If he allowed this so called one Nigeria to be what it is naturally supposed to be in 1967 all this stress of religious killings or ethnic killings today would have been averted. Though it is difficult for an Ibo man to stay or live in the village that God gave him maybe due to social or economic challenges, it would have been different if they were in Jos or Kano as a foreigner than as citizens of the same Nation where their neighbours would just wake up in the midnight to slaughter them and slash their pregnant wives and butcher their children and no body says anything more than “we condemn the killings.” If Ogoni my country home were to be a different country or say the Republic of Niger Delta stood alone and Jos or Republic of Middle Belt was a different country certainly our say Ogoni or Republic of Niger Delta foreign mission or Embassy would not have allowed our people die un-mourned in Jos or in Kano or Kaduna or Bauchi etc. It would have been taken seriously by whoever would rule those irate populace in the North because it would have attracted international concerns and such orgy of violence would have ceased. But because we claim to belong to the same country the killings have become part of our tradition and northern Nigeria now prides itself with the killing of innocent residents and citizens.
Who is fooling whom? What was the sin of Muammar Ghadafi? That he joined the rest of us to say that Nigeria is a failed State? Who does not know that Nigeria is a failed State? Brothers and Sisters, there is nothing absolutely here to pretend about. This country that cannot provide security for her citizens is worse than an infidel.
Since November, 2008 there has been crisis in Jos. This is minus the Yelwa/Shendam killings of 2006. If in November, 2008 there was a violent eruption of violence in the Plateau and in 2009 the same thing happened and nothing happened. In January 2010, the same thing happened and just three Sundays, that is on March, 7 the same thing happened and on March 17 another round of violence occurred all in the same State will you say that all is well with the leadership of that kind of country? A country that is careless over the welfare of her citizenry? What is the senate president now saying about the genocide or jihad against Christians now in the north where churches are bombed every Sunday? That they should beg these mad idiots and their sponsor?
Perhaps, if Ghadafi has said that with the spate of violence in northern Nigeria, Nigeria is the best country in the world maybe David Mark would have given Ghadafi a gold medal. He would not have called him a madman. So in this country people call white, black and vice versa. That it should be divided on religious lines is not still wrong. Afterall, it is on religious lines all the most disastrous killing have been over the years in the north.
Ghadafi was right. Of course the Muslims and Christians in the north have never lived like brothers and sisters. They have rather been living like cats and rats. If Ghadafi said so at best if that runs contrary to David Mark’s opinion he would have shown by now that everybody’s opinion on a controversial issue like that will not always be exactly his. Of course, Ghadafi as a human or leader had right to his own opinion. However, his opinion or expression with regards to the incessant crisis always springing from the north is a shared view even up to the international community.
Among Nigerians, Ghadafi’s view is not a lonely a lone voice in the wilderness. So what is the cacophony all about? If David Mark is ignorant he should be told that Nigeria has over 250 ethnic groups and over 300 languages and to crown it all over 150 million people. Are all these factors not suggestive of the fact that one day this pregnant Nigeria will give birth either peacefully or violently? Is David Mark a doubting Thomas? What sign does he want to see? Does he want the acid rain to fall from the earth to the sky to tell him that the country where he prides himself as a Senate President is a farce and very sick?
Only Rivers state is bigger in size and population than Israel. Over population alone is a reason for us to divide if not senseless killings.
I think David Mark rather than call Muammar Ghadafi a madman should rather go home and tell his brothers in the north that they are a bunch of disgrace and embarrassment to whatever country they claim to belong, for they are the mad ones. ###
Barr. Gideon Kpoobari Girigiri
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