‘’Today, for instance, it is so painful to be Nigerian. And that is prophetic, if you understand what we mean’’
By Jimanze Ego-Alowes
TUE, MARCH 03 2020-theG&BJournal-Alhaji Balarabe Musa is one of the grand old men of Nigerian politics. This is by virtue of his long running participation in Nigeria’s ill starred, ill distinguished, and shameful past. In other words, there is really little, if anything, to say in his and his group’s honor. His class of Nigerians are like Soyinka once confessed a ”penkelemess.”
If Nigeria is gone down a rabbit hole, names like and in the class of Musa are her drivers. This is the verdict of history. However, Musa has added to his ”initial conditions” participation in Nigerian politics, the luck of longevity. At 80 plus, and in good health, Musa remains something of an eruptive volcano, even if only of the verbal kind. And he is, it appears, self-aware of his gifts. Fittingly for such as with his voice, Musa today, is an alpha male in the human and political rights crusaders comradeship. A key arm of their distinguishing ecosystem is that they wear their alleged nationalism on their sleeves.
The latest we read about Musa, https://whirlwindnews.com/news/16262-Soyinka-is-a-tribalist-prefers-Yoruba-to-national-interest-Balarabe-Musa-, was his opposition to the regional security umbrella being put up by the Yoruba. According to the wisdom of Musa, such a move will engender national disunity. In fact, Musa went further to charge Soyinka, a fellow traveler ”Human Rights” comrade, of being a tribalist. This is very unusual and important.
It is so because the very public justification of the Nigerian human rights community is that ”we are nationalists.” So to charge one of yours, a tribalist, is the moral equivalent of placing a fatwa on him. In Mao’s China for instance, such Soyinka alleged apostasy is sanctioned with execution. In current North Korea, it calls for a Soyinka being thrown out to starved hyenas – please no puns or metaphors. In comradeship, to turn coat is one of the 7 deadliest and unforgivable sins. So to accuse a party faithful of that is rare, save you are ready, we repeat, for throwing him to the dogs. Soyinka ronu.
Expectedly, Musa was not alone in his anxieties of a unitary, even if broken down, Nigeria ran by his fellow tribesmen. One other gentleman, by the name of Muktar Shagari, https://www.sunnewsonline.com/proliferation-of-security-outfits-may-break-nigeria-shehu-shagari/, amongst others, joined to berate the Southwest on Amotekun. To repeat, in their minds Amotekun is a ploy by the Yoruba to secede.
For us, we neither support nor oppose Amotekun. But we hold the following thoughts on her. First of all, the Federal Government under President Mohammadu Buhari, who happens to be Fulani, Northern and Muslim, has and is failing to protect lives and property of several sections of the Nigerian nation. But it is not just that he has failed. There is a twist to the failure. Buhari according to him and or his spokespersons, put up a claim that 1. Buhari appointed only those who are competent. 2. It happened that those so appointed on the basis of alleged competence, are anything but. This is so, at least, by verifiable results. Their failures are so resounding that echoes of sack them have filled up the chambers of hell. 3. It so happened that just about all those appointed security top brass – by one reckoning 99.91% – are all Muslims and northerners, like Buhari, like Musa, like Shagari. These facts are open to independent verifications by any parties. In fact, the matter is so skewed that Ike Ekweremadu joked, that were Buhari to set up a Boys Scouts Commission, no Igbo man would make the Directorate. And lest you think it is a Southeastern dilemma, then this. General Olusegun Obasanjo, despite his alleged nationalist credentials, had this to bemoan – tongue in cheek:
“I will continue to fight for Nigeria’s unity until I die. But this fight is not to make my children and my race second class citizens,” he said. https://www.thecable.ng/restructuring-must-be-addressed-now-says-obasanjo.
So who is about to make or have made Obasanjo’s Yoruba race second class citizens?
Given all this, one has to remark as follows. That as records show, no prominent Northerner, certainly not Musa, not Shagari, had ever spoken against the stark Northernization and Islamization of the security food chain. In other words, it is safe to say that Musa, Shagari and Company have given their countenancing and approval of the Islamization and Northernization of Nigeria’s security ecosystem. Musa, Shagari and company, are happy and blessed with a Nigeria run as a political outpost of a Northern only security machine.
Next, some questions are indicated. 1. What exactly is unity and how is it to be promoted? Is it by excluding others in a manner as to Northernize and Islamize the security umbrella? 2. If a people are excluded from such commanding heights of society, are they not being told in practical terms, as approved and countenanced by Musa and Shagari that they don’t ”belong with us?” In fact, they should wake up, sorry, breakup and go? 3. Is it not thus not safe to say that the Buhari government itself, is a secessionist government – in this case, secessionist in reverse? That is to say they are asking the others to go, since in their staying they have to be imperialized, enslaved etc. by Northerners and Islamists like Musa and Shagari? These are questions. Yet there are more.
- What do the duo of Musa and Shagari make of the fact that Nigeria, especially Southern Nigeria, is virtually held to ransom by Fulani herdsmen? If Musa and their kind are prompted to argue the Fulani rampages the north too, let them read https://opinion.premiumtimesng.com/2019/08/07/kidnapping-mafias-and-their-branding-by-jimanze-ego-alowes/.
- So, what do they make of the fact that despite the industrial killing machine of the Fulani herdsmen, few if any Fulani herdsmen who are Northern and Muslim like Musa and Shagari etc., have been brought to justice?
All these and more unanswered questions, make Musa’s and Shagari’s positions puerile, if not laughable. For in truth, how can the North which has gone gay and riotous with the destruction of Nigerian unity, place a burden on other sections to be straight and sober with the preservation of the same unity? How dare the North exclude others and say that the excluded others, should preserve that from which they are excluded? What magical realism is this?
Unity is more destroyed by exclusion than by secession. And all the coups of the Northern military junta has been deployed to redevelop Nigeria as to grant the North veto powers over the rest of Nigeria. Before, the North used to share this veto or Security Council Powers with the Yoruba, forming the infamous G2. Further down the redevelopment of Nigerian political power architectures, the North rudely dismissed the Yoruba from the G2, consigning them to the boys quarters of power. This explains why Obasanjo is soaked in tears, second class Yoruba race and all that jazz.
Finally, one wished Amotekun never happened. But given what Nigeria has become, Amotekun must be understood as a desperate attempt by a people to secure their estate. Will it work? Our guess is that it is not a desired arrangement. It will work only to the extent it is understood as a pain reliever, not a cure.
What ails Nigeria, from economics to security has a cure. And the curative regime is called restructuring. It is obvious, despite pretensions, no Nigerian has the genius or brains to run a complex union. Nigerians are too poetic for the mathematical tasks of running or domesticating complexities. Nigerians, one and all, always retreat to their Bantustans. It perhaps, did not start with Buhari, but he may have revved it up beyond what is road legal. In other words, moves like Amoetekun are highway speed bumps to forewarn him, Musa, Shagari and company, that they are about to crash the Nigerian ship of state beyond repairs. At least this is the gospel according to Olori Apena Obasanjo.
In all it should be stated clearly to all parties as follows. That the purpose of Nigerian independence was never to have the Fulani inherit British overlordship and imperialism over other native Nigerians. Rather than have that happen, Nigerians are agreed it is meet that Nigeria be mercifully shipwrecked, be destroyed. And as is are the signs, even if not wonders of the justness of cashiering out Nigeria to save her humanity. Today, for instance, it is so painful, so disgraceful to be Nigerian. And that is prophetic, if you understand what we mean. Ahiazuwa.
Thinker’s Corner: Quotes on the nature of the universe.
The sleep of The Just reaches the depths achieved by the sleeps of the dead, but with a trigger for resurrection. Mother A’Endu.
Jimanze Ego-Alowes (PhD) is Author and public commentator
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