Today, we shall conclude our discourse on the above subject-matter by moving away from our analysis to charting a national future path.
Like I said before, I agree partially with Sheik Gumi that some of those bandits – the Nigerians among them – who have been identified with known family links in Nigeria, should be rehabilitated. This process should be done bearing in mind certain necessary precautions which must be put in place in order not to repeat the mistakes of Operation Safe Corridor of 2016.
Having said this, my observation about the efforts of Sheik Gumi is that there is actually nothing wrong in the decision by government to offer the olive branch to Nigerian sons and daughters who feel aggrieved with the system and hence caught up in the so-called freedom fighting or whatever you may want to call it, if the gesture is a government policy adopted by the House of Assembly. My problem is that there is favoritism by the executive arm of the government in favour of the Fulani ethnic nationality who constitute the herdsmen, kidnappers, and bandits, by the Fulani-led government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in the dispensation of justice. Presently, there are two different systems of application of justice in Nigeria that is not anchored on a level-playing ground. This is the major reason for the mass anger by the other ethnic nationalities in Nigeria, who, by the way, are the indigenous owners of the territorial landmass known as Nigeria before the Fulani came in 1804. Today, the Fulani are toying with the destinies of the owners of the land.
The government of Nigeria must be serious in the administration of criminal justice to whosever that deserves it, irrespective of ethnic nationality. The caveat therefore, should be that terrorists must be separated from genuine freedom fighters ( I disagree with Sheik Gumi that bandits who are blood merchants and mercenaries, nay soldiers of fortunate are freedom fighters) and the olive branch by the government must be presented with maximum care as all security cautions must be plugged in.
We are all agreed that there is something fundamentally wrong with Nigeria, so my opinion as a father the same way Mr. President is the symbolic father of all Nigerians is that you do not weld the big stick to a disgruntled and recalcitrant child at all time, unless all avenues of truce through mutual understanding, has been explored and exhausted. In my opinion, the government should be courageous enough to apply the olive branch across board, yet within the limit already suggested earlier.
While we talk about negotiating with bandits who have visibly shown their disregard for human lives and freedom for people who they kidnap and collect ransoms from, (claiming that they are bona fide sons and daughters of Nigeria in Fulani freedom fighting as revealed by Sheik Gumi), it is not fair that the government continues to proscribe and alienate Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and the IPOB who are not known to constitute any danger to Nigerians. What Mazi Nnamdi kanu and IPOB have only done is asking for the sovereign nation of Biafra and they are known to have never gone against the law in their demand in spite of provocations and killing of its members by the government security agents. If Mazi Nnamdi Kanu who the government of Nigeria has branded a terrorist is actually a terrorist, he would have been arrested by the international community as he travels around the world. The fact that he is allowed to enter all countries of the world is most of which he is given protection and to red-carpet treatment is enough reason for Nigerian government to understand that the intentional community has a favourable understanding and sympathy for the cause which he represents.
Conversely, I doubt that those AK-47-welding guys on near-complete face mask who Sheik Gumi went inside the forests to meet, (who have not been branded a terrorist group and proscribed in Nigeria) can fly into Europe and America undisguised without being arrested and charged as terrorists. This differing application of justice in Nigeria defines the ill-motivated and ill- conceived opinion of the Nigeria government who has isolated itself from the common opinion of the international community on the terrorists the government harbors and encourages. This must have given the international community a good impression of the caliber of men who run the affairs of present day Nigeria.
I must be clear and consistent in condemning any type of pardon whatsoever to people who have been known to cause sorrow and bloodshed. They that kill by the sword should die by the sword. If the government is still bent on pardoning people, such gestures must not go against the laws of the country, impede the criminal justice administration system, jeopardize national security, be policized, or done for both religious and ethnic considerations. Unfortunately, all these are what the Fulani-controlled Federal government of Nigeria is presently doing.
Having said this, the easiest way to address the multi-faceted issue of disagreement in Nigeria by the emerging ‘freedom fighters’ and ethnic militias (including Odua freedom fighters championed by Mr. Sunday Igboho) to avoid the experiences of Somalia and such other countries where ethnic militias wretched havoc, is through a quick and immediate restructuring of the country. With that, no ethnic nationality in Nigeria will nurse the ambition to conquer another ethnic nationality and appropriate its natural resources, which by the way, is the major reason for the present upsurge of ethnic freedom fighters in the Middle Belt, and Southern Nigeria.
Lest forget, what happened in Orlu, Imo state, was the worse manifestation of double standard in a country where bandits and killers who are branded freedom fighters, are given amnesty and paid ransom for kidnapping school children while true freedom fighters are bombed and snuffed out of the earth. What happened in Orlu is a bad precedent which must be taken to the United Nations by the Igbos who must allege genocide by the Fulani-led Federal government of Nigeria. It is wrong that the government of Nigeria should levy the kind of land and aerial bombardment of a section of Igbo nation with fifty truck loads of battle-ready soldiers and an additional fleets of jet bombers – the types used in Biafra during the war as witnessed by many of us – at a time no war has been declared by any act of the National Assembly on any section of the country
The military hierarchy cannot convince Nigerians and the international community that they went to engage in such a complex and comprehensive military exercise in Orlu merely to maintain the peace as claimed by the man who invited them (Governor Hope Uzodinma) because the details of that exercise as seen in the viral video making the rounds shows a complete situation of an unauthorized and illegal war against the Igbos during peace time.
Do not tell me that the operation was to secure a part of Nigeria because I understand that there are so many, many other ways that the security agencies can set down to work, gather intelligence reports, analyze, complex, sift the chaff from the wheat, and effect arrest of the criminals they seek, if there are any in Orlu.
In my view that operation was meant to intimidate and achieve a psychological humiliation of the Igbos as well as remind them of the defeat and conquest of the civil war. Whosever that requested for that operation is an enemy to the Igbos and should be regarded and treated by the Igbos as that. In Igbo usual terminology, he is a saboteur. Make no mistake, no matter what the constituted authority in the south east who have long lost faith with the Igbo think about the ESN( Eastern Security Network), the Igbos are silently behind that group and no amount of intimidation can cow them in. What the people make resort to do now is to give the group, who may decide to go underground, their open support.
Yes, I am aware that the military high command denied the authenticity of the viral video but my opinion on that is that Nigerians and the international community must sustain belief in the authenticity of the viral video till the military high command provides an alternative proof to the contrary (as it failed to provide in the viral video of #Lekkimassacre which it also denied), Igbos in the National Assembly should for the record, initiate a process to press for an official and vehement condemnation of the Orlu military bombardment by the Nigerian armed forces. Their view about that military action in Orlu must never be different from the views of Igbos who they represent in the National Assembly.
Sample the opinion of Igbos everywhere including those in the Diaspora and you will discover that they vehemently condemn that action.
Beyond this, the Igbo ethnic nationality in Nigeria should immediately seek for the status of an endangered people in the United Nations wherefore Igbos should need the protection of the International body against ethnic cleansing of Igbos. The process of condemnation of the Orlu military bombardment and hostage-taking of hundreds of residents of that community will also serve as an additional evidence both in the United Nation and the International Criminal Court to strengthen the demands of the Igbos in Nigeria for self rule, if self-rule becomes the last option for the survival of the Igbo ethnic nationality in Nigeria.
Secondly, registering this unauthorized war levied against the Igbos which can never be called a mere security operation in both the Green and Red chambers of the House will create the necessary precedent of formal and group condemnation of the act when it appears in the official list of the chambers’ activities. It will also prevent future occurence of such dastardly act in any part any of Nigeria till the purpose of Nigerians in restructuring the country is achieved.
The escalating activities of terrorists in northern Nigeria is one of the expressions this in the capricious nature of fortune. It could go either way – good or bad. In the case under discussion nemesis has caught up on the northern Fulani political strategist and power chess players who always play God, believing that they earned the birth right of the ruling Nigeria from God, to turn Nigeria towards any direction to their benefit. It is without remorse that Nigerians are discovering that the present security situation in northern Nigeria is good riddance to prolonged and bad rubbish.
For example, many of the repented bandits have confessed that the people presently in government brought them to Nigeria to use them win 2015 presidential election but reneged on their promise to give them a permanent homeland, as soon as they ascended power. A northern Nigerian political elite, Baraje, has collaborated this position of the bandits which drove them to revenge. From this perspective, it must be understood that the present scenario playing out in northern Nigeria is a case of inordinate ambition that have gone the wrong way. In this regard one can only say ‘pelee ooo!’ (sorry ooo!) like the Yorubas will say, as Igbos also will say ‘ndo ooo!’ One thing is certain, by the time the heat on them reaches boiling point, they will be ready to come out of their century-old illusion and embrace the reality of the evolving minds of Nigerians who they thought they had conquered. Nigeria will be better for it at the end in so far as the present tempo is sustained with the four remaining regions of the middle belt, south east, south west and south south, who were initially intended to be pawns in the political chessboard of northern Fulani political chess players (but who have fortuitously been saved and vindicated by providence) find ways to insulate their regions from the raging inferno engulfing the north east and north west.
My heart goes to the indigenous but captured ethnic nationalities in the far north including the once prosperous Hausa of the then Trans Saharan trade who have been impoverished by the Fulani who used a religion that was known to these indigenous Hausas for more than 1,000 years before the Fulani came to what became Nigeria to conquered the Hausas. These indigenous groups in the far north must find ways to align their new-found hope and strength with liberation forces in the middle belt, south east, south west, and south south.
Let us recall again that Sheik Gumi had maintained, through the interview with Channels Television that he hated using the word bandits to address those dispenser of tears, sorrow and blood. According to him, he preferred to called them militants or freedom fighters in defense of their Fulani ethnic nationality.
Juxtapose Sheik Gumi’s position with the government official position which was revealed by the information minister, Mr. Lai Mohammed when the minister was asked in another interview why the federal government proscribed the IPOB and designated it a terrorist organization when it has not proscribed banditry or labeled their operations as terrorism and you will observed that there is a congruence of belief, understanding and ideology exhibited in the two opinions.
For this reason, I reason Sheik Gumi was a covert negotiator floated and funded by the Nigerian government. If this is so, and because it was not authorized by the House of Assembly, the executive arm of the federal republic of Nigeria has involved in a criminal activity through being an accomplish in the criminal activities of the bandits because the gesture is obviously outside the scope of the power invested on it as defined in the constitutional provision for the prerogative of mercy by the precedent. This therefore suggests the opinion that while Nigerians cry wail as a result of the bandit’s attacks, the federal government may quietly have officially regarded the bandits as freedom fighters pushing for a just course for their Fulani ethnic nationality.
The divisive and in inciting statement of Sheik Gumi that ‘aruna’ (unbeliever) soldiers (ostensibly referring to soldiers of the Christian religious faith) are sent to kill the bandits in order to divide Islam, confirms that the bandits enjoy some level of sympathy and protection from some Muslims in and outside government because of their Islamic religious belief system. It also gives a clue to the possible reason for the murder of not a few Christian military officers who had successfully fought the Boko Haram insurgents including, who knows, the young bright female flight officer who was accidentally ran over by a vehicle inside a military barracks.
From this perspective of sympathy and protection therefore, can one understand why it has become easy, almost transforming into a weird national policy, that the sympathizers in both the central government and some state governments in the north east and north west part of Nigeria (who see a religious reason in the cause being pursued by the bandits) who have access to government and national treasury, shift the material and monetary resources of Nigeria to the bandits to sustain the maiming and killing of Nigerians. A few days ago, Nigerians read with shock the revelation that the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) supplied some bags of rice ostensibly seized from smugglers, who I regard as lesser criminals, to the more hardened criminals, the bandits, who constitute more danger to the Nigerian nation them the smugglers from whom those bags of rice were seized.
Putting himself under oath, a ‘repented’ bandit insisted that for the seven years he had operated as a bandit, he was aware that some agents of the federal government of Nigeria supplied them with the AK-47 guns, lives ammunitions, Hilux pick-up vans, and cash which they used in their operations. Though speculative this claim may be, yet it raises a question as to reasons why a legitimate government can levy a war against itself and against the people it governs. `
There is a precedent in Nigeria and a shocking reason why a legitimate government can levy a war against itself and the people it governs. In his first outing as a military President and the Commander in Chief of the armed forces in Nigeria, the present President of the Federal Republic relegated his country Nigeria and voted against Mr. Peter Onu from the Igbo ethnic nationality in Nigeria for the post of the Secretary-General of the OAU ( Organization of African Unity) in 1985 in favour of Monsieur Ide Omaru, a Fulani man from Niger Republic who eventually clinched the post. This is in spite of the fact that Mr. Onu had operated in an acting capacity in that office for two years when the tenor Eden Kodjo expired in 1983.
So, it seems that first allegiance to the Fulani ethnic nationality in 1985 and also in 2021 than Nigeria can be a sustainable reason for the Nigerian government headed by the same man to levy a war which it turns around to fund the aggressor, against itself and the people it governs.
Another ‘retired’ bandit collaborated the statement of his former colleague and insisted that some people in government fund their operations as they supply the bandits with AK-47 guns, humorously adding that all they know is cows and cows do not give birth to guns.
These musslings from different sources of the bandits were given the absence of credence of authenticated facts and indirectly confirmed by Mr. President through two recent directives issued from Aso Rock, Nigeria seat of power, viz:
- Responding to a recent (still counting!) kidnap of school children, Mr. President said that the government have not bombed out the enclaves of the bandits because it does not want to increase the number of casualties recorded in bandit-related fatalities. This is an obvious confirmation of the terse and direct answer of Sheik Gumi in that interview with Channels Television to the question as to whether government knew where the bandits are. Sheik Gumi did not mince words, neither did he pause before saying that the government knew all the places the bandits are stationed in Nigeria. In that directive, the President, obviously exhibiting pre-knowledge, cautioned the governments of the bandit-infested states to stop inducing the bandits with gifts of cash and hilux operational vehicles which the governors periodically give out to the bandit as bribe to prevent them from attacking their states.
- Recently too, the President imposed a no-flying zone order on some states across the north eastern and north western part of Nigeria as a result of his knowledge that those aerial routes are used to ferry arms, ammunitions, cash and other logistics materials to the bandits by sympathizers who were identified to be spread across the private and public sectors, and possibly Muslim groups. Obadiah Mailifiah had already said this, and the government through the DSS hounded him.
It is on record that the governor of Zamafra state objected to the imposition of a no-flying zone on his state, and this raises doubt as to his sincerity and commitment in fighting bandits in his state. It is possible the governor may be thinking about the emerging business opportunities in banditry which will stop flowing with the federal government clamp down on the bandits.
While top-notch businesses flourish in banditry among the high echelon of society in northern Nigeria, the crumbs from the masters table do not escape the attention of the poor and wretched people in the lower rungs of northern Nigeria social ladder. By this I mean that Boko Haram and banditry will continue to flourish in northern Nigeria for as long as there is extreme poverty there. What I suggest is that northern Nigerian elites and leaders should immediately develop human resources in the north as well create wealth with the money they have amassed in their long years of ruling Nigeria
Without seeking for funds from the national coffers, northern leaders and politicians can mop up enough resources from among themselves to develop the north the way Igbos have developed the East without federal government presence. If they do not do this, generations of repented Boko Haram members or retired bandits will soon find out in the larger society that hunger and depravity which drove them to the bandits and Boko Haram camps still exist and ravaging the larger northern Nigerian society. By the way, this is the major reason why the Federal government Operation Safe Corridor of 2016 backfired. The bandits will normally run back to their former friends, colleagues and hustlers (many Nigerian youth are condemned to hustling between the good, the bad and the ugly) in the camps, having understudied the security situations and being more dastardly with new tactics to evade the security forces.
As a result of the vicious cycle of recycling northern youths between the larger society, and banditry/ Boko Haram, many northern leaders are now trapped between the devil and deep blue sea. Many of them can no longer visit their country homes because of the restiveness of the northern youths. Nigeria saw one of the northern legislatures shedding tears on the floor of the lower chamber of the House of Assembly. With this development it is certain that northern youth look upon their elites as articles of trade to kidnap and collect ransom. It is unfortunate and very serious.
My opinion is that no condition can ever be late to change that persists. The northern leaders must therefore spare some of the money they stashed away for extravagance and invest such money to engage their youths. With massive irrigation and willingness to pull off long-flowing gowns and embrace agriculture, northern Nigeria can feed the whole of Africa. It is an irony of life that the campaign to dutifully engage northern youths which cost deposed eminent Emir of Kano, HRH Sanusi Lamido Sanusi his stool started hunting northern oligarchs and the traducers of the former Emir so soon after the Emir was deposed. The man, a humane personality and surprisingly an anti-feudalist, will be sunk in mixed thoughts and sober reflection.
To end this discourse, I wish to amplify the fact that based on revelations so far gather from sundry quarters including Sheik Gumi, there is ample evidence to believe that both the bandits and the terrorist are striving towards the same purpose with the northern leaders and political elites in the siege by the Fulani on Nigeria. The government, too, seem to be complicit in this covert misadventure. With the continued onslaughts of bandits and Boko Haram in Nigeria, Nigeria now have a veritable proof to the source of every wide scale crime as theorized by the maverick, General Sani Abacha that any crime which survives after 72 hours must be to thae knowledge and possible connivance of an incumbent government.
While all the group in northern Nigeria including their socio-political organizations maintain synergy with themselves in order to achieve their common goal and unanimously in crab-like manner advance in the same direction in their conquest of the southern Nigeria, the politicians of southern Nigeria their socio-cultural groups are all playing solo.
In a work written by me which was published in page A12 (REFLECTION COLUMN) of the Guardian on Sunday of February 13, 1994 titled “ SOLVING NIGERIA’SPOLITICAL EQUATION”, I had examined the probable reasons why the southern Nigeria politician find it easy to sell out his conscience ( in what I called ‘ political pouching’), feeling free to sacrifice the interest of the people he is supposed to protect on mere porrridge served by the northern Fulani politicians. One of the reasons I identified which is still obtainable today is the absence of a cohesive and organized progressive political force in southern Nigeria to challenge the audacity of the northern political machinery. Why has the Yourbas of southwest found it difficult to work harmoniously with the Igbos of the south east, vice versa, in a consistent and enduring political arrangement? I had observed in that work that the south east and the south west must recognize they have nothing to lose than their common slavery and bondage by the north, when they team up to work together and present a united front to beat the legendary divide-and-rule tactics played on them by the northern political elites.
Iba Gani Adams and other Yoruba leaders and elders have already recognized the inherent dangers in the disunity of the south east and the south west. I think this is the time to correct it. Igbos should dump the politically-retrogressive philosophy of ‘Igbo enwe Eze’ (Igbos have no King) and seek for direction under one ethnic canopy with one agenda as the Yorubas always do when they confront a common challenge.
They Afenifere, Ohaneze, PANDEF, and the Middle Belt Forum should henceforth work in common effort to solve the political problems confronting the different ethnic nationalities which they represent.
Having sacked the aspiring bandits who presently pose as herdsmen from their territories, these ethnic groups should quickly make hays while sun shines by moving fast before the elections of 2023 to employ all internal legal means and international diplomacy to ensure that whatever other alternatives (such as alleged by Obadiah Mailafiah) which the northern Fulani political elites may have as future plan towards the conquest of Nigeria , does not materialize.
ADDENDUM
Few days after I analyzed and predicted that Kwara State is sitting on a keg of gun powder, presently maintaining what I called ‘peace of the graveyard’ in part one of this work, the conundrum exploded.
Kwara state was forcibly taken away by the Fulani Jihadists from the bona fide indigenous owners of the land through the assistance of Afonja and this has brought about centuries-old clash of two parallel cultures.
That usurpation would continue to cause restiveness and bear sour and rotten fruits in the manner of the recent clash of Christians and Muslims for such simple reasons as the Islamic dress code of wearing hijab in Christian missionary schools.
I rest my case!
ABUCHI OBLORA
FOR: Global Upfront Newspapers
REMARK: Read Similar Posts by ABUCHI OBIORA as archives in The Kaleidoscope , https://globalupfront.com/section/the- kaleidoscope .