Opinion
Mr. President, but you are the Divider-In-Chief
On Friday night, Mr. President, in response to the claim by the Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP), that it killed ten Christians in Nigeria as revenge for the killing of its leaders: Abu bakr al-Baghdadi and Abdul-Hasan Al-Muhajir in Iraq and Syria, you made a “passionate” appeal to Nigerians not to allow “the terrorists to divide us.”
According to you, “we should under no circumstances let the terrorists divide us by turning Christians against Muslims, because these barbaric killers do not represent Islam and millions of other law-abiding Muslims around the world.”
You went on to say that you were, “profoundly saddened and shocked by the death of innocent hostages in the hands of remorseless, godless, callous gangs of mass murderers that have given Islam a bad name through their atrocities.”
Mr. President, you may well be saddened by the death of the hostages. I am not in your mind, nobody is. No law prohibits selective sadness in Nigeria. You have the right to be sad about the death of ten hostages, but not about those of Shiites, pro-Biafra agitators, victims of herdsmen attacks and the likes who are in thousands. Such sadness may be perfectly understandable when the death happened at a time your government is coming under international scrutiny for religious intolerance. This intervention, however, is not an attempt to probe into your mind to know whether you are truly sad or not. It is to call you out on what seems like an attempt to play to the gallery with respect to the widening ethnic and religious divisions in the country.
Mr. President, your appeal is welcome. It sounded very presidential. But the dividers are not the terrorists, they are those in power in Aso Rock and you are the head as the country’s president. You are the divider-in-chief.
Terrorists are who they are, and you are right about them being godless, callous gangs of mass murderers; murderers who have spared neither Muslims nor Christians, and whose heinous crimes are condemned by all, irrespective of religion or ethnicity. A vast majority Nigerians understand the terrorist for who they are. I don’t see, how, for instance, I will, because of the execution of Christians by a terrorist group, be angry with my Muslim friend or neighbour who is no less scandalized by the gruesome murders.
It is not in doubt that the murderers are soulless. They are guilty of crimes against humanity and are indeed barbarians who should not live among humans. They are all that and more. But they are not the people who are dividing Nigeria in political terms. The attempt to accuse them of dividing the country cannot, therefore, fly. Nigerians know who are dividing them.
Mr. President, Nigerians are divided by your policies; policies that have ensured that practically all arms bearing security and intelligence agencies, from the military, police, customs, to Civil Defence are in the hands of your own section of the country.
As it is with security, it is perhaps, even worse with the economic architecture. Mr. President, as it stands, virtually all key revenue generating and regulatory agencies: Finance Ministry, Nigerian Ports Authority, Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Inland Revenue Service, Nigerian Immigration Service, Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, Assets Management Company of Nigeria and the likes are also taken up by your own section of the country.
I am aware, of course, that the Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) is still headed by Dakuku Peterside as reward for Chibuike Amaechi, who it is said, was very instrumental in your emergence as president, even though your own people are also in charge of finance and other key sections of the agency. I have not also forgotten that the CBN is headed by a gentleman from the south. But that’s about it. Every other one is held by your own north, in a country of 200 million people of divers ethnic and religious groups.
Mr. President, every appointment you make every now and then, goes in the same direction. You pay no heed to our complaints in this regard. Apart from those, every post worth its salt in Aso Rock you have also given to your own people. There is the attorney general, the secretary to government and the chief of staff. Worse still, Mr. President, this is the first time in the country’s history that all three arms of government are headed by people of one geopolitical region and one faith, in a country with a nearly even Christian and Muslim population. You, as president, is head of the executive. Ahmad Lawan, senate president is head of the legislature while Justice Tanko Mohammed, the Chief Justice of Nigeria is head of judiciary. Mr. President, we remember how reluctant you were to appoint Justice Walter Onnoghen for job of CJN when it was his turn. And when the vice president, Yemi Osinbajo did in your absence, we know how Onnoghen eventually ended.
These Mr. President, are the cause of division. You are treating other sections of the world country as though they are outsiders, yet you want to suggest that it is the terrorists who are dividing the country.
Well, the only way they might be doing so will have to do with how they are being treated by you, and how you treat agitators who are not armed elsewhere. Mr. President, we hear in the news once again that arrested members of Boko Haram, the dreaded terrorist group, are being released from detention because they have been “de-radicalised.” How ridiculous Mr. President. These are people who have actually killed thousands of Nigerians and wasted many of our gallant soldiers. Yet, they are not tried, executed or jailed but freed because they have, according to your government, repented.
Mr. President, at the same time, you have shown disinterest in arresting and prosecuting militant herdsmen who are wreaking havoc in most parts of the country. At the moment, they are much more deadly than Boko Haram judging by the number of people killed this year and last year. They move around with AK47, their hideouts are largely always known. But your government routinely makes excuses for them.
However, you never hesitated to send soldiers to the East to mow down pro-Biafra agitators who are never armed. They are shot on sight for holding flags and for marching in the streets. Those who manage to escape the bullets are sometimes designed with acid.
The Shiites have also been victims of the eagerness of those who wield the gun to waste lives of people whose beliefs or ethnicity are differ from theirs. Mr. President, these are the cause of the divisions, not the terrorists.
You have a long history of it too. When you were military head of state, you chose to back a citizen of Niger Republic, Ide Oumarou against your own compatriot, Peter Onu for the job of African Union Secretary-General. Oumarou had been of your ethnic Fulani stock and a Muslim, Onu was an Igbo man and a Christian. Mr. President, on that occasion, you chose tribe and religion over country, even as head of state.
Again, upon coming to power in 1983, you accused the Shehu Shagari government which you replaced of corruption. But for some strange reasons, you put Shagari who was the executive president, as Prof Wole Soyinka once put it, in a ‘cozy apartment in Ikoyi’ in the name of house arrest, but the vice president, Dr. Alex Ekwueme, who had no power to implement policies, you detained in Kirikiri Prison and even continued detaining him after he was found not to have stolen a kobo by the tribunal you set up.
Mr. President, former governor of Ondo State, Chief Adekunle Ajasin suffered similar fate. You detained him indefinitely even after he was pronounced not guilty by same tribunal. His only crime, perhaps, was deciding to, as a member of the UPN, stand his ground against the onslaught of the north-leaning NPN.
Meanwhile, the likes of Uba Ahmed who was Secretary-General of NPN and a prominent figure of the Shagari government who fall into the hands of your security agencies somehow disappeared to overseas.
Let’s not dabble into the currency change and briefcases and other sundry controversies because they will take too much time to exhaust.
Mr. President, there are many other examples. But let’s stop here. This is not an attempt to ridicule your government, Your Excellency, but an effort to convey to you how your government is being perceived by large sections of the country. This is in the hope that, as you appear willing to start 2020 on a positive note, given your recent statements, it will help you make amends such that at the end of the day, may remember for being the statesman you ought to be, and not the sectional leader you have largely become.
