THE ANGO ABDULLAHI WORRIES: MY REPLY TO AN ARGUMENT THIS NIGHT – AN OPINION

Emmanuel Nigeria, I have read you clearly. But look, it is not enough that you call a whole professor, former vice chancellor of a Nigeria’s premier university a liar or distorter of Nigerian history. You must avail your argument with the truth of history that you know. In the absence of that, I uphold Prof. Ango Abdullahi’s narratives and call on the entire Southerners that I am part of, to stop the hate against the North.I have always said the North is not the problem of Nigeria but that if anybody is truly interested in know what the Nigeria’s problem is (if any), then he should go to 10 Down Street and ask the authorities of British nation and not to truly look down on any Northerner. It will be disservice to Nigeria for anybody to attack Prof. Ango Abdullahi for telling the polite truth that he knows of the history of the building of One Nigeria which he said happened by pre, during and post-colonial era of Nigeria’s existence and yet such person would have been celebrating Nnamdi Kanu’s IPOB over its and MASSOB’s disrespect for the Nigerian State at will. What manner of people are we therefore? Whoever belongs to this category of arguments is indeed one of the problems of Nigeria.

I will stop here until there is a reference to a counter-fact of history capable of making me see that Prof. Ango Abdullahi is truly a distorter of history and capable of making me believe why Northerners should not be entitled to airing their views in the nation’s public space except that they will be described promptly as “parasites” that must not be allowed the rights of speech, culture and religion like we freely exercise in the South and still believe we are the most deprived stakeholders in the Nigeria’s marriage of over 100 years.

I have been truly an eyewitness to a Yorubaman in my Sokoto Road Nasarawa GRA compound in Kano telling me in Yoruba that “You should not live within these people but come to Sabon Geri.” He was speaking in Yoruba thinking he had found a brother of same mother tongue who would be partner in hate. He then said one thing that drove the prompt reaction of the Hausa man sitting with us: “They are Gambari”, he said. And the Hausa man just replied him in clear Yoruba: “Yes, we are animals (he translated Gambari) but you people in the South (who so hatefully describe us this way) are the grasses that we eat.” Was he lying? But no, he wasn’t. He was only giving a sincere response to a misdived Yoruba man who earned all his life makings in Kano but would never think good of his host community.

Has anyone said same to an average Niger Delta youth before he start arrogantly demanding his own share from any job you want to do on the land of “his father” to allow you put a digger on the ground?

Well, Liberty Badmus, on whose post the comment that dragged me up from my sickbed was made, spoke well that two wrongs cannot make a right. But before we arrive at that, we must first and foremost clear the air on Prof. Ango’s ventilated worries: Are Northerners truly none contributors to the building of Nigeria and its economy past and present? Are the Northerners truly parasites on the Nigerian marriage? If the North are naturally the political super powers of the Nigerian State, which is an undeniable fact, did they make themselves to be or historical facts about past present life of Nigeria coupled with colonials masters made them so? If we pride ourselves in Southwest as the only educated and call the North Gambari, if the Igbo that should for the rest of their lives blame themselves for distorting the Nigerian Federalism when it favoured them with General Aguiyi-Ironsi could have persistently complained that Nigeria does not count them important and have therefore constituted themselves (their political, traditional leaders and elites inclusive) into national security threat for the rest of Nigerians, if the Niger Delta could have laid claim to the Nigerian oil as their personal property without telling us how the discovery of the oil was funded and from which resources in the pre-oil Nigerian economic era and for that reason they have terrorised our economy into recession, we should then hold ourselves responsible for denying Northerners the rights to express the truth that they know about Nigeria, when we can’t present a more convincing truth.

That is where I have issue with Afenifere, a PDP sociocultural Yoruba group that always get vocal only when the discourse is to attack the North, Islam and nothing but that. Lagos’ Ikorodu had been under the attacks (rape, robbery, etc) of Niger Delta militants but the same Afenifere never issued a press statement. Yet they can cry woes to God Almighty when the cause will give them the opportunity to shutdown the Hausa/Fulani or Muslim of Nigeria from talking publicly. I am this kind of Yoruba soul. Do these people believe at all that they are calling the bluff of the Maker of Universe by so doing or not?

Truth must be our rule of engagement here. And the truth all of these are happening now is because, to Afenifere, PDP lost power; to Igbo not only that PDP lost power from an Igbo GEJ’s hands but because the winner is Hausa/Fulani Nigerian and to the Niger Delta, it is simply to continue to show dominance on the management of the oil without wanting any check.

NO SENTIMENT!

The comment by Emmanuel Nigeria just unfortunately penetrated deep into my innermost of bonemarrow that I had no choice than to resurrect briefly and make this counter-comment and repost it on my now very sensitive Facebook Wall, where many satans and evil doers of Nigerian society now catch cold whenever I post a thought.

WAINAJUNDANA INSHA ALLAH LAHU MOLIGALIBUUNA!