By BASHIR ADEFAKA
“I have seen no Hausa-Fulani leader or man that shielded his erring people from facing justice like we do in the South. Yet, we claim the North is reason we are backward as a nation.”
I have not set out to put my thought together on this topic so as to entertain or impress anybody. Allah even says through his Messenger, Muhammad, peace be upon him, that if it remains only animal that will be able to call human being to order, he will command it to do so. Therefore, in reading me this time, prepare your mind that all you will read by me will not be palatable to your sense of satisfaction but, no one that the point I will make touches his behaviour has got a choice. We all own this country and no one stops any patriotic member from saying what will keep it together (and on) in peace, unity and development. By ringing the bell of ethnic and religious hate every day, you are overreaching the limit of your rights. Where your own ends mine begins. So, take note!
We have been hearing reports about police officers and stations in Yoruba Land being afraid to treat reports received against erring Fulani persons. I am saying that this report must be investigated. It must however be noted that only from Afenifere leaders, mainly late Yinka Odumakin – all PDP members of South West – this report is heard.
Listen to me and read me well with an open heart, the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, is Leader of Fulani tribe in Africa, my position. We as Yoruba and Igbo may be covering and shielding our own, who have questions to answer over their misdeeds against humanity and the state, from facing justice, e.g. Evans the richest kidnap kingpin, Nnamdi Kanu, Omoyele Sowore, Sunday Igboho, this Fulani arrowhead and, above all, Leader of Africa’s largest religious and traditional communities has never changed in his position that criminality has no tribe neither has it religion and, so, that any Fulani man or Muslim found in crime should be treated as criminal.
Even President Muhammadu Buhari that you so deride for nepotism, his tribesmen and religion’s people have been the ones the law of Nigeria has successfully worked against. Because, the North allow the corrupt or terrorist, bandit/criminal among them to face the consequences of their actions. Those Southerners who were supposed to be brought before the law, the South created crisis until it is impossible. The North have been blamed for why refineries do not work in Nigeria. But it is the same North in Buhari, who built whatever you call Nigerian experience of refineries, that put the nation’s money in repairing them after 14 years of Southern Presidents’ failure to repair them. Those who turned themselves to celebrated militancy and who took joy in bombing those achievements, which region were they from? They were busy destroying the achievements of President Buhari, so that the North, about whom they have told the world that they are bad people, will not turn out to take the glory for the better change. Those destroyers, which region were they from, I repeat? North? Of course, you cannot answer correctly. They say because Buhari did not talk while “Fulani” people are destroying their farm land with their cows. You should have consulted history to know that herders/farmers issue dated back to pre-independence. Okay, why are you not condemning Buhari for not talking about the terrorism carried out against the country we all own by the Southern elements of yours? The question of whether Buhari is even a Fulani man or not is matter of another day.
They even aided their criminals, e.g. Evans, Omoyele Sowere and Nnamdi Kanu, and allegedly corrupt politicians, e.g. Orji Uzor Kalu, to either remain untried escape trial so justice won’t be brought face to face with them. They celebrate a man who dented the image of Nigeria until the Fulani people they hate so much pushed one of their own forward and who has now cleaned the bad image they (the South) gave to the country of all of us. Imagine, today, after the money he stole is being repatriated from UK, a serving minister even joined in dancing to praise-music in his honour. I have seen no Hausa-Fulani leader or man that shielded his erring people from facing justice like we do in the South. Yet, we claim the North is reason we are backward as a nation.
While that is said, I hope we in the South will toe the same line of these Hausa-Fulani leaders and people and stop shameful shielding our own. To us, only Northerners can be criminals whereas, they are the best friends and merciful ones we have ever enjoyed. In terms of everything! There are no Igbo or Yorba criminals, our claims imply by such behaviour. That is to call for war. And my question is: Can we Southerners stand in the event of Second Civil War in Nigeria? If in the mouths you don’t know the answer, you definitely know but have the answer hidden in your hearts. To whose detriment? Definitely not of me but of yourselves.
All hate speeches and unguarded utterances by Yoruba and Igbo against these innocent tribe, Hausa-Fulani, must and, I mean, must stop. That is the main cause of the problem we have in Nigeria. We are not even good towards ourselves. What then is my impression about you? Just now, Sunday Igboho just disrespected and and added salt to Pastor Adeboye’s injury mocking him over the loss of his son and and saying he would not send him condolence message because he did not support Oduduwa Republic. He should go out and ask any right thinking Muslim in Yoruba Land, if you do Oduduwa Republic today, the war you will face will start from there because no Muslim will lie in wait until all these pagans trying to lord their idolatry disbelief on everybody. Thank God the Pastor of Redeemed Christian Church of God rejected them.Pesident of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Pastor Samson Ayokunle, and Afenifere leaders are the catalysts giving them the impetus to go ahead and have a country where we that, although not saints, believe in God mean nothing but shit to them. We are the ones that believe we didn’t come to this world by accident but by God creating us for purpose of worshipping him and working to sustain ourselves till the end of life and they hate to see us fullfil our duty to our Lord. That is the Oduduwa Republic they want. And CAN is their leading light. How then is CAN regarded as Christian apex body with all the ethnic crisis it has caused destroying the country on behalf of its pay master, America?
I am in my 40s. I grew up amidst misrepresentations of Hausa-Fulani as evil and animalistic people. It is the reason it is so difficult for me today that my eyes and brain are open to accept any such deriding claim against them by my tribe’s people. They have made simple issue so complex for themselves that even when Hausa-Fulani people living in their midst run for safety into a barrack for protection against their hate-induced attacks, they scream to the heavens that Hausa-Fulani have entered Barracks One and Barracks Two to train to kill them and take over their land. Tales that don’t add up. These are the same Yoruba people, who in the days when Northerners used to do reprisals, when Hausa-Fulani people were killed in Yorba Land, the Yoruba in Kano would quickly run to a place called BRIGADE, that is Army Barracks, for protection. Imagine that the other reasonable Kano people asked the military to throw the Yoruba people out for their slaughter. But no. They didn’t. I knew a number of Yoruba travelers, who were called into certain Hausa-Fulani houses at Sharada area during the reprisal crisis and given Hausa dresses to change their shirts and trousers to avoid being targets of the yandabas. In Kano, area boys or misguided youths are called yandabas. But in the South, many of the society destroyers are university graduates and children of supposed elites. Because even the elites are part of their evils. If not, sons and daughters of whom are the cultists of higher institutions?
But if you have any case of criminality against any Hausa-Fulani tribe person, stop generalising but treat the offender. I just watched video of a supposed journalist interviewing an Ibadan farmer. After he was told him that the Fulani boy who attacked him had been arrested and transfered to Iyaganku Police Command Headquarters, our so called Journalist friend still asked to know what the people of the community did to the Fulani residents in the area. But the farmer, an Islamic cleric, floored him by saying, “After the offender has been arrested, what again should people do?”
As a Journalist, if he is, he expected innocent Hausa-Fulani people in Ibadan to be killed because one of them committed a crime. Imagine that the Hausa-Fulani in Kano just decided to kill all Yoruba in the nation’s most volatile city for the crime of just one Yoruba person or to kill all the Igbo for the crime of just one Igbo person. All this stupidity must stop!
BACK to my earlier point, the claims that police stations are afraid to arrest criminals among Hausa-Fulani people should be investigated. Because, the impression is to say President Buhari, being Fulani(?) man, has given a standing order that no criminal, once of Fulani tracing, should be touched. No. Those that have suffered most under Buhari government are his own Hausa-Fulani people. Even in the area of Boko Haram, who have been suffering most? Northerners and Muslims. Why is it only Afenifere and opposition party people in Yoruba Land that are saying police officers in stations do not respond to report of criminals among Fulani? Why are we having Fulani in police custody if that claim is true?
The war these people are calling for, when it starts, not even the West that give them, e.g. CAN, Sowore, Nnamdi Kanu and DJ ‘Witch’, money to destroy their own country under pretext of ethnic, religious and political “imbalance” will support them. And I am afraid that after the Second Civil War, there may be no South again as what will become of the society will be NIGERIA where who controls power and its direction will be based on ‘survival of the fittest’ and, guess which of the regions has the strength to occupy the nation in that case.
Reason a stitch in time for everyone now can only save nine, only if they reason and allow the large population and diversiry in the country to play their real part as sources of strength for peace, unity and development.
*Bashir Adefaka, a Yoruba Prince from Akure, Ondo State, is Lagos based Journalist, media and publicity consultant.
