By Bashir Adefaka
(omope72@gmail.com or send text only: 08163323906)
When a problem has the hand of a government, no matter how low the level of that government, likewise when the problem is mainly by opposition party whose has chosen the whipping of sentiments as political tools, to solve such problem requires a concerted effort and cooperation of the people. What is happening in Benue, Taraba and other parts of the country where killings have been going on almost unabated despite the efforts of the Federal Government and its security forces is by no other but the handwork of opposition.
I have listened to comments of those who say the recent recognition by President Muhammadu Buhari of June 12 as Nigeria’s real date for celebration of Democracy Day and honour of Alhaji Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola with the highest honour of Grand Commander of the Federal Republic (GCFR) were political decision to earn the votes of South West people in the coming 2019 presidential elections. Considering the general knowledge of how Abiola sponsored the Ibrahim Babangida coup that toppled the Buhari’s military regime (1984-1985), it is difficult for those holding this position to carry through their game.
I also had discussions with some people who say the rare decision notwithstanding that people are complaining so much in the country and that the President has to improve on so many things happening in the country especially the killings and ensure the killings are stopped. It is not clear what those discussant meant by “so many things happening” but I can infer that what actually meant to say was “killings”, which they mischievously claim was being done by Fulani because their man was at the herms of affairs and that they are supported by the President. The distancing of self by foreign media from this notion has brought succor to my spirit. They know it was hypocrisy.
Now two things: June 12 political and killings not being addressed by the President. Then I say whoever holds this position is not of us, as patriotic Nigerians. It is about time we stop politicising our lives and security in this country. If we continue this way, none of the efforts of government towards giving us better life through dividends of democracy will have any effect. The government can, on calls by citizens and their governors, send troops numbering millions to Benue, Taraba, Plateau or Zamfara, the killings will not stop because we are misguiding ourselves on the cause that we either know correctly or pretend to know but which we do not know of killings.
This is the first time I am seeing a section of Nigerians agreeing that another section are killers while their own section has the saints. It is the first time I am seeing a section of Nigerian religious communities agreeing that members of another religion are killers while their own religious group has the saints or the persecuted. It is the main reason this is the first time a President of Nigeria is being tagged as supporting the killings of some people by some people under his leadership and that he is backing those killings because the killers are people from his own tribe and religion. This is the most disgusting, inauspicious, senseless opinion or position to be held by any person who only profess to love his or her country and wants it migrate from grass to grace but in the real sense is a deceiver. He that loves and wants his country to grow for the betterment of the generality of the people must not hold the kind of notions aforementioned.
Truth of the matters arising is that, the killings in the country have more to it than imagined. Only people who are serious minded and are not agents of destruction can decipher this truth. The killings are political machinations of some political opponents who are bent on discrediting President Muhammadu Buhari at all cost being that they have, brilliantly, discovered that the political game of hardship and hunger they were offering to Nigerian public no longer sell and attempt to get another one which will sell is the reason for the killings.
Or else, why would President of the country be put to question over security situation in a state governed by a governor whose powers and jurisdiction are almost at pal with that of the President and is heavily funded with security votes to achieve carry out his function in that regard? Those who are so doing, what do they want to achieve? Okay, to drive home the point that the lack of state police is the cause of killings as the governors have no control over the police on excuse that it is federal?
But nothing has been found in all of these questions except hypocrisy. One, no state governor or his state community has justifiable claim to blame President Buhari for the killings in his given state because the constitutional responsibility for ensuring security, safety and welfare of the people of his state is his sole reason for being in power, while the responsibility of the President is clearly stated also in the Constitution. You can blame the President if he has deprived you of access to security votes and use of police, solders or other security agency to fulfill those responsibilities.
Why then are people particularly colleague media practitioners misleading the public about the truth of the situation? What do they want to achieve by this or do they not know that if they cause chaotic situation as a result of their unpatriotic publications and misrepresentations of facts about issues, no country will be happy to willingly adopt them into its citizenry except that they create refugee camps which may eventually render them useless for the rest of their lives?
It is so pitiful that people who are supposed to be the final destination of finders of truth and facts are themselves empty, deliberately, because of their stomachs and what they want to be but not because of “our stomach” and what “we want to be” as a nation and generality of people. This is the problem.
Now, if we want the killings to stop, we must first and foremost erase from our hearts the notion that President Buhari refuses to act because the killers are Fulani “herdsmen”. That is hate speech and devilish. We must also stop the idea that one particular religion is killer faith while the other is the saint. The media should also stop projecting higher one ethnic or religious group to the detriment of the other. Channels Television for example will never carry any positive news about Islam or Muslim but can jump over such news and go to the worst.
Last moonsighting broadcast of Sultan was attended by Channels Television reporter in Sokoto but, instead for the head office that actually broadcast news to carry the news for the guidance of Muslims of Nigeria, they disregarded the Sultan’s effort but went to Zamfara to pick the story of woes that wanted Nigeria to hear about the North and Muslim dominated states where they reported how ten people were killed in two Zamfara villages on a day Muslims were expecting the good news of new moonsighting. Most unfortunate of it all was that, they reported a church service in that same bulletin. That is how bad things have been with South-based media practitioners in Nigeria.
For instance, the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Muhammadu Sanusi II, complained that over 700 Fulani armless men, their defenceless women and innocent children were slaughtered on the Mambila plateau by some militia that investigations have persistently proved to have been trained, funded and sponsored by government of Taraba State. The media, which had chosen to hype the far later killing of 75 people by gunmen in Benue, turned their eyes away from the Taraba killings of 700 because they were relying on what the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) told them. Instead, they encouraged people who have the ungodly spirits to misrepresent and who consistently denied the Taraba killings never happened because the souls affected were souls of Muslims and Fulani. What could be more an injustice than that by any media sector of any developing country!
More importantly, nobody is asking questions about the possible role of the current almost unprecedented kind of desperate political opposition that we have in the land in the killings that they are now hanging on President Buhari. When a problem has the hand of a government, no matter how low the level of that government, likewise when the problem is mainly by opposition party whose has chosen the whipping of sentiments as political tools, to solve such problem requires a concerted effort and cooperation of the people. What is happening in Benue, Taraba and other parts of the country where killings have been going on almost unabated despite the efforts of the Federal Government and its security forces is by no other but the handwork of opposition.
For example, what we used to hear in Nigeria was herdsmen versus farmers clash and it never ever snowballed to the type of what we have today. And the politico-religious actors escalating the herdsmen/farmers clash do not do it with commonsense as the leg of the dead they claim to have buried continues to be exposed unknown to them. If you say herdsmen and farmers are fighting and along the line lives are lost, while you tell us how many people are killed or injured by herdsmen, you should be able to tell us the number of people killed or injured by the farmers.
But to really expose the hypocrisy of those who fathomed the idea of “herdsmen killings” in the 2019-based ongoing situation, the only killers or injurers are the herdsmen and the farmers are either Christian Church members or minority people in the North who are not Hausa/Fulani. What ethics of journalism permits this kind of publication or broadcast for journalists? If no one, then why are media practitioners deliberately hurting to destroy the already ailing country now undergoing surgical operation by the current administration of President Muhammadu Buhari?
If the country collapses, do they not realise that it will collapse not only on the head and people of government they intend to join the desperate opposition to destroy but also that it will collapse on them and their journalism? Then who has gained?
The single solution to the whole problem is for people to embrace change: tell the truth to themselves and of happenings and learn to decipher evil from righteous, wrong from right, bad from good and then support the side which is righteous, right and good. You cannot continue to claim balancing reports when evil and righteous in the matter of national security and development is concerned except by the thinking of human rights activists of Nigeria, evils also have right. What manner of rights?! It takes wisdom for any professional to realise this and be able to do it. It makes no sense when you goof and you claim you talking the truth to the powers that be. What manner of truth?!
This is important because, it is these same people blaming the government’s allegedly not taking action over the killings that stand on the side of the people allegedly culpable in the killings. Yet much as the government troops, police and DSS have arrested some of the responsible for the killings, these claimers continue say he has not acted on stopping the killings and it is so because those arrested so far have turned out to be people they do not expect to be arrested. They cannot however proved those arrested are not the culprit. All they want to know or hear is “Fulani” and “Fulani herdsmen declared terrorists”. They do not believe in the workings of justice. It must be their own whims and caprices that must be done, yet they do not stop blaming the President when they should be blaming themselves.
And when some of them, who are big guns in the society, are invited by the Police because of their allegations against them in the cause of unraveling the killers and their sponsors, to come and explain themselves, it is the same people who blame President Buhari that still stand with them. So also it is they that are found in support, when some people went to the extent of blaming Police’s invitation of them on working for a particular state governor and they went to the extent of jumping out of police vehicle when being taken to court for prosecution, same people who are blaming government and have called on it to stop the killers have themselves openly played role not more or less than believing the stories of the accused while joining them in fighting the Police and the government. Some particular lawyers are culpable in this.
If you don’t trust the Government and Police of your country, then you are not fit to be alive or be citizen of that country or member of that society! Yes! United States of America is great today not that it is free of security challenges like we have in Nigeria but because, when every America citizen wakes up in the morning, he says, “God bless America!” But here, people are comfortable joining to support evil plots against the well being of Nigeria and its citizens. It is sad!
You have heard how many of those, who chose to raise the alarm of threat to their lives in the past, had turned out to be that they did so to divert attention from their atrocities under investigations. Dino Melaye raised alarm that some people wanted to kill him. Police investigations later exposed him as the mastermind of his own acclaimed assassination and thus arraigned him for “misinformation”. The same Dino Melaye raised alarm that killing of 24 souls on one day in Kogi State was handwork of “herdsmen”, only for Nigerians to wake up and see that by the time military and police rose to the problem and arrested the criminals, the alarmist turned out to be the sponsor of those killings to destabilize the state and to discredit the sitting governor of his own state. To further lay credence to this, since those criminals have been arrested, suddenly, no herdsman is killing again in Kogi State, yet the arrested criminals are not Hausa/Fulani.
It is of no use to claim that the suspects said they did not know Melaye because, sponsored criminals do not necessarily need to know their sponsors especially in desperately charged political atmosphere like some of them have turned the society to currently. Politicians can go to any length in achieving their political ambition, it matters not if lives of many have to go for it. So, it is not yet uhuru for Dino Melaye to rejoice. That denial by the suspects is not a verdict of justice. The truth will eventually come into the open.
Also, Senate President Bukola Saraki had raised alarm over purported frame-up to implicate him. He was talking about arrested cultists taken from Ilorin to Abuja. No Nigerian should interfere in police investigation but he did using his position as number three citizen, thinking that it will affect the real investigation he wanted to divert attention from, unknown to many Nigerians. But because the government and its Police are not dunce, the real investigation was not affected by that alarm. And it was the case of Offa robbery, although not yet presented to court but, even at that, it is glaringly seen that Saraki cannot extricate himself of it.
Then it came to former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s alarm of threat to his life and that he was being framed up to be imprisoned. He even said he has been put on Watch List by the Buhari Administration but the government said only the ones whose hands are not clean are afraid but that it will not do anything against people who have not run foul of the law.
The Obasanjo’s alarm came barely 24 hours after President Buhari’s declaration of June 12 and honour of Abiola, Kingibe and Fawehinmi that many Nigerians had seen as healing of the wounds of 25 years that Obasanjo himself was part of afflicting on Nigeria. What motivated that action of the former President if not to truncate the joy of Nigerians over the President’s lauded decision?
It however turned out to be that Buhari’s government is carrying out investigations on so many evils and atrocities of the past (and no time is too long to bring any body to justice), which Obasanjo now discovered were seeing his hands in virtually all of those atrocities. That was aside the fact that he needed to also do something to diffuse the added popularity that has accrued to President’s already popularity over the June 12 decision. That was reason for the alarm he raised forgetting that Nigerians are now wiser and would buy into it. He failed and Buhari is moving on.
In all, having discovered they have persistently failed to get those alarm games of theirs to the skulls of Nigerians, they now returned to the trenches and are now saying Buhari declared June 12 as Democracy Day to win votes of South West in 2019. How possible is that. Did Buhari make June 12 a campaign promise when he won in South West in 2015? No. Does Buhari have any challenge in South West ahead of 2019 that he now needs a declaration of June 12 to patch up? No. Buhari has done what he and his consultants know is right and, from the existing relationship between him and Abiola who was believed to have been sponsor of Babangida coup that ousted him in 1985, it is clear that South West need Buhari more on the issue of June 12 than he needs the South West.
So, on a final note, Nigerians, be they professionals or artisans, tribal, traditional or religious people, should rise up in support of the Muhammadu Buhari government because it is because of his changing the old order turning the table against those few who have claimed the ownership of Nigeria for long that has caused the killings and economic sabotage that the nation has witnessed. Only with the support, understanding and resoluteness of the people of the country can this battle against the enemies of the masses be won.
*Adefaka, a Lagos-based media practitioner, wrote from Lagos.
