“If
Boko Haram kills Christians and burns down churches, we will slay
Muslims and raze down mosques. We want to warn them that we, the Niger
Delta youths, in this 21st century will not accept the killing of
innocent Christians or the burning of churches. That if they try it in
the north or any part of Nigeria, we the Niger Delta youths will not see
any Muslim or mosque in the Niger Delta” – Niger Delta Revolutionary
Crusaders, August 5, 2016
It is no
longer news that the new leader of Boko Haram, Mr. Abu Musa Al Barnawi,
who apparently has the backing of ISIS, has said that he will target
only Christians and burn down all the Churches in the country.
He has also said that Muslims and
mosques will no longer be targeted and that Mr. Abubakar Shekau, the
erstwhile leader and principal voice of the terror group, is no longer
the leader.
Mr. Shekau has responded by saying that
he will continue to slaughter whoever he pleases and that he remains the
authentic leader. There appears to be a very serious rift in the ranks
of Boko Haram which is good news.
As far as I am concerned the two factions can do us all a favour by destroying one another and burning in hell.
Anyone that targets Christians and
Churches, or indeed any innocent civilians for slaughter, is not worthy
of life. They are nothing but vermin and, like the cockroaches that they
are, they must be crushed.
Mr. Shekau is evil but Mr. Al Barnawi is
even worse: he is the devil incarnate. He represents ISIS and we all
know what that means.
Whichever way we look at it and whatever
is going on within the ranks of Boko Haram we must not lose sight of
the bigger picture. And that bigger picture points to one thing: Nigeria
is in a mess.
Quite apart from the poverty and
hardship that has afflicted the land coupled with the total destruction
of the economy and quite apart from the shattering of peoples dreams and
the drastic reduction in their standard of living by the ineffectual
and barren fiscal and economic policies of an inept and incompetent
government, our President did not stop there.
He also went as far as to appoint as his
minister of sports a man who is clearly (to use Donald Trump’s words
about Hillary Clinton) “unbalanced and unhinged”.
This is a man that can barely speak
english and who, during the week of the Olympics, publicly referred to
our country as “the United States Of Nigeria” whilst reprimanding our
Olympic football team for getting stuck in America and arriving late in
Brazil.
Someone should tell Honorable Minister
Solomon Dalung that it was his job to get our boys to Rio De Janeiro on
time and that it was something of a scandal and a national embarrassment
that it took the last minute intervention and assistance of Delta Air, a
private American airline, to get them there in time for their match
with Japan.
Whilst our boys did us proud by going on
to defeat Japan and later Sweden, the video of the Minister disparaging
them and spouting nonsense about some fictitious and imaginary country
called ‘the United States of Nigeria’ whilst wearing his ridiculous red
beret went viral on the internet. A fool goes by no other name.
In normal climes the Minister would have
been forced to resign the following day and he would have been
compelled to apologise to the nation that he is purportedly serving for
forgetting its name. Sadly though there is nothing that is “normal”
about Nigeria or the Buhari administration.
Equally abysmal was the recent outing of
Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola, President Buhari’s “super Minister” of
Power, Works and Housing, on BBC TV’s Hardtalk.
Before millions of viewers from all over
the world, the Minister told his host Mr. Stephen Sackhur a shameless
and pernicious lie by claiming that he never promised Nigerians an
increase in power generation and supply.
It is his inability to be forthright, to
appreciate the virtues of telling the truth and to keep his election
promises that has earned my aburo Tunde Fashola the nickname of Minister
of Darkness.
Since he was appointed ‘super Minister’
the power generation in our country has dropped from 5000 megawatts at
the time when President Jonathan left office just over a year ago to
under 2000 megawatts today. Worst still he has not managed to construct
or complete the refurbishment of a single road.
Yet it is not the crippled economy, the
erring and dim-witted minister of sports, the intellectually dishonest
and lying minister of power, works, and housing or any of the other
numerous foibles of the Buhari administration that gives us the most
concern today.
It is rather the gradual and systematic
generation and invocation of a frightful and cataclysmic atmosphere of
war and the looming threat and increasing likelihood of a great and
violent ethnic and religious conflict, the likes of which Africa has
never seen before.
If it is not Boko Haram that is
slaughtering our people it is the Fulani herdsmen. Worse still they are
doing these despicable things with the active connivance and support of a
few people that are in the corridors of power today whose objective is
to islamise our nation, plunge us into a fiery abyss and create chaos.
The bible says ‘there is no fellowship
between light and darkness’. We have said it before and we will say it
again: we must restructure Nigeria before it is too late. If we fail to
do so we will have no choice but to reconsider our so-called unity.
If things don’t change quickly we must consider the possibility of dividing our country and renegotiating our union.
We cannot afford to wait any longer
because we are playing with fire and we are sitting on a keg of
gunpowder. We must attempt to do whatever needs to be done peacefully
and we must not allow the butchers and those that kill in the name of
their god to provoke us into another civil war.
Nothing represents the danger of the war
that is looming more than the response of the Niger Delta Revolutionary
Crusaders (an affiliate of the Niger Delta Avengers) to Al Barnawi’s
threat.
They responded by saying that if
Christians and Churches are targeted by Boko Haram they will kill all
the Muslims in the Niger Delta area and they will burn down all the
mosques. It is a simple case of “action” and “reaction” and I sincerely
hope that those that are used to killing others and not being killed
themselves take them seriously.
Clearly we are living in dangerous times
and I sincerely hope that those that brought religion into our politics
in 2015 and that used Islam and the Boko Haram offensive as a political
tool against a southern Christian President are seeing the fruits of
their labour.
When you invoke the proverbial genie and
let it out of the kettle you must be prepared to live with the
consequences and whatever follows.
Yet the folly does not stop there. As if
our sensibilities were not already sufficiently provoked President
Buhari took the religious dance to yet another level last week by
directing the Central Bank of Nigeria to sell foreign exchange to Muslim
pilgrims that were on their way to Saudi Arabia for hajj at 197 naira
to 1 USD.
This whilst everyone else, including
students, manufacturers, businessmen, Christian pilgrims, the ailing and
holiday-makers, must continue to buy at 400 naira to 1 USD. When the
math is done this amounts to a whooping N7.9 billion naira concession
for Muslim pilgrims.
And all this in a country that is not
only impoverished and whose people are suffering from the worst economic
hardship and poverty crunch since independence but also one that is
meant to be a secular state.
Such is the national outrage that
President Buhari’s forex concession to his Muslim brothers and sisters
has provoked that a well-known political commentator and activist Mr.
Paul Achalla wrote the following on his Facebook wall on August 5th:
“N410 to $1 for business, education,
entrepreneurship, food processing, manufacturing, etc. and N197 to $1
for pilgrims going to Saudi Arabia? Bluntly put, Boko Haram ideology won
Nigeria’s 2015 general election!!!”
Paul Achalla is right. How can this sort
of nonsense be justified in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural,
multi-religious secular state? Is Buhari’s Nigeria crafted only for the
Muslim north? Is Saudi Arabia now the spiritual headquarters of our
nation?
If it is not the Sultan of Sokoto
declaring public holidays, it is the President giving subsidised rates
of foreign exchange and preferential treatment to members of his own
religious faith.
If it is not that he is leading our
country into a sinister and dangerous military coalition of Sunni Muslim
nations it is that he is holding conferences in Abuja with foreign
Muslim clerics whose stated objective is to “spread sharia throughout
Nigeria” and islamise our country.
Worst still virtually all his Service
Chiefs and principal commanders in his Armed Forces together with his
National Security Advisor, his Minister of Defence, his Minister of
Internal Affairs, his Inspector General of Police, his Chief of Defence
Intelligence, his Director General of State Security, his Chairman of
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, his Commander of the National
Civil Defence Corps, his Comptroller General of Customs, his Comptroller
General of Immigration, his Comptroller General of Prisons and ALL his
other security, para-security and intelligence agencies, bar one, are
northern Muslims.
Can there be any greater form of
corruption, abuse of power, injustice and betrayal of trust than this?
Does this not prove the fact that our country is in dire need of
restructuring?
The 2nd part of this article will be published on Wednesday, August 9, 2016
Femi
Fani-Kayode is a lawyer, a Nigerian politician, an evangelical
christian, an essayist, a poet and he was the Special Assistant (Public
Affairs) to President Olusegun Obasanjo from July 2003 until June
2006. He was the minister of culture and tourism of the Federal Republic
of Nigeria from June 22nd to Nov 7th 2006 and as the minister of
Aviation from Nov 7th 2006 to May 29th 2007. He tweets from @realFFK.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
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