On January
13, 2017, a military former head of state, General Abdulsalami Alhaji
Abubakar and members of his National Peace Committee were in Sir Kashim
Ibrahim House Kaduna. His team comprised eminent Nigerians like Cardinal
John Onaiyekan, Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah, Commodore Ebitu Ikiwe, and
the Sultan of Sokoto. The peacemakers had a three hours closed door
interface with Governor Nasir El Rufai, Deputy Governor Barnabas Yusuf
Bala, and other top Kaduna government functionaries.
The former Head of Nigeria junta stated
their mission to Sir Kashim Ibrahim House thus: “We are here due to the
recent happenings in Southern Kaduna. And from here within the week, we
are going to meet with other stakeholders, religious leaders, the chiefs
in the area, and also visit the site where these problems are and
discuss with the people. After which we will now sit down and see what
we think should be done”.
After their almost late visitation to
Southern Kaduna, and after listening to tribulations of victims, and
tour of the genocide spots the head of self-appointed National Peace
Committee informed the world of their next line of action in this
fashion “…after which we will now sit down and see what we think should
be done. Then we come back to the governor and if necessary to the
federal government”.
From their mission statement, it’s clear
that they are going to Southern Kaduna to see political, spiritual and
feudal lords of victims. Except they are telling us that they are living
in some far off planets, they know what has happened and still
happening in Southern Kaduna. Sequel to that, why go to Southern Kaduna?
The peace committee knows who
has failed in protecting lives and property of indigenous people of
Southern Kaduna via his/their actions, inactions, and pronouncements.
Nasir El-Rufai, the Kaduna governor, and President Muhammadu Buhari, the
commander-in-chief, have woefully failed to secure the people of
Southern Kaduna in what is obviously appearing to be a genocidal scheme
locally hatched, and commissioned to foreign barbarians to execute it.
Wait a minute, are they going to
Southern Kaduna to make peace or just see the scale of inhumanity and
barbarism perpetrated by some hell-bound territorial expansionists?
Let’s yield to the temptation that they are going to talk and promote
peace. Now, let me ask; is Southern Kaduna at war within or other
communities in Nigeria? No. If it’s incontrovertible and irrefutable
that Southern Kaduna people are not at war with any local or external
community, why waste time visiting them and seeing Nigeria’s version of
Sabibo?
General Abdulsalami’s team are mere
attention-seekers whose interest is not to see to the end of the
genocide in Southern Kaduna but gained national prominence. Come on, are
these mixed grill team ignorance of Governor El-Rufai’s statement of
2nd December 2016 and his chat claims of 21st December 2016? Governor
El-rufai claimed he knows the barbarians and vandals killing people,
burning houses and running over farmlands in Southern Kaduna. He said,
they are foreigners living in Niger, Cameroon, Mali, Chad and Senegal.
The chief occupant of Sir Kashim Ibrahim House went further by telling
us that he has paid some of them compensation to cease the killings in
Southern Kaduna.
With Mr. El-Rufai’s shameful and
felonious revelation, are the National Peace Committee not to head to
the countries Mr. El-Rufai enumerated and sue for peace? Heading to the
direction victims of the mindless killings and arsons amounts to
wobbling effort and charting a wrong directions. Let them get the
contact of the killers from Mr. El-Rufai and head to their foreign
climes and import them from their countries for a peace conference. It
will be easy for them to achieve that because the compensator of killers
Mr. El-Rufai knows their whereabout.
If the gerontocratic clustered
in the national peace committee are serious, let them head to Aso Rock
and report Mr. El-rufai’s foreign policy action of linking and
negotiating with terrorists. If they want us to take them serious let
them openly condemned Mr. El-rufai’s action of compensating foreign
killers of Southern Kaduna people because there is no local and global
tradition that purified compensation of terrorists. Terrorist
are killed and in milder cases arrested and prosecuted. But Mr. El-rufai
has introduced a boomeranging angle into the way terrorists are
handled.
Do General Abdulsalami and his team
members desire we take them serious? Let them insist that victims of
known foreign killers be compensated. Let them insist that Mr. El-Rufai
should explain why the village of Goska in Kaninkon Chiefdom of Jema’a
Local Government that was under 24-hours curfew was attacked on 24th
December 2016 with impunity.
Let them, if they are sincere, inquire
reasons why Governor El-Rufai and President Muhammadu Buhari have not
created an Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)? Or direct them to set-go
the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and State Emergency
Management Agency (SEMA) moving with relief materials to Southern
Kaduna?
Are members of National Peace Committee
saying they are unaware of Governor El-rufai’s tweet in 2012 that told
people that whosoever kill a Fulani man takes a repayable loan? On 2nd
and 21st December 2016 he told us that he is Fulani. A simple linking of
the dots and reading the thin blue lines in between his 2012 tweet and
what is happening today will reveal that when he used the word ” We put
it to whosever…” he told us the resolve of his genocidal and barbaric
groups. This is logic. No special wisdom is needed to connect the dots.
Gen. Abdulsalami must have heard of the
imperial decree of an aspiring maximum leader Governor El-Rufai that
anybody that counsel victims of genocide in Southern Kaduna to defend
themselves is hate speech. And, that, he will arrest and prosecute such
people or person. His tantrum and megalamomic resolve contracted
provisos of the country’s 1999 constitution and Geneva Convention of
People’s Rights that clearly stated that, self-defense is a human right
to a person or people under assaults, specially in a situation where
government has vividly demonstrated its incapability in safeguarding
them from reckless terminators. From this, it’s clear that Mr.
El-rufa’i is telling the people of Southern Kaduna to hold their hands
while janjaweeds he knows and have been communing with commits dastardly
acts.
Some of us are outrageously elated that
patriotic citizens like Governors Ishaku Darius of Taraba, Ayo Fayose of
Ekiti, Nyesom Wike of Rivers, Bishop Oyedepo of Winners Chapel, Senator
Danjuma Tella Laah, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode and Christian Association of
Nigeria (CAN) have advanced the position of self-defense. We live to
see how Mr. El-Rufai will walk his threats by arresting and prosecuting
these people that directly challenged his wicked and satanic philosophy.
Let him demonstrate to Nigerians his awesome power by arresting these
men of timber and caliber and men he can’t even stand in their front and
talk. Preying on people like Dr. John Danfulani of Centrum Initiative
for Development and Fundamental Rights Advocacy, (CEDRA) and Jacob
Dickson of Authentic News Daily is not the best way of
showcasing his executive recklessness and dictatorial disposition.
History confirms that bullies are cowards.
This is my counsel to the people of
Southern Kaduna and their socio-political group, distance yourselves
from the men of the National Peace Committee. They are on a
time-wasting and energy-consuming scheme of elites that are malnourished
of the capacity to call a spade by its name. People who hardly look the
powers that be in the eye and tell them some quinine-tasting truth.
Should the targeted groups ignore this divine advice of steering clear
and rejecting the invitation, they will sooner or later be confronted
with the repercussions of their intransigency because nothing good will
come from their interface.
Let them invest the time they will waste
meeting these people who don’t share their aspirations or feel their
pains in prayers and designing of strategy of how to defend their lands
from unabashed land grabbers and 21st century inquisitors.
Going for such compromised meetings will be like singing the Lord’s song by the rivers of Babylon.
John Danfulani, Ph.D., is the
executive director of the Centrum Initiative for Development and
Fundamental Rights Advocacy (CEDRA), a leading human rights activist
organisation. He can be reached by email HERE.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
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