Femi Fani-Kayode
Professor Ango Abdullahi is the spokesman and de facto leader of the Northern Elders Forum.
His notorious mendacities and constant
submissions and assertions remind me of Shakespeare’s’ profound words in
his classic play titled ‘Macbeth’ where he spoke of “a tale told by an
idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”.
A few days ago the Professor claimed that, “the north sustained the entire Nigerian state from 1914 up to 1974”.
This is a lie from the pit of hell. The
truth is that the opposite is the case: it is the south that sustains
the north and it has been doing so from 1914 up until today.
Lord Lugard was the first
Governor-General of colonial Nigeria and the architect of the 1914
amalgamation between what were formerly known as the “northern” and
“southern” protectorates of Nigeria.
In 1914 he described the north as “the
poor husband” and the south as “the rich wife”. Can someone please tell
me how a “poor husband” can sustain a “rich wife”?
It is rather the “rich wife” that
sustains the “poor husband” and this has been the case in Nigeria
despite the fact that he has been pillaging, raping, beating, abusing,
sodomising and cheating on her for the last 103 years.
If not for the south with its kind and
gentle disposition, its liberal and cosmopolitan tendencies, its
intellectual virility, its generous and accommodating population, its
massive mineral and human resources and its never-ending and charitable
quest and desire to be its brother’s keeper, the core north would be the
poorest and most barren place on earth today. Professor Abdullahi knows
this and so do all those that think like him.
Without the south the core north would
have been a poverty-striken, land-locked, waste-land and barren desert
with little hope and few prospects.
Despite all their pretensions they owe everything to the south That is the bitter truth.
With his disdainful and disrespectful
comments Professor Abdullahi has distorted the truth, attempted to
revise history, insulted the south and been uncharitable and unfair to
his benefactors.
This is a monumental error and a grave
miscalculation on his part because gone are the days when southerners
can be intimidated into silence.
I say this
because a new crop of southern and Middle Belt leaders are silently on
the rise. They are proud of their identity, history, culture and ethnic
heritage, they have wholly espouse the nationalist cause, they refuse to
be cowered, subjugated, intimidated or enslaved and they reject the
notion of being being labelled as second class citizens or “drawers of
the water and hewers of the wood”.
The problem with people like Abdullahi
is that falsehood is in their genes. Their submissions are manifestly
dishonest and their words are rooted in deceit, mendacity, doublespeak
and, worst of all, misplaced and baseless arrogance.
I believe that 103 years of a forced
marriage, an unhappy union and an abusive cohabitation is long enough.
There can be no fellowship with the core north because there is no
common ground and many northerners view southerners as nothing more than
serfs.
We have tried for many years to plead with them to see reason and to let us live together peacefully but they have refused.
Instead they have taken us for granted
and they have taken our charity, generosity, kindness and meekness for
cowardice, stupidity and weakness.
They insist that In all matters they
must always have their way and they must always dominate. They claim
that they were “born to rule” and that we were “born to serve”.
They assert that the rest of us are
subhuman slaves and serfs. They insist that we live and flourish at
their pleasure and that they have the power of life and death over us.
They are the poorest and most backward
zone and they have little or nothing to offer yet they insist that they
must always wield the power and that they must always lead and rule.
Yet all they bring to the table is
rancour, division, strife and conflict, whether it be the quest for
perpetual domination or covert support for Boko Haram and the Fulani
militias and herdsmen.
I say enough is enough! The only way forward is to restructure Nigeria or break her.
Whether anyone likes it or not I have
spoken the bitter truth. I have reflected the minds and hearts of
millions of people from the south and the Middle Belt.
Abdullahi and those that think like him
must understand that their insults, their arrogance, their lies, their
dangerous nonsense and their reckless and provocative historical
revisionism must stop.
The south has come of age and more than ever before southern unity and a common resolve has become a reality.
He would do well to learn from the
timely interventions of his core northern brothers like Governor Nasir
El Rufai of Kaduna state and Emir Muhammad Sanusi 11 of Kano.
Last week, in a direct response to his
welcome assertion that “the north is now ready to divide Nigeria”, the
two of them said that the core north would not only be the “poorest
place on earth” if Nigeria were to break up but that the zone would also
be “worse than Afghanistan”.
They are absolutely right.
Instead of insulting our sensibilities
with false tales of a glory that never was, Abdullahi should get on his
knees and beg the people of the Middle Belt and south for forgiveness
for 103 years of core northern and Hausa Fulani cheating, lying,
violence, aggression, insults, domination, subjugation, mass murder and
ingratitude that we have had to put up with. They should be begging and
pleading with us not to go.
It is in the interest of his people to do so and anything less than that would be spitting in the wind.
Permit me to take this opportunity to respond to Alhaji Tanko Yakasai who is often referred to as an elder statesman.
However when he described those that
wish to restructure our country as “misguided” and those that wish to
exercise their God-given and lawful right of self-determination and
peacefully leave Nigeria as “shortsighted irritants” he did not speak or
behave like one.
A few months ago he also said that the
Yoruba were to blame for everything under the sun and that it was the
people of the south west that are “misleading the Igbo” into wanting to
secede.
He appealed to the Igbo “not to trust the Yoruba” because they would “lead them astray and later betray them”.
My response to him is as follows: the
days of trying to divide the south with absurd and nonsensical tales
that are spun and woven by desperate core northern bigots who secretly
tremble at the thought of a united southern front are long over.
Again the days of divide and rule and
internal colonialism are dead. Whether the likes of Alhaji Tanko Yakasai
and Professor Ango Abdullahi like it or not, It is only a matter of
time before the people of the south and the Middle Belt liberate
themselves from the evil subjugation and bondage of the Hausa-Fulani
core north.
If it is the Nigeria that the Legal
Advisor of Miyetti Allah (the umbrella group for the Fulani militants
and herdsmen), one Mohammed Bello Tukur, has just been appointed as the
Secretary of the Federal Character Commission by President Muhammadu
Buhari, I assure you that its days are numbered.
If it is the Nigeria where 808
Christians were slaughtered by those same Fulani herdsmen in Southern
Kaduna on Christmas day, 1000 others were butchered in Agatu, Benue
state sometime last year and yet another 13 were massacred in Southern
Kaduna on Easter Sunday, I assure you that the die is cast.
If it is the Nigeria where Igbo youths
that belong to IPOB and MASSOB are slaughtered at will, where Shiite
Muslims are massacred in their homes and where the sons and daughters of
Ile Ife are killed like flies on their own land just for being
accommodating, kind and generous to the Hausa Fulani settlers, I assure
you that the bell is tolling.
Finally, if it is the Nigeria in which
more Christians have been butchered and martyred than ANYWHERE else in
the world in the last 67 years I assure you that the countdown has
begun.
The latest round of mass murder in Southern Kaduna just last Sunday brings bad memories of this Easter.
Yet today permit me to plant a seed of
hope for a brighter day. Our oppressors may have today but tomorrow
belongs to us. As long as Jesus sits on the throne ultimately the
victory shall be ours.
The price for our new nation has already been paid in blood and nobody can stop it from coming to pass.
For centuries these Amalekites,
Chaldeans and Janjaweed butchers have been raiding our cities and
villages, setting them ablaze and kidnapping our people to sell as
slaves.
We have to fight for our children now or there will be no place left for them to call home.
The fact that some misguided individuals
actually believe that this can never happen and that Nigeria can never
break serves to prove the level of confusion, ignorance, darkness and
delusion that flourishes in their sordid little minds.
Whether they wish to acknowledge it or
not, the truth is that If the core north does not retrace its steps, not
only will Nigeria break into two or more pieces but people like
Professor Ango Abdullahi, Alhaji Tanko Yakasai and all those that come
from that zone will suffer immeasurably as a consequence of it.
It is at that point that they will rue
the day that they once shed so much innocent blood, that they once
subjugated and enslaved the people of the Middle Belt and that they once
poured scorn and contempt on the people of the south.
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.
0 comments:
Post a Comment