Again, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo has got the nation talking. Penultimate Saturday, Obasanjo delivered, what is clearly, a sermon at the 2019 Synod of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), held in Oleh, Isoko South council area of Delta State where he branded the aim of the terror sect Boko Haram as ‘Fulanisation’ of West Africa and Islamisation of Africa.
As would be expected, those who have sympathy for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), especially those at the seat of power, those who see everything about the country only through the prism of religion and tribal sentiments have been calling the octogenarian statesman all kinds of names. Some have fallen short of branding him a bigot and ethnic jingoist.
Sule Lamido, former governor of Jigawa State cautioned Obasanjo not to allow his political sentiment against President Muhammadu Buhari rid him of his statesmanship status.
“Don’t let your disappointment with sitting presidents turn you into a bigot. You must not abandon the national stage,” Lamido said in a statement by his media aide Mansur Ahmad.
For Junaid Mohammed, Obasanjo wants to set Nigeria on fire. Mohammed said what Obasanjo said was a lie and his intention is to set this country on fire.
Mohammed said “…Any time Obasanjo looked for something and he didn’t get it, he used abusive language to reduce what he looked for. He wants to play one section of the country against the other. The people being killed are mainly Muslims in the North and they are people who have nothing to do with the contentious issues in the country.”
Predictably, the federal government condemned the former president. Alhaji Lai Mohammed Minister of Information and Culture, in a statement by his Special Assistant, Segun Adeyemi, said Obasanjo’s comments were divisive and depressing.
Mohammed called on the former President, who he said took bullets for Nigeria’s unity, not to allow personal animosity to override his love for a united Nigeria, saying it will not be out of place if he withdrew his unfortunate statement and apologised to Nigerians.
“Since the Boko Haram crisis, which has been simmering under the watch of Obasanjo, boiled over in 2009, the terrorist organization has killed more Muslims than adherents of any other religion, blown up more mosques than any other houses of worship and is not known to have spared any victim on the basis of their ethnicity,” the statement said.
Like Obasanjo or hate him, what any sincere person can’t question is his avowed commitment to a united Nigeria even to the detriment of his Yoruba tribe. This more than anything else is the reason he was trusted with the presidency in 1999. Obasanjo despite being unpopular at that time with the people who were up in arms against the military juntas that annulled the June 12, 1993 presidential election was picked and handed the plum job against the will of the people.
It is mischievous of the elite of the north to now blame the governments of the past for doing nothing to check the activities of Boko Haram. Truth is they simply played politics when these people were bombing churches, United Nations compound, prisons and killing policemen around the north. They backed these faceless killers and almost blackmailed then President Goodluck Jonathan to grant them amnesty for destroying and killing innocent Nigerians. Of course, when you ride a tiger you risk ending up in its belly. Some of them, who now speak from both sides of their mouths, accused President Jonathan of deliberately trying to wipe out their youth population while fighting the insurgents. Now, Boko Haram is a monster that has outgrown everybody. Boko Haram now kills without discrimination, they blow up mosques and churches and other soft targets and have engaged the nation in what is clearly a full blown war.
Boko Haram’s open desire is to institute Sharia or Islamic law across Africa. Similarly, the activities of the murderous Fulani herdsmen have left this nation more divided than anything else. Is it also not a fact that they are being treated with kid gloves? After killing several farmers across the nation, wiping out villages and sacking the inhabitants, what has the federal government under Buhari done in concrete terms to bring these killers to book other than placating them? What is in question now is the sincerity of purpose on the part of the government to bring these problems to an end.
Since the Fulani killers went out of control all federal government moves have been attempts to pacify them with no consideration for the farmers who have largely been the victims and who have abandoned their farms for fear of being killed. The federal government has refused to put its feet on the ground that open grazing belongs to the past. They are flirting with the idea of building cattle colonies and grazing reserves with public fund for private businessmen.
There were also reports early this year that the federal government had approved N91 billion for grazing reserves. The first phase of the plan takes care of grazing reserves in each of the seven pilot states of Adamawa, Benue, Kaduna, Nasarawa, Plateau, Taraba, and Zamfara which have been affected by herdsmen/farmers clashes, with four ranches (small, intermediate, medium and large) in each grazing reserve.
Recently, there were reports that the federal government is allegedly planning to pay Fulani herders N100 billion to woo them to stop kidnapping and banditry in the country. While the report of the alleged payment was yet to sink in, the federal government is poised to build them a radio station.
Adamu Adamu, the Minister of Education, had in an interview last Wednesday said the Federal Government had acquired an Amplitude Modulation broadcast radio licence for the herdsmen as part of efforts to end perennial farmers-herders’ clashes.
According to Adamu, the radio station will operate on frequency of 720 KHz and will broadcast in the Fulfulde language, mainly spoken by the Fulani people. Adamu said, “The radio service will serve as a vehicle for social mobilisation and education, in addition to interactive radio instruction methodology that will be adopted to reach the very hard-to-reach segment of our target population.
“Additionally, it will enhance our capacity to address crisis between herders and farmers with attendant consequences to loss of lives, destruction of productive assets, nomadic schools, facilities teaching and learning resources.”
When one places all these side by side with the fact that the federal government always denies that this group of people has continued to enjoy special treatment one cannot help but doubt the sincerity of the federal government.
Nigeria is currently the third most terrorised country globally after Iraq and Afghanistan. Insecurity ravages the land. Nigeria is the poverty capital of the world. Unemployment figures are too scary to contemplate. Hunger is everywhere and people are taking to suicide in a manner that used to be alien to us. Tackling these problems require approaches that are devoid of sentiment and partisanship. If tackling Boko Haram is considered more complex, how does one explain these attempts by the federal government to satisfy just a tribe at the expense of others? How do you dismiss reports that this station would end up in the hands of bigots who would end up using it to broadcast inciting commentaries on the nation?
Between the federal government and Obasanjo who is more divisive and sectional? How many radio stations have been built with public funds for other tribes? Calling Obasanjo names and attacking his personality is missing the point. The obvious point is that the Federal Government is not doing much to allay the fears raised by Obasanjo. Truth is bitter. Obasanjo’s admonition is akin to a sermon; there is nothing to add or subtract. There is need now for us as a nation to talk and sincerely address these problems; the Federal Government alone clearly cannot handle it. Nigerians are daily losing faith in the Nigerian project.
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