OH! You wonder why bombs are flying around? Where were you when some Jihadists threatened to make the country ungovernable over the zoning palaver? You heard it too? Why then do you wonder… It is in their character.
No. This is beyond the 2011 elections. It is about the very bitter truth of what we call “our country”. It is about the slaughter in the last 50 years of thousands of Nigerians, especially Southerners —- individually and in groups. They have always been at war with the rest of Nigeria.
No. Don’t hate the average Hausa fellow, he’s a victim too. This clique of Northern elites are in fact the worst enemies of their own people. You didn’t know that too? Get somebody to compute for you the number of Southerners who have been slaughtered by the blades of their private army of almajiris: lecturers, youth corp members, women, children, babies. The number will shock you. They deliberately maintain an unofficial army of uneducated youths who can be brainwashed and mobilized at short notice against the rest of us. A recent estimate puts the almajiri population at 10 million. The tendency is to think of almajirs as kids of the streets. But what do they grow to become? Adult almajiris —- who can find their ways into positions of power, including the Army.
It’s always been their ambition to conquer the whole of Nigeria and dip their swords in the Atlantic.
Call me names. I don’t mind . You still live in your dream world of unity, one Nigeria, democracy—- all those playthings they feed you to keep you occupied while they pursue their age-old agenda.
God! Your naivety forces me to go down memory lane…
See, just eleven days after independence, on October 12 1960, while the nationalists, mostly Southerners, were basking in the glory of a battle fought and (so they thought) won, the Sardauna of Sokoto and Premier of northern Region, Sir. Ahmadu Bello, granted an interview to the Parrot Newspaper. There, he brazenly declared the agenda of the North for the new nation: “The new nation called Nigeria should be an estate of our great grandfather, Uthman dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We use the minorities in the North as willing tools, and the South as conquered territory and never allow them to have control over their future.”
Imagine such mindless evil, such treachery.
That is the plan of the North for the rest of us. And it has never changed. There has always been an inner caucus that keeps this Jihad agenda alive –—and pursues it.
Can any Sultan claim not to be in into this?
It is no accident that Chief Moshood Abiola, a Southerner who won the 1993 presidential election, had to be killed. It is no accident that the death of the then President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s had to be concealed for so long with brazen brutishness. It is no accident that they fought and are still fighting Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, another Southerner over his attempt to be president come May 2011. It is all to”ruthlessly prevent a change of power.” After all, they are to use the South “as conquered territory and never allow them have control over their future”
The reality is that Britain handed over Nigeria to the Northern elite behind the backs of Awolowo, Enahoro, Nnamdi Azikiwe and the other vocal nationalists. Indeed, some years ago, a British colonial officer, Harold Smith, published accounts confirming how Britain rigged the very first election in Nigeria to ensure power goes to the North.
This clique cares for nobody except its class. Not even for the average Hausa man. The average northerner, in fact, has for long been a victim of this elite few—-even before Nigeria came into being. All efforts are made to keep the masses of the North uneducated and impoverished till today.
Northern progressives should team up with the rest of Nigeria to break the stranglehold of this self-seeking jihadists on the North.
This northern clique cares nothing for religion, God or Allah –- they employ these only as smokescreens for obtaining power. The Northern elite has proved true to character by keeping the majority of its people in abject poverty despite half a century of political domination and plunder of Nigeria’s resources. The current backward state of Nigeria over which normal citizens agonise —- no roads, no power, no jobs, no hospitals, no education, no planning —- is Paradise to the North— just like decay is Paradise to maggots.
Indeed the struggle for a better Nigeria, politically and economically for which many have died since independence is a struggle against the North’s rapacity. Reason why hardly any northerner is on the casualty list: Ken Sarowiwa, Fajuyi, Aguiyi Ironsi.
What has all this got to do with the unending slaughter in Jos? For answer, hear what another spokesperson of the North, Malam Bala Garuba, said in the West African Pilot Newspaper of December 30, 1963: ”The conquest to the sea is now in sight. When our god-sent Ahmadu Bello said some years ago that our conquest would reach the sea shores of Nigeria, Some idiots in the South were doubting its possibilities. Today, have we not reached the sea? Lagos is reached. It remains PortHarcourt. It must be conquered and taken.”
Jos is being taken already. And some “idiots” from the South do not know.
The erstwhile GOC, 3rd Armoured Division in Jos, Major-General Saleh Maina, who was widely accused of taking sides with the Hausa community in the Jos crisis was so scared of revelations that could be made in the course of an investigation into the killings that he fought desperately to stop an inquest. If he was not guilty, why is he afraid to release transcripts of desperate calls from Jos indigenes under attack by Hausa fighters which he allegedly ignored?
Former Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff in the General Ibrahim Babangida regime, General Domkat Bali, a four-star general had this to say on Maina and the Jos crisis:
“… I believe and a lot of people believe so too, that the GOC (Maina) is playing games with us, and that they are part of the problems… I am talking about something very serious. This is not just about Plateau, but the whole of Nigeria. You see, the Chief of Army Staff is an Hausa man; the GOC is an Hausa man; they dictate who should come here and who is to serve in what position.
“My feeling is that they should remove Maina, because he has shown bias for Islam and it is a dangerous thing not just for Plateau, but for the whole country…”
Bali added: “When I schooled in Kuru here, it was the most peaceful time that Plateau was. We then were celebrating Salah as though we were Muslim children, and they were celebrating Christmas with us as though they were Christians. The conflict began when the interest to dominate grew. And of course it met with resistance; that was when the problem started. The issue is: why must it be the Hausas that want to dominate Jos? Why not the Yorubas or the Ibos? That’s the problem.”
Today, no one is talking of probing Maina. And those Hausa/Fulani attackers and killers of women and sleeping babies are usually spirited away from Jos to escape prosecution.
The Jos crisis is not religious. The North is only using these misguided army of fanatics, which it deliberately breeds, to carry out its jihadist agenda. Now they have graduated from knives and arrows to bombs. And , believe it or not, they are heading for the Atlantic.
By the way, why is the main road that leads to the Atlantic named Ahmadu Bello Way?
Sorry to shock you, but some of those reading this piece may (unfortunately) die of jihadist bombs/knives. That’s Nigeria for you!
Have you heard that a camel bred in the Sultan’s palace in Sokoto has now been promoted a corporal in an Army Barrack in Lagos?
