By Jude Atupulazi
It is true that it is not good to speak ill of the dead or to gloat over the death of anyone, but it is also difficult not to do so when certain personalities are involved. I’m not sure many Nigerians wept their eyes out when notorious armed robber, Lawrence Anini, was executed by a firing squad.
I also recall that when the late military dictator, General Sani Abacha, died, there was great jubilation in many places across the country. While it is morally not right to so behave, you may not entirely blame those doing so because of what they might have gone through in the hands of those they reacted in that way to.
News of the death of the immediate past Head of State of Nigeria, General Muhammadu Buhari, filtered in last Sunday. He was said to have died in a London hospital. Since then, apart from government circles, the Federal Government, precisely, I am yet to come across any other place where people are hitting their heads on the wall and wearing sackcloth because our former leader is no more. If anything, the mood is akin to what played out when Anini and Abacha died, and the reason is not far-fetched.
Leaders are supposed to protect those they lead or serve, as the case may be, apart from providing them with the good things of life as much as they can. They also regard everyone as their own; no favoritism. But in Buhari’s case, he was everything a leader should not be. He seemed to take delight in the sufferings of people under him, especially those not of his tribe or religion.
Indeed, under him, Nigeria witnessed the highest number of deaths in peacetime. He literally watched people killed and did nothing because those people were not ”his people”. Under Buhari, Nigeria was sharply divided along ethnic and religious lines. Under him, some Nigerians became untouchables, to the extent they could do anything and walk away unscathed. In fact, any attempt to apprehend them attracted serious reprimand from the authorities. And no group benefitted most under him than the people called Fulani herdsmen.
These people perpetrated heinous crimes against humanity and killed women, man and children in what were clearly ethnic cleansing and ancestral land grabbing. They sacked farmers from their farms, leading to astronomical rise in the prices of foodstuffs as farmers stopped farming and fled for safety elsewhere.
What did Buhari do? He called it farmers/herders clashes, rather than what it was: a systematic wiping out of ethnic nationalities in order to take over their lands and impose their religion on them.
To worsen matters, not a single one of these killers was arrested and prosecuted. The unspoken or unwritten law was that when they came to you, you either ran or submitted yourself meekly to be slaughtered like a ram while they filmed it, shouting, ”Allahu Akbar!” you were left to imagine what manner of God was happy to see his creatures killed like fowls while his name is shouted gleefully by the murderers.
Under Buhari, these killers became sacred cows. Their cows were valued more than human beings; that is human beings not of Fulani stock. He sought to even have communities outside the north grant them land to do their business of rearing cattle.
But somehow, the lord must have touched many of our legislators who opposed it, as well as many state governors. If not, the Fulanis would have been living comfortable among us and biding the time they will rise and kill us and take over our ancestral home.
Buhari killed what was left of Nigeria’s unity. He sowed distrust among hitherto cooperating ethnic nationalities. Even in the north, the Hausas distrusted Fulanis and for the first time started dissociating themselves from them and telling anyone who cared to know that they were not the same. He simply killed Nigeria.
His governance style was one of brazen ethnic and religious bias. He elevated mediocrity over competence by appointing his people into top positions, even when it was public knowledge that they knew nothing. He northernized the armed forces to the extent that quality was grossly sacrificed on the altar of kinship and religion.
Is it little wonder that a whole Nigeria Army has failed to win the war against a rag-tag army of Boko Haram fighters for years? How could they when Buhari said during the President Goodluck Jonathan regime that a fight against Boko Haram was a fight against his people?
It was therefore not surprising that we began to hear rumours of sabotage against the Nigeria Army by those inside the government and even commanders of the soldiers. News came out that often times the positions of our soldiers were given away to Boko Haram who would then attack and kill them. Even captured Boko Haram soldiers were given amnesty and then absorbed into the nation’s army.
Scandalous, isn’t it? Then, the same Boko Haram soldiers absorbed into the army would then betray and sabotage their colleagues, with some even secretly supplying arms and ammunitions to Boko Haram. So, tell me, how could victory be achieved under those circumstances?
Buhari sowed hatred and distrust and never hid his disdain for Christianity. When Christians were killed by herdsmen in the Middle Belt, Buhari never opened his mouth in sympathy. The height of it came the day over seventy people killed by herdsmen were buried same day in Benue State. The person who called himself the head of state, neither visited nor gave his condolences.
But he forgot no one lives forever. He has today joined those whose deaths he supervised vicariously. I wonder the kind of reception they would give him, if, indeed, such were possible. But only God knows.
You can see why I started this piece by comparing Buhari’s demise to those of Anini and Abacha? Wh, indeed, will weep and roll on the floor for his demise if not those of his ilk? For sure, the herdsmen and Boko Haram terrorists will be the ones mourning him. As for me and my people, we will be minding our business and pretending like we have heard nothing. Ometalu bulu.
Buhari or Jubrin?
At a time when Buhari was always travelling abroad for medical treatment, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu, announced that Buhari had died while a certain Jubrin from Sudan was ”cloned” to stand in for him. He said it was that Jubrin that returned to Nigeria and began to rule us. Today that Buhari’s death has been announced, Kanu’s people are saying it was Jubrin that died and that the chapter has finally been closed.
To buttress this fact, those who swallowed this crap hook, line and sinker, posted a picture of the late Queen Elizabeth, when she was alive, on social media signing a condolence register to bid Buhari farewell.
Well, while people are free to believe what they like, I find it particularly alarming that there are things people can choose to believe, probably because someone they follow says so. The question I have kept asking is how such a deception could happen and wasn’t carried extensively by the world media? Such Hollywood stuff is what CNN and others love to celebrate about Africa.
They would have carried it for weeks on end till other world leaders would question Nigeria. But no, it was not seen or heard anywhere except in manipulated videos or pictures put out by the propagators of that falsehood.
Such baloney is no different from what we used to hear that the Israeli Army had surrounded Nigeria, waiting in their warships and aircraft to attack Nigeria if the Federal Government touched Kanu. Since Kanu’s travails, we have not seen even a single Israeli warship, aircraft or soldier anywhere, ready to strike against Nigeria.
It is also not different from the yarn spun last year that IPOB had bought armoured tankers which would be displayed in December of same last year, as a result of which they had announced a sit at home in honour of the event. I once wrote how I had taken a bet with one Ebonyi State-born okada rider that it would not happen.
He insisted it would happen in December. December came and went and nothing happened. Today, when I manage to see him, he looks the other way. Poor, ignorant soul! This is how many have been brainwashed into committing atrocities in the name of Biafra, while blaming it on outsiders like Fulanis.
Thank God that Gov Chukwuma Soludo has kept saying that 99.9% of those committing atrocities in our land are our people. Of the remaining 1%, it is still our people that collude with Fulanis or other outsiders to commit crime.
This is because, those Fulanis fear us as much as we fear them and they wouldn’t be comfortable operating inside Igbo heartland if they didn’t have the support of our people with whom they share the proceeds of their crime.
So, next time you hear this talk about Buhari and Jubrin, just know that it is coming from the brainwashed followers of IPOB. Indeed, it is now said that there are two people one should avoid arguing with: a woman in love, and an IPOB sympathizer. Arguing with them is so much waste of time because they will never listen to you. Just save your breath.
