Not in Buhari’s name (II)

When poverty increases, the poor seeks other ways and means to explain their jeremiad and would vent their spleen on those they can see since their oppressors live in vaulted mansions heavily protected by state security. Bombs are flying across our country without explanation. So far nobody has been queried for dereliction of duty? Recommendations […]

When poverty increases, the poor seeks other ways and means to explain their jeremiad and would vent their spleen on those they can see since their oppressors live in vaulted mansions heavily protected by state security. Bombs are flying across our country without explanation. So far nobody has been queried for dereliction of duty? Recommendations for the punishment of perpetrators of past riots are gathering dust on our president’s table and on the table of PDP governors who are more eager to rig themselves back into governance than to find answers to basic misgovernance issues.

For the sake of argument, let us believe that Buhari has bred an army of malcontents in readiness for the kind of carnage unleashed on innocent people in northern Nigeria. Isn’t it the duty of the police, the army intelligence, the NIA, the SSS and the public funded security outfits to unravel such plots? The inability of these groups to carry out their statutory functions has led to finger pointing. Recently, the SSS arrested members of a northern group and accused them of attempting to poison the president’s food. Such arrant nonsense happens only in Nigeria. If our country had been facing the kind of threat that America faced since 9/11, we would have been history and it would have been Buhari’s fault! Whenever there’s a breach of security, the ruling class looks for someone else to blame. By killing Buhari, Nigeria’s problems will not go away of course, but it will help the PDP fulfil its promise of misruling us for the next 60 years.

Yes, there is need for soul searching in northern Nigeria. Issues hinged on leadership failure and the manipulation of religion and or ethnicity for political goals. To deny that they exist is to fall into the same pit as those blaming Buhari because their chickens won’t hatch. We have serious issues of intolerance exacerbated by the alienation of the masses of people in our region to governance. This has led to the volatile riots which accompanied the ‘introduction’ of political Shari’a and are underlying causes of palpable tension from the Plateau to Bauchi. We cannot blame that on a two-year old political party which happened to have made better electoral showing than the dinosaurs before it. Yes, northern Nigeria has to accept that the love of political power by its elite has done nothing for its people than exacerbate poverty, ignorance and increase the level of intolerance of the ‘other’ even if that other is a member of the extended family.

Our illiteracy level is the highest of other regions of Nigeria. The capacity of our people to breed children whom they cannot cater for has institutionalised the almajirai system. This almajirci is not different from the Area Boys syndrome in pre-Fashola’s Lagos; the Bakassi boys or kidnappers in Igboland or the brigands glorified as militants in the Niger-Delta region. Men simply add wives to wives in order to increase their chances of hitting the divine ladder of success. While success remains elusive, the young lads are literally dumped on so-called religious teachers whose understanding of religious and political issues is as warped as their limited world view. These children are moved from state to state without the consent or knowledge of their parents; sentenced to beggarly existence and squalor. They serve as ready army to any group and would join protests or start a riot without cause.

Today, they are joined by a new group of malcontents – educated or half baked youths with blighted future who are swayed by every wind of political and religious doctrine and prone to violent outbursts at the huff. For instance, while most of these youths have never crossed the border to Niger, they are swayed by events in far away Middle East. Egypt is 90 percent Muslim but its doctors are all over the place. They could have recruited into the army of God. Events in far-flung places lead to the burning of churches and mosques and the destruction of lives and property by those who cannot point to Ndjamena on the map. These people turn themselves into avengers of the faithful as if they taught the Saudi how to pray. They are no Buhari supporters.

Indeed, General Buhari is a victim of the terror of his ignorant admirer. He would not touch some of the known czars of corruption that they want to impose on his party as candidates and for that reason, his party has lost votes. Buhari cannot stop a determined and rampaging mob any better than the I-G. If he had shown up at any of these riots, he would have left with a broken skull at the least as indeed many of his own close supporters have been. Employment will reduce the number of malcontents, guns wont. Why were there no riots in Dutse where Sule Lamido is said to be leading a quiet revolution? Why were there no riots in Bauchi under Adamu Mu’azu?

Buhari is a victim and a threat. He is a victim of the misguided youths hoping on his track record for a change in their social situation and a threat to the corrupt and power hungry who live on milking the poor. To his enemies, he and his party are a bunch of jihadists. I thought the reasons why we have such an army of ‘Christians’ and ‘Muslims’ is so that we can wage a holy war against corruption at all levels. The question we need to ask ourselves is; how come there is such wanton looting, gross underdevelopment, bad governance et al in spite of our devotion to our religious doctrines? Why are there no voices of dissent whenever they settle down to share our common patrimony? They take oaths in the name of God and yet have brought our nation to its knees.

We should redirect our anger at those who mess up our lives and ask pertinent questions every time political frenzy brings out the beasts in us? Religious affinity should mean nothing to us, if those who swear by the Quran or the Bible steal our money to build their vaulted villas; choice cars and reduce security agents meant for the entire community to escorts. We should ask them to give account of how after 12 years, they have brought our schools to a state of coma and our hospitals into morgues.