PDP’s Janjaweed strategy

Since 1987 at the earliest, it has become the term used by the United Nations and western commentators on the conflict in the Darfur region to describe the militia comprised of Sudanese Arab tribes, the core of whom are from the Abbala (camel herder) background, along with others recruited from the Baggara (cattle herder) people, […]

Since 1987 at the earliest, it has become the term used by the United Nations and western commentators on the conflict in the Darfur region to describe the militia comprised of Sudanese Arab tribes, the core of whom are from the Abbala (camel herder) background, along with others recruited from the Baggara (cattle herder) people, although instances of membership among some other tribes in the region have also been recorded.
The conflict between the nomadic Janjaweed, and the local tribes in Sudan’s western region of Darfur, dates back to 1988, and was principally about access to farmlands, and grazing pastures for livestock, which the nomads possessed in Abundance. Sounds familiar? Well, we shall return to that point in due course.
From the small scale raids on the sedentary farming communities the conflict took a turn for the worst with the escalation of the Sudanese civil war when it snowballed into a major conflagration with devastating consequences for parties in the conflict – mainland Sudan, the Sudan Liberation Movement Army, the Justice and Equality Movement, and even neighbouring Chad Republic.
By the time the terrible blood-letting began to ebb, hundreds of thousands from the indigenous African tribes had perished, while the Sudanese President, Omar Basher, was swiftly indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on allegations of not only funding, but arming the Janjaweed against the local African tribes. The Sudanese President has flatly denied the allegations, but it has not stopped many, including the PDP General-Secretary Olisa Metuh, from attempting to exploit the controversy.
And that is because, just as is the case with the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, in Darfur, too, wholesome atrocities by other bandits and criminal gangs brought about by the security void in the conflict zones of the Sudanese civil war, came to be accommodated under the blanket name of the Janjaweed.
That view is supported by the well-researched thesis by David Hoile titled ‘The “Janjaweed” Militia in Darfur’ posted on the Media Monitor’s Network, in which he pointedly stated: “There is also no doubt that these militias, and criminal gangs, have exploited the security gap which opened up in Darfur following the murder by rebels of over 400 policemen and the destruction of dozens of police stations in a region the size of France or California in which law enforcement infrastructure was already badly stretched.”
Hoile believed the conflict was caught up in the sort of propaganda and misinformation that has characterised previous coverage of Sudan as several commentators who could not resist partisan or lazy analysis of events in the region hastened to project the image of government-supported “Arab Janjaweed” militias attacking “African” villagers and in doing so often merely echoing questionable rebel claims.
He concluded, “This was done despite the scarcity of reliable information. United Nations media sources, for example, have noted “a lack of accurate information on the conflict” and Reuters has also stated that “it is hard to independently verify claims by government or rebels in Darfur.” Commentators have consistently reported – and attributed – human rights abuses within Darfur in circumstances in which independent confirmation of such assertions is impossible.”
Regardless, it was the gory images from the Darfur conflict, along with its equally gruesome narrative, which the PDP, through its Secretary-General Olisa Metu, now wants to characterize the opposition All Progressive Party (APC), without the slightest proof beyond the clumsy claim that somehow, the leading figures in the party led by General Muhammadu Buhari, were behind the violence that trailed the results of the last Presidential elections in 2011.
And those allegations irresponsibly postulated in spite of the powder-keg the nation is currently perched have been consistent as much as they were also systematically. They follow the dubious narrative that somehow, the northern political establishment irrespective of political affiliation, were against a southern presidency in the person of Goodluck Jonathan.
And their strategy has also been bald, as much as much as it has been simply stupefying. Except the authors know what most of us do not yet know about the impending elections in 2015, I am completely mystified that they cannot see the potential damage it poses for their principal. They seem too assured of the primitive potency of their present narrative in the short term, without contemplating its boomerang effect on the President in the long run. All told, the PDPs Janjaweed strategy is a monumental folly, and here is why:
In the first place, if it seeks to present the image of the President as the vulnerable minority still limping from the sore feet of his bygone shoe-less era, then they have grossly miscalculated. That image now belongs to our archives. What confronts Nigerians today is the image of a president increasingly reluctant to probe reported allegations of sleaze in his administration. It is the profile of a leader who promised transformation but ultimately degraded Nigerians.  
He has become the leader who failed to move against the fuel subsidy scammers who have hurt Nigerians the most, and also the President who procrastinated for close to a year before restoring normalcy to our tertiary institutions.
But more damning of all, Nigerians are now confronted with the image of a leader under whose direct watch; the lives of ordinary Nigerians have become very cheap. We have unresolved insurgency in the North-East, civil strife in the North-central, rampant kidnappings in the South-East and the South-South, and the oldest crime among them all in the form of armed robberies in the South-West.
The second folly, obviously, is the attempt to slander members of the opposition on account of their region, ethnicity or religion; and here, I strongly believe that it is either Metu has totally gotten his mathematics hopelessly wrong, has embarked on delusions of grandeur, or is perhaps hiding something we don’t know.
One thing I do know for sure is that his choice of the regrettable exploits of Janjaweed saga was not accidental. It’s obvious similarities with the on-going mayhem in most of the North-central region of the country between indigenous farming communities, and the nomadic Fulani herders resonates fully locally, and Metu knows it.
Stripped of all pretences, his stigmatization of the APCs recently unveiled manifesto, which he likened to the Janjaweed ideology, must be seeing for what it is – the crude attempt to further exploit our fault lines for political gain.
That line of thought and strategy is hinged on the pathetic imagination that Nigerians, especially those from the Christian minority groups in the North-Central (I consider the term “Middle-Belt” with its wholesome contradictions on demographic representation an anachronism since the creation of the six regions structure, have not been wiser for their experience in the past four years. Hunger, disease, and insecurity have no religion, or ethnicity, after all. But there is a third reason why the PDPs Janjaweed strategy risks imminent failure.
In my opinion, it is predicated on the laughable belief that the President can do without the majority of the “Janjaweed” votes in the Northwest (18,900,543) North-East (10,038,119 votes) and the North-Central (7,675,359 votes) geo-political zones. Put together, the three zones accounted for 36,614,021 out of the 66,877,994 that registered to vote in the six regions in 2011.  
With those statistics, Metuh’s Janjaweed strategy comes with significant risks. It is the PDP believe only Gabriel Suswan or Jonah Jang are sufficient for them to win in 2015, of they have significantly down-played the roles its rebel governors who defected to the APC played in delivery the President in 2011.
Either way, the strategy will also make it extremely difficult for even those governors in Niger, Katsina, Kebbi, Bauchi, Kaduna and Jigawa who remained faithful to the party for varying reasons, to campaign vigorously for the president if the current sterotyping of people on the basis of their of religion, region and ethnicity persists. But like I stated earlier, perhaps Metuh knows something the rest of us do not know yet.