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These past weeks have been so unfriendly. The weeks Gbaja/Adeyemi Gate unleashes its terror on us. We have been so unfortunate. And some characters have been so wicked and deadly to add that to our heavy burden.
We accede uncommon courtesy to Femi Gbajabiamila, President Bola Tinubu’s Chief of Staff. And it flows ceaselessly from our hearts. He is in hideous collaboration with one hitherto obscured, unknown species: Matthew Adeniyi Adeyemi.
And their contention is the height of controversy. The enfant terrible Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC). Gbajabiamila claims PFIPC is fictitious. Adeyemi raises a strong counter-claim. He forcefully insists. It exists.
Our experience since has been sore and agonising. Honest, it pains. It tortures and torments. It aches and hurts. At the same deep intensity. We are bitter for it’s awful. We’re afflicted.
Gbaja/Adeyemi Gate has bastardised what remains of our choked, narrow space. Very unpleasant. We earnestly and vehemently pray. There will be no end to the shenanigans soonest. Not even in the farthest future.
We wish from the very bottom of our broken hearts. The mess will forever be messiest. And the scandal will remain the most embarrassing to the weird characters involved.
They will never know rest. Or enjoy peace. Reprieve will never come their rough way. They will be sinking in their notorious scam deeper and deeper. Until they reach the bottomless pit. There and then. They will dwell richly in excruciating pains to no end.
May God grant them restless peace. And generously too. That’s what heaven will oblige them in unmatched abundance. We can’t wish the racket away with a careless wave of hand. It’s the starkest reality of our time.
But, let’s strive to endure. Wear their despicable garb. And pretend like them. That Gbaja/Adeyemi debacle doesn’t exist. It’s a wild imagination. Yes. Let’s do that for a short moment. Close our minds to this ugly actuality. And we will be glad we did. It won’t be a waste all together.
At this juncture. We need to opt for a useful retrospect into our grotesque past. Our disgusting recent history. Largely defined by deception, dishonesty, nepotism, pure lies, falsehood, falsification. And their countless ilk.
All avarices are embedded in our stinking yesterday. They are in an embarrassing legion. Yet. No one cares a hoot. It’s abnormal business as usual. It’s strictly peculiar to us. And us alone. Both the rulers and the ruled look the other way.
It’s glaringly clear. We have a Herculean task at hand. Begging to be confronted headlong. We have to make haste. We can’t avoid tarry any longer. That will be a monumental disaster.
All the same. Let’s make a worthwhile attempt. Our sordid gone by will amaze and amuse any sane soul. These revealing utterances confirmed this sour truth. That we asked for the predicaments befalling us unending.
We systematically watch our systemic down-turn taking its ugly shape. Not a voice was raised when it mattered most. We were dumb, tongue-tied, mum and mute. Up till now. We are still stranded on our crossroads.
The North started the race early enough. Their grand master, Othman Dan Fodio, led the pack. He blazed the trail in 1806. He laid the solid foundation for our today’s unending quandary.
He made a profound utterance that year: “One of the swiftest ways of destroying a kingdom is to give preference to one tribe over another or show favour to one group of people over another.” That’s the impetus his wolfish Fulani kinsmen needed to let loose. And they did let loose.
Since then. We have not known peace in the actual sense of it. And there’s no stopping him. We dared not. Where he stopped. His Fulani kinsmen continued with reckless abandon. And despicable audacity.
This is how the monster was created and nurtured to full maturity. More than two centuries later. Former President Muhammadu Buhari responded “swiftly” to Fodio’s call to duty. He did it in 2001. A supposedly elder statesman turned ethnic and religious bigot.
Listen to his stinking, sickening vomit: “God willing, we will not stop the agitation for total implementation of Sharia in the entire federation of Nigeria.” Dateline; August 2001.
On June 3, 2013. When the heat was on boko Haram. Buhari vomited again: “Clamp down on Boko Haram, injustice against North.” By his “North.” He meant essentially his Fulani killer kinsmen. He was as selfish, greedy as that.
Before then, after Buhari displayed his “pangs.” That was July 29, 2011. The Sokoto sultanate toed the same line. Sultan Mohammed Sa’ad Abubakar cried foul. He condemned outright. What he considered to be military crackdown against the Islamist Boko Haram sect.
He postulated to our disgust: “We cannot solve violence with violence.” That was his sole message to a gathering of (Muslim?) religious leaders in July 2011. We wondered why. Perhaps, because “Boko Haram said it is fighting for Islamic rule.”
Their beloved cousin, Boko Haram General, Abubakar Shekau, echoed it 11 years after Buhari. He was more forth coming and expectedly bloody. On January 27, 2012, he roared: “By Allah, we will not stop fighting until every Nigerian is living by Sharia law. If you don’t abide, we will kill you.”
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Then from the blues. Reprieve showed up from unexpected quarters. Former President Goodluck Jonathan sprang a daring surprise. He demonstrated that his Presidency wasn’t for show. That he could bark, bite. And effectively too. He applied a sledgehammer. He slammed Boko Haram with a long-awaited but highly deserved proscription.
And their North erupted in uproar. They rose stoutly against it. They opted not to see the atrocities the Islamic sect had committed. Nor the monumental damages it wrecked on the North East. Even a so-called northerner on the fringe, Lai Mohammed, insisted the ban must not stand.
Unknown to him, maybe. He was blindly acting the well drafted script of the so-called cure northerners. And he was doing it extremely well. Back then in 2013. He was wearing the toga of National Publicity Secretary, Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).
He agreed: “Terrorism in all its ramifications is condemnable, and no responsible government will allow any group, no matter its name, grievances or ideology, to carry out terrorist acts unchecked.” The meeting point ended there.
Taking refuge in the Constitution, he argued: “But we believe that whatever action government takes – even in an emergency – must pass the Constitutional test, especially since the relevant sections of the Constitution have not been suspended.”
Nasir El-Rufai must not be missing on the radar of this notoriety and immense magnitude. He didn’t disappoint. Nor did he fail to occupy his space. And play his role. He told us to our face, point black on July 2, 2021: “Federal Government is not against bandits because they are doing business not secession like Nnamdi Kanu.”
He is not done yet. More on his sleeve: “Banditry is a business in the northern part of the country.” See why we are in the deepest shit: “Bandits are just collections of independent criminals. It is a business for them. It is not a case of Nigeria must break up.”
That’s the exact thought process in the North: “The government has not swiftly moved against bandits because they are not demanding secession like Nnamdi Kanu, detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) is doing.” El-Rufai spoke as governor of Kaduna State then. Figure out their collective mindset!
In the thick of all this. Simon Lalong shouted out on top of the plateau in October 2021. He held sway in Plateau State for eight years. He ought to know what he was saying. And he did know. He was sad, frustrated. His state is terrorists-infested. A leading epicentre of terrorism.
He was daring. He accused “Federal Government in failing to stop the killings in his state and refusing to allow him deal decisively with the situation, even after investing in equipment that can change the tide.”
He blew up like never before. And he did in the open: “We have made recommendations to the President. We say let us sit down at the table. Let us set up a high-powered committee of experts to sit down and look at the recommendations and see the opportunity to help the governors to rescue their states. Otherwise we will continue to lament on some of these things that we are talking about.”
But he met a solid brick wall in Buhari. He denied him every request brought before him. He rather aligned strictly with the Fodio Jihad agenda. That is the eerie stuff he was made of.
On Sunday, January 30, 2022, Babangida Aliyu showed up for us. He’s one of them, yet he intervened. He knew the game plan, A-Z. He came out to volunteer, without prompting. He exposed the deceit of his co-travellers in the North. He too is a former governor.
An important stakeholder in the North. Remember him! He was once the self-acclaimed “Chief Servant” of Niger State for eight years of two terms, unbroken. The reason he didn’t hold anything back from us:
“When Boko Haram started and (the late President) Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan’s government started doing something about it, it fell on former President Jonathan to carry on.” Then what happened?
“Many northerners misconstrued his (Jonathan’s) position at that time and for political purposes, they threw many arguments that made it impossible for the proper articulation and proper implementation of policies that would have got rid of Boko Haram and now, we still have them till today.”
It is indisputable. It’s the hard fact they will not want to hear. They didn’t allow Boko Haram’s proscription to stand. Yet they found it very comfortable to christen IPOB as a band of terrorists. If the greed and the dishonesty in them had allowed it to stay way back in 2013. We wouldn’t have been in the messiest mess we are presently now.
See what has become their North. It prides itself as our undertaker. Their Boko Haram of yesterday. Has spread their deadly gospel of terrorism to every corner of our land. And infested like locusts every of our forests. Preying largely on our innocent school children. Who could hardly recognise their immediate new forest environment.
This gospel ravages like wildfire in harmattan. Consuming our bushes and the captives in large number. Practically on daily basis. It has become an irritating routine. Our new abnormal way of living. As we speak, it is still counting! Turning out victims in hundreds, thousands, et al.
With these undeniable utterances and startling, frightening revelations. That way, the North nurtured terrorism into full maturity. The North: Our unkind but critical undertaker. Home and dry. It is well documented. You can take it to the bank.
We don’t need to live in self-denial any longer. We have heard it from the horses’ mouths. With datelines and time-lags. What other proof? They don’t pretend it. Neither will they feign it. It’s coming straight from their innermost minds. And it’s deeply deep.
That’s the monster we have on our fragile laps. The battle we must confront. If not…
