The Northern Elders Forum and other interest groups on Tuesday slammed the 17 southern governors for demanding power shift to the South in 2023.
TheNewsGuru.com, TNG reports that the southern governors met in Lagos on Monday and reinforced resolutions reached at their May 11 meeting in Asaba, the Delta State capital.
They insisted that power must shift to the South in 2023, and agreed to enact anti-open grazing laws by September 1.
However, in a swift reaction, the North Elders Forum, through its Director of Publicity and Advocacy, Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, said the North will not be intimidated into yielding an office that ought to be settled democratically.
It sees the decision of the Southern governors as an expression of a sentiment that could be best discussed within a political process.
“We are running a democratic government and decisions over where the next president comes from will be made by voters exercising their rights to choose which candidate best serves their interest,” NEF said.
The Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG), in a statement by its spokesperson, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, accused the Southern governors of ganging up against the North.
Describing the proposed anti-open grazing law as retrogressive, the group said it threatens the legitimate presence of pastoral communities in the South.
CNG said: “Their (Southern governors) support for treasonable felony, by the subtle endorsement of the activities of such criminal separatist forces, led by the likes of Sunday Igboho and Nnamdi Kanu, by warning the nation’s security agencies against operating in the region without obtaining permission from the governor of the particular state is a matter that must be given the seriousness it deserves.
“It is ironic for such leaders of a society that delights in unleashing mayhem against fellow citizens of other regions at the slightest of pretexts, to expect the other sections of the country to trust them or any of their proteges with presidential powers.
“The Southern governors’ resolutions in that regard have further exposed a deliberate attempt to impose a contentious system of a rotational presidency that turns all democratic norms and accepted indices of our national demography on their heads; a rotation system that is clearly aimed at achieving dubious political goals; and one clearly designed to weaken the North.
“The Southern governors’ threat to impose and enforce this undemocratic leadership selection process on the North, irrespective of its advantage of numerical superiority and inherent political sophistry, is part of a calculated design to continuously weaken our region politically and pauperise it economically.
“This conspiracy is actively perpetrated with the connivance of some northerners and accommodated by the personal ambition of a few of those that present themselves as northern political leaders.
“Inevitably, the immediate trigger to the Lagos pronouncements was the collaborative assurances by the former Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima and the Kaduna State Governor Nasir Elrufai given just two days earlier.”
CNG insisted that the North would not be stampeded into making major decisions around power shift.
It added that only a candidate who is competent and can unite and secure Nigeria should be President in 2023, irrespective of where he or she comes from.
“We warn the Southern governors and their northern collaborators that any attempt to ride on the back of such gratuitous insults to democratic fair play and crass political opportunism, to hoist incompetent leadership on the nation in the name of rotation would not be accepted and shall be vehemently resisted,” CNG added.
Fears of “Fulani domination” have endured since Nigeria’s founding but, more than ever before, there is now an insanely unhealthy obsession with the Fulani in Nigeria’s South. The Fulani are not just routinely reviled with genocidal rhetorical venom, all manner of devious, supernormal political power is ascribed to them.
In the service of the reigning monomania about the Fulani, Northern Muslims, irrespective of their ethnicity, are now labeled “Fulani.” It’s worse if they are also beneficiaries of “juicy” political appointments in the Buhari regime.
Former Chief of Army Staff Tukur Buratai, for example, was habitually called “Fulani” even though he is Babur from southern Borno, a good portion of whom are Christians. The late Abba Kyari was called “Fulani” even though he was Shuwa (but linguistically and culturally Kanuri) from Borno.
When Muhammad Mamman Nami replaced Babatunde Fowler as the boss of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), many people in the South said Nami was “Fulani.” But Nami is Nupe from Niger State, and Nupe people are linguistically, historically, and geographically closer to Yoruba people than they are to Fulani or Hausa people.
There is a list doing the rounds on social media of supposed “Fulani” people who are holding strategic positions in Buhari’s government, but most of the people on the list are merely northern Muslims who are neither ethnically nor culturally Fulani. Take Nigeria Customs Service boss Hammed Ali, for example, who appears on the list. He is neither Fulani nor even Hausa. He is from the Jarawa ethnic group from Dass in Bauchi State.
Nigerian Television Authority’s boss, Yakubu Ibn Mohammed, is also on the list of “Fulani” appointees of strategic government agencies, but he is ethnically Jukun from Taraba State who grew up in Plateau State.
NNPC boss Mele Kyari has also been assigned a “Fulani” ethnicity even though he is a straight-up Kanuri man from Borno.
The only linguistically and culturally Fulani people on the list are FCT minister Mohammed Musa Bello and UBEC boss Hammed Bobboyi who are both from Adamawa State.
A reporter from the South recently interviewed me for a personality profile, and although one of the issues we discussed during the interview was the robust diversity of northern identities and how people mistake me for Fulani, Hausa, “Hausa-Fulani” or Nupe even though I am actually Baatonu from Kwara State, he still went ahead and described me as “Fulani” in his story. This shows how our preconceptions can sometimes distort our perceptions.
I corrected his unintentional mischaracterization of my ethnicity because he was kind enough to let me have a pre-publication readback of his story.
In other words, the South is relentlessly rhetorically Fulanizing the North, particularly the Muslim North, just to fertilize and sustain a simplistic narrative of superhuman Fulani domination. One of my Fulani friends from Adamawa by the name of Idirisu Alkali tells me he is often simultaneously amused and flattered by the prodigious capacities that southerners endue on his people.
The Fulani are now lionized in the South as the lifeblood of the North and the sole designers of all that is ill with Nigeria. But at the core of this sociologically impoverished monomaniacal fixation with the Fulani is a deep-seated but unacknowledged inferiority complex, which is fully realized in the tendency to describe as “Fulani slave” anyone who expresses opinions that depart from the forced and false consensus of the Fulaniphobes in the South.
Since only “masters” can have “slaves,” people who call others “Fulani slaves” have clearly accepted the Fulani as “masters,” indicating that they have also internalized their own inferiority before the Fulani.
But the truth is that the Fulani are just as human as anyone else. They are not a stagnant, undifferentiated, unthinking human monolith with no dissensions. They have the same fears, anxieties, and pains as anybody else. They have both good and bad people like other groups. There’s no conspirative conclave where Fulani people meet and plot to dominate everyone else. They battle disunity within their ranks like all ethnic groups. In fact, like the Igbo, they agonize over the progressive erosion of their language and culture in much of Northern Nigeria.
Muhammadu Buhari on whose account the Fulani are ceaselessly dehumanized and vituperated is, in fact, not culturally or linguistically Fulani. In other words, although he traces patrilineal descent from the Fulani, he doesn’t understand or speak Fulfulde (as the language of the Fulani is called) and has no experience with Fulani culture.
Buhari’s father, Adamu Bafallaje, who was an ardo (as Fulani community elders are called), died in his real hometown of Dumurkul in the Daura Emirate of Katsina State when Buhari wasn’t old enough to know him, so Buhari was brought up by his maternal relatives in Daura. His maternal relatives are ethnically Kanuri people who are nonetheless culturally and linguistically Hausa.
As Mamman Daura’s daughter, Fatima Daura, wrote on the occasion of her father’s 80th birthday, Mamman Daura is Kanuri. The family’s forebears migrated from Borno to a town in what is now Niger Republic and finally to Daura. Note that Mamman Daura’s father, Dauda Daura, shares the same mother (but different fathers) with Buhari. So Buhari’s mother, Hajia Zulaiha, was Kanuri.
Not having grown up with his father and knowing next to nothing about the Fulani, Buhari idealized not just his absent Fulani father but the Fulani people. This is a well-known psychological phenomenon that is encapsulated in the folk wisdom that says, “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Barack Obama, for instance, idealized his absent Kenyan father—and his Luo people— with an intensity he would never have had if he’d grown up with him.
Buhari’s idealization of his absent Fulani father inspires an exaggerated identification with the Fulani in ways that alienate others and expose innocent Fulani people to unjustified animosity. That’s why I called him the “single greatest threat to the Fulani” in a July 6, 2019 column.
I also pointed out in a January 12, 2019 column titled “Miyetti Allah, Presidential Endorsement and Politics of Fulani Identity” that “People who are on the edge of an identity tend to be more exaggeratedly aggressive in their assertion of the identity than those who are—or see themselves as being—in the mainstream of the identity.
“For instance, when there was a butcherly communal turmoil that pitted Bororo Fulani cattle herders against Yoruba farmers in the Oke-Ogun area of northern Oyo State in October 2000, Buhari led a group of ‘Fulani’ northerners to Ibadan to meet with the late Governor Lam Adesina where he told Adesina, among other things, ‘your people are killing my people.’ A Fulani person from the northeast is unlikely to say that.”
Nothing in what I’ve said is intended to mitigate the injustice of Buhari’s preferentialist style of governance. I started calling out what I called the “undisguised Arewacentricity” in Buhari’s appointment since 2015 when most people were scared to criticize the regime (read, for instance, my September 5, 2015 column titled “Buhari is Losing the Symbolic War”), but to put the entire moral weight of his wrongheaded choices on the Fulani and proceed to demonize them without let is both reprehensible and unconscionable.
There’s no denying that northern Muslim elites have benefitted disproportionately in choice appointments in this regime, but “northern Muslim elite” isn’t synonymous with “Fulani.”
An honest, empathetic role play would probably help. Imagine being from an ethnic group that’s perpetually slandered, maligned, reviled, and vilified as a national pastime because you share ethnic identity with someone—or some people—whose boneheaded policies smolder you like they do your traducers. How would you feel?
Demonizing people based on invariable attributes that are incidental to their humanity, such as their ethnicity or race, is akin to condemning them even before they were born. Malcolm X once called that the worst crime that can ever be committed. Let the toxic, hateful ignorance stop already!
Borno State Governor, Babagana Zulum, has called for a power shift to Southern Nigeria in the next administration.
Governor Zulum stated this on Thursday while delivering a lecture on security and economic growth at a book launch by former Director-General of NIMASA, Dakuku Peterside, with the title ”Strategic Turnaround”.
He urged the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to heed his advice and keep to previous agreements made to shift power to the southern part of the country in the next administration.
The governor used the opportunity to blame poor handling of the Boko Haram insurgency in the early years and corruption of government officials for the insecurity in the country.
He added that the mistake Nigeria made that has led to the banditry in the country is ignoring poor countries around us.
He claimed that “if Nigeria had emulated some European countries and empowered their poorer neighbours the situation would have been mitigated”.
According to the governor, military interventions and even national restructuring cannot stop the crisis, he is calling for strategic leadership and social re-orientation to end the insecurity in the country.
The leadership of Cattle and Foodstuff dealers under the aegis of Amalgamated Union of Foodstuff and Cattle Dealers of Nigeria (AUFCDN) has agreed to end the blockade of supplies to the south.
They reached the agreement at an ongoing meeting with Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State in Abuja on Wednesday.
Abdullahi Tom, a youth leader of the cattle dealers who is attending the meeting, told newsmen that the union has agreed to shelve the strike.
Femi Fani-Kayode, former Aviation Minister, is attending the meeting.
Last week, the union commenced strike to protest the attack on some of their members during the #EndSARS protests and the recent Shasha market crisis in Ibadan, Oyo state capital.
They had initially given the federal government a seven-day ultimatum to weigh into the situation and look into their demands.
The Union had demanded protection of its members, and payment of N475 billion compensation for lives of members and properties lost during the #EndSARS protest and the Shasa market crisis.
They also demanded the dismantling of all roadblocks on federal highways where their members are harassed and money extorted from them by security operatives.
The strike entailed closing all routes between the North and South for vehicles conveying cattle and food items. Such vehicles were stopped from reaching the Southern region.
Both sides have been affected by the strike. Food prices soared in the South, while farmers in the North complained of poor patronage.
Daily Trust had reported how onion traders lamented over the crash in the price of the item.
A bag of onion which sold at N35,000 before the strike, plummeted2. to N7000 during the blockade.
Bashir Tofa, an Elder Statesman, has warned those stoking ethnic tension across the country to desist from doing so in order to avoid a serious crisis.
There has been tension in the country since an ultimatum was issued to herders to vacate the SouthWest over rising insecurity.
Sunday Igboho, Yoruba self-acclaimed activist, had first instigated crisis against the Fulani Community in Oyo State in January, leading to loss of lives and destruction of properties.
But peace was restored after Southern and Northern Stakeholders met in Ibarapa Local Government Area of Oyo where the initial violence took place.
Surprisingly on Tuesday, Igboho stormed Abeokuta in Ogun State, and one person was reportedly killed in the violence that ensued.
In a statement, Tofa called on the federal government to address the situation before it spirals out of control.
“The mayhem we see, almost everyday now, of killings and maiming of people of Northern extraction, including especially, the Fulani, in some other parts of the country, is totally unacceptable. There is clearly a nefarious plan by the enemies of this potentially great country to initiate a violent crisis that may lead to its
destruction.
“Tension is beginning to brew, and if revenge attacks on Southerners begin here in the North, it will be difficult to control. Our enemies from within and outside, some well known by our Security Agencies, are more determined than ever to set us against each other, so that we may get to a point of no return when the conflagration begun.
There is no part of this country that is at peace.
“Local and neighbouring, including foreign terrorist, are busy, fully armed, to cause whatever damage
they can inflict on our dear country. I, therefore, call on the President to take this insecurity and the tribal lynching happening very seriously, and put up urgent measures to deal with them without any more delays. I am sure, there is concern at the Presidency and discussions are being held,” he said.
Tofa advised the federal government to take urgent and decisive action, adding: “If any Nigerian will not be allowed to live freely and conduct their lives and businesses in any part of the country without being disturbed or molested or even killed, then no one should be allowed to settle and prosper anywhere else.
“Those foolish leaders and their stupid hirelings who encourage the expulsion of other Nigerians from their States, should remember that their own indigenes also live in other parts. They must stop, or the law should stop them by all means necessary.”
Unless the North really wants the Presidency to go to the South in 2023, it would only take an act of God for anybody from the southern part of the country to become the next president of Nigeria. And you won’t blame northerners for it. Southerners will do it to themselves. And they have already begun.
One of the earliest signs of this self-immolation is the recent announcement of the defection of the Ebonyi State governor, Dr. David Umahi, to the AllProgressives Congress (APC). For many observers, Governor Umahionly formalized his defection because for a long time, he has not hidden his sympathies for the APC. In fact, in the run-up to the 2019 general elections he had been accused of planning to defect to the APC. So, the announcement did not shock many political observers.
Of course, he is not hiding his reason for leaving the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He wants to contest for President under APC, where he thinks he stands a chance to get the ticket because the “body-language” of the APC at the moment seems to suggest that the party would zone the presidency to the South. What is not known yet is whether Dr. Umahihad a good chat with former Governor of Akwa Ibom, and current Minister of Niger Delta, Senator Godswill Akpabio. Umahineeds to find out if Akpabio is happier today in APC than he was as a Senate Minority Leader under PDP. Umahi also needs to confirm if what Akpabio has today amount to robustly improved political fortunes over what he had prior to his defection. Above all,Umahi needs to find out from Akpabio whether those talking to him or those he is talking to are the same APC kingmakers Akpabio consulted with before leaving PDP.
Having said that, it must be clear to all that Umahi’s defection to APC has weakened the Southern bloc and their interest in the APC. The South will yet be weaker as more and more of them begin to announce their interest in the presidency. The sheer number of people from the South seeking the ticket will be so many that they will have paved way whosoever from the North shows interest.
Without consulting any oracle, you can say with a measure of certainty that from the South East alone, and on the platform of APC alone and for the 2023 presidential ticket alone, you should also expect Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu to throw his hat into the ring. You should soon expect an announcement from OwelleRochas Okorocha. Won’t Chief Jim Nwobodo try again? And who will Arthur Eze support? With all of this, there will be nothing like South East bloc vote at an APC national congress.
And come to the South West: Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu will come out. He didn’t formAPC for Buhari alone to rule for eight years, and for Tinubu to continue as occasional visitor to the Aso Villa. This time he is likely to seeka four–year tenancy (with option of renewal) there. Don’t discount Pastor Tunde Bakare. And if the same people speaking to Umahi speak to Ekiti State Governor, Kayode Fayemi and Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, they might decide to try their luck.
And from the South South, it is unclear if former Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi wants to remain a kingmaker or wants to try to be king himself. And given the spirit of optimism that drives every politician, Akpabio might want to try his luck also.
Soon, you will have at least 15 figures from the South seeking the ticket. Of course, they will be sharing the South votes. So, even if APC “zones” the position to the South, the South would be so divided that if “Idris Mohammed” from Yobe State decides to contest against the ‘well-qualified’ southern aspirants, he will eventually get the ticket, and may ultimately become president.
As commonsensical as it sounds, the politicians, especially those of southern extraction are listening to a different music. As projected in APC, so would it be in PDP. But the politicians are so self-opinionated and self-important that none wants to step down for the other. The result is not that each of them will self-destruct, but also mutually destruct.
But the sad part is that it will not end there. These Southern politicians whose lack of tact and narrow-mindedness would cost the ticket will begin to fan the embers of ethnicity.
“Ogbeni” would say he failed because “Okoro” did not support him. So, Igbos hate his people!Umahi would say that Tinubu has never liked him and that is why the “Igbos” (suddenly it would be the Igbos, not him) did not get the ticket. And Okoroacha would say Rotimi Amaechi sabotaged him because the Ikwerres of Rivers State do not like the Igbos.
That is how politicians would use their frustration to cause ethnic tension among the nationalities of the Southern Nigeria.
But can this situation be remedied? Hopefully. This time, I think it is not only the apex cultural organizations, but ethnic-based professional bodies. The professionals, especially those from the South East, know how much community burden they bear, just because of bad governance. So, they have an enlightened self-interest not to continue to look away.
Recently, the slogan, “Handshake Across the Niger”, signaling partnership among the nationalities of the South. Perhaps, this is the time that even professionals, not just cultural leaders in the South, should give meaning to it. The agenda is not the wrest power from the North, as some people say. No, that is too myopic. But to ensure that aspirants from the South who do not stand much chance should step down early enough, so that the Southern bloc votes would not be dissipated at the at the partyCongresses. And does it mean that the North does not have good candidates? Far from that. The only problem is that if the Party decides to zone the position to the South, the very good candidates from the North would like to respect that position, meaning that only renegades from the North would stand. And because the South is so divided against itself, the renegade from the North might receive higher votes and defeat the super aspirant from any part of the South. That way, the candidate that would emerge would not be the best from the North and not from the South either.
So, for the sake of our collective future,professional groups, as well as apex cultural organizations might go beyond their call of duty and act as guidance groups to ensure that the right people emerge as candidates, by helping to mid-wife an accord in the interest of the nation. And the time to start is now!
Your Excellency, President and Grand Commander of the Federal Republic (GCFR) of Nigeria, General Muhammadu Buhari, please permit me to address you in your full designation. It is deserving of men and women entrusted with responsibility. I write you this message with a heart plagued by anguish and a soul throbbing with terror, both as a concerned son of the soil and as an individual with an interest in the pursuit of human rights and fundamental changes in the polity.
Before I go into thrust of my message, may I remind you of three key election promises you made before you mounted the saddle of power. You promised to fight corruption and make it a forgotten thing in Nigeria and to defeat Boko with military precision and install national security. In May 2015, you became President of Nigeria, the second time of ruling the country, after unsuccessfully running for that coveted crown in the 2003, 2007 and 2011 general elections. Your defeat in those three attempts did not deter you. Rather, it buoyed your optimism and underscored your doggedness as a soldier who never says die or flees in the face of conquest. A true soldier lives to fight another day, and that was what you did. During the campaign season, we remember how you, flanked by party stalwarts, gleefully stood before swarms of supporters, gap-toothed and beaming with assuredness of victory. With your party bigwigs you waved brooms before the jubilant hordes, like revellers waving ivy in a bacchanalian festivity, and like Hercules, you swore to clean the Augean stable, the enduring cesspit called Nigeria.
Then you won the elections. The first man to dethrone an incumbent president, and started off on a very positive footing, taking on the demon of corruption in a ferocious war, even though many think – and they are right to do so – that your anti-corruption war has been solely targeted at your political enemies, especially those that belong to the opposition side of the political spectrum. Some have even gone further to accuse you of embarking on selective ethnic witch-hunt. People have accused you of remaining insensitive to the crass looting of the commonweal by your party members and hangers-on, that clingy and opportunistic colony of political vultures that are wont to burrow into Nigeria’s bloated bowels to gorge on the cadaverous entrails. But, this is not the focus of my message. It is only a prelude.
Now, the thrust of my message is security. You have been in the corridors of political power far too long time to understand that security is a key desideratum of responsive and trustworthy governance. You were in the upper levels of government in 1975 as Governor of North Eastern State under General Murtala Mohammed; in 1976 as the Federal Commissioner (the equivalent of minister in today’s parlance) for Petroleum and Natural Resources, under General Olusegun Obasanjo; from 1983 as military head of state, following a coup that ousted the Second Republic presidency of Alhaji Shehu Shagari, up to August 1985, when you were swept aside in a coup, seen by many as retributive. That coup was led by General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, the gap-toothed enigma of a man that has worn various sobriquets like a mantle, some of which are: “The Evil Genius”, “Machiavelli”, “Political Maradonna”, and “The Butcher of the Niger”.
Those close to you, including co-military officers, testify that you are a man with a desire to do things right. This was why as a military ruler, your government introduced the programme called the War Against Indiscipline (WAI), through which you set to restore and sustain positive values in society, even though its very implementation was fraught with repressive conducts. How can we forget how your soldiers, ever nimble and mean-faced, savagely whipped discipline into a miserable populace with their thirsty and swishing kobokos (horsewhips) cutting through flesh and drawing blood, on the streets, at motor parks, in crowded public places, teaching the people the bitter language of discipline in a military fashion? I hold no grudge against your person, your Excellency. It was your own understanding and way of enforcing discipline and ensuring national security.
Now, that brings me to the central concern of my humble message to your Excellency, the President: SECURITY, a word that may have become trite to you, given your years of service as a military man and even as a top political figure. Needless to remind you that a key constitutional remit of a responsive and responsible government is national security. Such a government is that which provides protection to its citizens against external aggressions and threats as well as an internal safety that assures wellbeing in every facet of life. Leverett Saltonstall Professor of International History at Harvard University, Charles S. Maier’s definition of nation security can be instructive and instructive. He describes national security as: “a capacity to control those domestic and foreign conditions that the public opinion of a given community believes necessary to enjoy its own self-determination or autonomy, prosperity and wellbeing.” As a matter of fact, security comes in varied dimensions, including: physical, political, economic, military, social, cultural, ecological or environmental, cyber and infrastructural, just to mention a few. While all these are important and interact in mutually reinforcing ways for the maintenance of a stable and happy society, I will focus on just one, and that is physical security. However, it is important to point out that there are blurred lines between physical security and some of the others like political, military, social and environmental security. In fact, physical security can be an all-embracing descriptive expression for all types of security – corporeal, concrete, objective and visible, if you like.
Your Excellency, people are grumbling about your handling of the matters of state, saying that the country whose political saddle you have been riding for around five years now has become one of the most insecure places to live in the world. I have considered people’s complaints with an objective eye, and I think they are justified in their disaffection. First, let us start with Boko Haram. You made consistent promises to fix the persistent insecurity tugging at the very core of our collective existence and defeat the insurgents within the shortest time possible if elected. We all remember your assertion in an interview at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, in London. You had stated as follows:
“I as a retired general, and a former head of state, have always known about our soldiers. They are capable, they are well-trained and patriotic and always ready to do their duty to the service of their country… You can bear witness to the gallantry of our military in Burma, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Darfur and many other parts of the world, but in the matter of the insurgency our soldiers have neither received the necessary support nor the required incentives to tackle this problem.” You further accused the military apparatus under your immediate predecessor of lacking competent intelligence and analysis, blaming this for the inability to locate and rescue the abducted Chibok girls. On top of that, you criticised the government of the time for not making any effort towards a multi-dimensional response to the security problem, leading the country to depend on neighbouring Chad and Cameroon for rescue. Your Excellency, to be honest, not everyone celebrated your avowal wholeheartedly. You may not know this, but many took it with cautious optimism. Even, there were others who did not believe or care a hoot what you promised to do. For the latter, it was the usual vainglorious, self-important effusions from a frantic mind.
Five years on, your Excellency, and the state of external security of the country has deteriorated to staggering proportions. Boko Haram has continued to make unbridled incursions into northern Nigeria and the Middle Belt, sacking whole villages, maiming, raping, pillaging and killing, like some maniacal, trigger-glad gung-ho Hollywood heroes obsessed with the sight of gore. Of the 276 Chibok girls abducted and whisked away into the insurgents’ Sambisa dens in Chad and Cameroon, some have been rescued by the Nigerian security forces (credit to them), a few others initiated their own escape into freedom, while about 112 are still reported as missing. It has been widely reported that some of the girls have been killed, while many have been forced to marry their captors, bearing children for them, every one of them men battling with concupiscence and harnessing sexual violence as a veritable instrument of religious war.
Also, Leah Sharibu, now 17, the only Christian among the 110 Dapchi girls that were abducted by the Boko Haram faction, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), in February 2018 is still trapped in captivity, despite your Excellency’s profuse promise to secure her freedom. She was only 14 at the time of her capture, and it has been reported that she has conceived and born a child for one faceless insurgent. Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, still rants and rages, threatening more mayhem and blood, and the common opinion now is that your Chief of Army Staff, General Tukur Buratai, has failed dismally in his role. Nigerian frontline soldiers and their officers have repeatedly lamented their continued supply with outdated weapons to fight their enemies, who are better equipped with more modern and more sophisticated artilleries. Today, those gallant soldiers have become the laughing stock of both Nigerians and their West African neighbours, especially Chadians whose president, Idriss Deby Itno, recently joined his soldiers in the frontline to deal a deadly blow on Boko Haram terrorists, flushing them out of Chad, and killing over 1000. Perhaps, General Buratai should learn a lesson or two from the Chadian leader. Or better still, you can get rid of the present service chiefs and appoint new ones, men who are keen and responsive. But, whichever option you choose, please ensure that the men you have sent to defend the country are supplied with modern and sophisticated artilleries.
Now, I would like to draw your attention to the recent cases of people smuggling from the north to southern Nigeria over the past few weeks. Intelligence making rounds say the people, stowed away in trucks among cattle and sacks of goods, and many others coming in surreptitiously on minis buses, are not almajiris, but hired Boko Haram mercenaries sent in batches to southern Nigerian communities with an agenda. You may have heard how local vigilantes in some of these communities as well as the governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, recently intercepted some vehicles (including those belonging to Africa’s richest man, billionaire Aliko Dangote) used for smuggling these individuals in the midst of a national ban on interstate travel due to the Corona virus pandemic. If you will agree with me, Governor Nyesom Wike deserves commendation, perhaps a medal (please stifle a giggle over this) for ordering the arrest of 14 men who were hidden inside trucks conveying cows from the North into his state, on the night of Thursday, May 7. No other governor has had the courage to do what Wike has done so safeguard his state and people. The men had been intercepted by security agents stationed at the Rivers State borders and to make an example of them for other prospective violators of the ban, Wike (I’m sure you’d be enamoured of his bravery and exemplary action by now) ordered that the 14 people be tested first for Coronavirus and then charged to court while the cows and trucks would be auctioned. I bet you would have admired his guts or even done the same in your prime as a military man. Am I right, your Excellency? I can bet you’re chuckling.
Your Excellency, there are several questions on the lips of members of the communities into which the said mercenaries are being smuggled, and they are:
What is the mission of these individuals in southern Nigerian communities during this time?
Why should they be hidden among cattle or sandwiched between bags of agro produce like MacDonald burgers?
Why should they breach the interstate travel ban imposed by your government?
What do they intend to do with the caches of arms found in their sacks and baggage?
Who provided them with those weapons?
Moreover, what has prompted such unprecedented mass movements of people from the north (some say they are people recruited from the Futa Jallon region of West Africa) to southern Nigeria?
I hesitate to believe the allegation that these individuals are being sent to execute a well-laid plan, whatever that is, or that they have made makeshift camps in bushes, in readiness to unleash terror on the communities. One supposed intelligence claims the set time for the attacks is when covid-19 will have been over, and that the mercenaries are currently undergoing routine training in military combat in their forest camps. These stories are gaining traction, though some objectivists like my humble self, consider them to be rumours and fear-mongering until certified as true. But, one thing I do know for certain is that the unchecked acts of terror by herdsmen and Boko Haram against hapless and unprotected Nigerian communities in recent years are enough reason for people to worry about the current smuggling of persons from northern Nigeria into the south in the midst of a pandemic and interstate travel ban.
Terror has seized many farmers. Women and young girls continue to be violated, routinely bearing the concupiscent rage of satyrs and killers from the north who now maraud their towns, villages and farms without the faintest of qualms. These are not hearsay. There is a plethora of videos and photographs showing unprovoked attacks by Fulani men, who, driven by Mephistophelean rage, leave testimonies of mutilations and gore that are hard to forget.
Your Excellency, we all remember you as a man of action, driven by energy and zest. We once regarded you as a Mr. Michelin archetype – strong, firm and dynamic. But, many are beginning to doubt that you are still driven by that spirit that catalysed radical things. Now, permit me to ask where that spirit has gone. Has it flown away with age and ageing and its consequent lethargy? To reiterate, I am ill-disposed to rumours and fear-mongering. But, many people believe that your Excellency is no longer in charge of things, and has never even been, and that a monster that goes by the undesirable label, cabal or gang, if you like, has always run the government.
Your subjects need protection of their lives and property. Many say you have even been compromised by the fact of your tribal identity, which has made you always turn a blind eye on the heinous crimes against humanity committed by your tribesmen. In the absence of national protection, communities may decide to provide their own forms pf protection as they deem fit and appropriate. And believe you me, the result of that kind of situation can be grave. Very grave. As I write this, dark clouds of insecurity thicken, sliding across the sky, bearing an uncertain burden. Is the country sitting on a keg of gunpowder?
Dr. Theophilus Ejorh is a writer and research consultant based in Dublin, Republic of Ireland.
Only essential service providers with approved permits from appropriate authorities were allowed the right of movement across the country.
30 persons found tucked between goats in the trailer
However, despite the subsisting ban, one of the regular, almost cliche kind of news stories during the lockdown is the arrest of trailer loads of young able bodied northerners (98 percent males) hiding under the ‘almajirai’ camouflage to sneak into the southern region of the country.
For clearer understanding of the terms, Wikipedia defines ‘Almajiranci’ as a system of Islamic education practiced in northern Nigeria. The male gender seeking Islam knowledge is called ‘Almajiri’ while the female gender is called ‘Almajira’, and the plural is ‘Almajirai’.The system encourages parents to leave parental responsibilities to the attached Islamic school. Colloquially, the word ‘Almajiri’ has expanded to refer to any young person who begs on the streets and does not attend secular school.
Unlike the typical almajirai who are usually underage, malnourished and dependent on alms for survival, the pictures and videos from the scenes of interception across the southern states showed that those arrested so far are adults and people of sound mind.
Sometimes numbering over 500 in a 40-feet truck, these so-called almajirai who are old enough to have fathered several offspring according to the tradition in that part of the country move like they are on a mission. Those who are not bold enough to travel alone hide in between their cows to escape the prying eyes of the law enforcement agencies stationed at the various inter-state borders. Their movement is not restricted to a particular time of the day as arrests have been made in broad daylight and at night.
Trailer load of humans intercepted in DeltaThis worrisome development has further tensed the security situation in the country and also cast aspersions on the sincerity of the COVID-19 fight.
While it is safe to say that COVID-19 has permeated the entire length and breadth of the country (except for Kogi and Cross River States) with Lagos being epicentre followed distantly by Kano, one then wonders the aims of such illegal and deceitful movement at this sensitive time of our national lives.
So far, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequential ban on inter-state movements, full truck loads of these northerners have been intercepted and arrested in all the South South, South East and South West States.
Expulsion of almajirai to home states totally a northern affair
A major pointer to the strangeness of the sudden invasion of these all-men northerners to the South is that the ‘deportation’ and reception of almajirai to their home states has been a northern intergovernmental affair.
TNG reports that governors under the aegis of the Northern Governors’ Forum (NGF) had in April issued a statement where they “discussed the risk that Almajiri children are exposed to due to the virus. They unanimously decided to ban the Almajiri system and evacuate the children to their parents or states of origin.
“They vowed never to allow the system to persist any longer because of the social challenges associated with it including the perpetuation of poverty, illiteracy, insecurity and social disorder.”
Kebbi State Governor Abubakar Atiku Bagudu later confirmed the development saying: “Some states have already started implementing this decision by taking back such Almajiri children to their own states of origin. I do believe that all the states in the region will soon commence the repatriation and this is for the common good of the states and Nigeria in general.”
The Kano State Commissioner of Education Muhammad Sanusi-Kiru recently explained that the deportation was to safeguard public health and stem the spread of the pandemic.
Stressing that the exercise would be continuous, he said in a statement: “The Almajiri students will be evacuated to Katsina, Kaduna, Jigawa, Yobe, Bauchi, Zamfara, Gombe, Nasarawa States and the Niger Republic.”
However, the deported almajirai are decently transported in a convoy of government and security officials and handed over to the receiving governments in a civil manner. So far, none of the coordinated deportation processes which began in April involved use of trucks or other dangerously exposed, insecure means of transportation to deliver the almajirai to their home states as witnessed with the arrests so far.
It is however important to note that the monstrous virus has further claimed more territories during the deportation spree. Several of the children transported back and forth have tested positive for the virus, therefore questioning the timing of the eradication of the Almajiranci policy.
Timeline of arrests
While the movement trend of northerners into the South is not new, however, the planned, consistent and massive intrusion into the region particularly since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic (through any means possible) amid a subsisting ban on inter-state movement of people and vehicles cannot be waved off as normal.
In what has become a daily news item, TNG recalls the following intrusion and subsequent arrests of the ‘almajirai’ at various border points of southern states:
How intruders cross inter-state borders unhindered
It still remains a mystery yet to be solved, why Nigeria operates porous borders. At national and international levels, our borders are all porous and the officials stationed there are most times willing to compromise with few wards of naira notes.
The unhindered inter-state movements during a subsisting lockdown order couldn’t have been possible if the borders aren’t so porous and officials negligent and corrupt.
All the arrested intruders allude to how they easily ‘greased’ the palms of the officials at the borders. Most of the arrests made were either by the State Task Force on COVID-19 or the executive governor of the particular state.
A concerned citizen said to unravel the easy movement of these intruders, these security questions must be asked with verifiable answers. “Where were they (the intruders) coming from?
How did they pass the other cordons in the many States, in between, to get to the cape of the sea as Rivers State or Akwa Ibom or Cross River or Delta or Edo or Enugu, etc?
Who failed to do what he was supposed to do all the way from wherever they started the journey?
How had they been feeding as they journeyed?
Who was planned to receive them as they arrived their destinations?
However, in what seemed like a response to the questions above, one those arrested by Governor Wike in Rivers last week, Ahmed Aliyu said they were contracted from Adamawa State to bring cattle to one Alhaji at the new slaughter in Oyigbo. He said that he thought that the lockdown will start by 10pm. He informed that the moved into the state after they bribed security personnel with N1500.
Those arrested so far are not almajiris, they are terrorists on a deadly mission – Concerned Nigerians
Nigerians, particularly of the southern extract have expressed their unreserved concerns (online and offline) over what they term a likely security crisis that may bedevil the region if the aim behind the calculated and massive intrusion of the northern youths is not uncovered and thwarted.
Ex-Niger Delta militant, Asari Dokubo in a video warned of the imminent danger inherent in the forceful encroachment of the northerners down South. According to him, the movement is questionable and smells of ulterior motives, He advised governors, ministers, lawmakers and other leaders in the region to plan a counter-strategy before it is too late.
A prominent South South figure who does not want his name in print also expressed his mind thus: “Those trailer/container loads may not even be almajiris. They may be well trained fighters of the extremist Boko Haram.
What a window of opportunity for them to come down en masse! The annihilation has been long planned out.
No doubt, the governors strutting about, shouting and gesticulating under the sun, in public shows of efforts at stopping the spread of Coronavirus may never have given it a thought. They sincerely believe they are working hard, and very hard, to stop the spread of Covid-19.
But what has presented ought to be seen to be different. Few weeks ago, Boko Haram was quoted as saying that it would strike in the South-south and South East. Many may have considered it preposterous. But what do they know. Now, Boko Haram has been largely walloped in the Chad region due to the efficiency of the Chadian army. They must find bases, and they may have rolled down south.
And the governors have been caught pants down.
The evidence is there. They just intercept lorries or trailers and ask them to return to where they came from. Matter closed! Really? In a country which has been held by the throat by a terrorist organisation since 2009? Strange!
Even our much talked about special intelligence units? They all bought the idea that these were almajiris? Nobody followed them to find out if they actually moved a few metres away from the last point the governor and his clean-shaven officials could see?
And for God’s sake, almajiris ought to be kids or teenagers. Those in view are spirtely young men, some quite smart to pass any entry physical test of any army. Some are kitted with clean cans and backpacks. There was no single forlorn look on the face of any of these i observed. They looked poised and happy like tourists.
The governors are simply being emotional. They ought to know. Those being moved down are not almajirtis. They are young men on a mission.”
Popular columnist and journalist, Lasisi Olagunju in an article titled ‘Almajirai’s expedition to the South’ and published on May 11 in the Tribune Newspapers said: ‘COVID-19 may be composing a requiem for Nigeria. Or do you sincerely think the country would be the same again if the North’s unhealthy conducts explode in unimaginable deaths as is gradually evolving before our very eyes? The South’s zest for life or what the French call joie de vivre, won’t let them allow the North infect them with suicidal foolishness. If the present resistance to infiltration of the South by the almajirai is sustained and the push from the North is unceasing, what do you think will be the result, ultimately? A new traditional ruler was enthroned somewhere in Borno State a few days ago, we saw how suicidal the crowd behaved. Why is it difficult for the far North to live in the 21st century like the rest of humanity? That part of Nigeria cannot continue to treat civilized protocols of safety in a pandemic with disgust and still want to share the Nigerian room with people who don’t want to die. The North needs be told clearly that suicide is not a native of southern Nigeria.
Recent spikes in coronavirus cases are traced to the almajirai moving across the country. The South is aghast; the North is unbothered. And we are in the same country.
The almajiri system is at the core of northern Nigeria’s politics of national domination. It is a key component of the North’s “infrastructure of violence.” Almajirai are the region’s well-nurtured, purpose-grown, ever ready troops, useful at all desperate times – elections, censuses, riots. Now, they are suddenly made a major vector of this bad season. That northern governors see the almajirai as a problem to be solved with COVID-19 is suspect. When you look into the angry eyes of those street boys, you see ghostly destinies frozen by accidents of their geography and birth. The almajirai we see regularly are predominantly male. Where are the girls? The ones not killed by random diseases have their destinies ruptured by the rape of child- marriage. Those who created them as problems are now pushing them South through unimaginable channels. They are daily hidden and daily discovered in unseemly, unlikely enclosures. Some under sacks of beans, some in millet and onion bags; some in suffocating containers and inside empty petrol tankers. They are dispersing them everywhere but nobody wants them anywhere near; no one, not even those who created and raised them to be street children forever. The most unwanted people in Nigeria of today are the almajirai — used, abused and now unleashed to spread viruses. And they are doing it very well; one of the COVID-19 patients who escaped quarantine in Oyo State last week was a 10-year old almajiri. He is still at large’.
Their consistent, distributive movement across South sign of hidden, dangerous agenda – Security experts
Meanwhile, some security experts who spoke exclusively with TNG said a study of the movements since the trend became noticeable showed that the immigrants were consistent and made deliberate journey to cover the all the southern states. They noted that beyond the popular fear of deliberate spread of the virus in the region by the intruders, a much more dangerous motive maybe unlocking sooner than expected if governors and other authoritative people do not act fast.
Bernad Dickson has been in the security business for decades. Speaking on the northern youths’ invasion into the South and the looming danger, he said: “You cannot take this for a coincidence. A careful examination of it all shows they have made a stop at virtually all the Southern states. That tells you that there is a deliberate attempt at causing coordinated chaos across the South at an agreed time. This is beyond the casual thought that they are coming to spread the virus. It is beyond that. People have recovered from the virus. But they may wreak a bigger havoc than the coronavirus or any other virus for that matter can. The governors or whoever is in charge of the arrests should stop the foolish trend of just turning the intruders back. They should be interrogated and made to give information that can help avert the looming crisis in their region.
One thing that we have come to establish as security experts is that terrorists are not afraid to die. They are ready to offer their lives in the course of carrying out whatever evil assignments they are commissioned to do. Yes, sniffing out information from them might be difficult because most times they have sworn allegiance to their benefactors but some will confess the sinister motives upon cajoling, torturing and ‘de-brainwashing’ albeit all done as professionally as possible.”
Ex-Niger Delta militant leader, Mujahid Dokubo-Asari has raised the alarm over the recent influx of Almajiris from the north to the south.
Dokubo in a 5-minute video said the southern leaders should be worried over the indiscriminate migration that has continued unabated in recent times. He said the movement is questionable and advised governors, ministers, lawmakers and other leaders in the region to plan a counter-strategy before it is too late.
North Has Already Destroyed Itself, It Remains South To Demolish – Dele Sobowale
Out-of-school children constitute security risk in Nigeria.” – Senator Lawan, Senate President, VANGUARD, March 11, p 44.
I did not know whether to laugh or cry about that news report. Lawan, Ph.D, well-educated in any country on earth, and a leader in the North for some time, is suddenly discovering, like other Northerners, what ordinary commonsense should have told all of them more than half a century ago. A society cannot go about multiplying the number of people with nothing to lose indefinitely without reaching a breaking point.
Readings in Sociology and Criminology have already established that those with nothing to lose, e.g almajiris, always account for most of the crimes in society and they never quit. Northern leaders had been contented to breed them, exploit them during elections and then discard them after the dubious votes were counted. We watched under-age children on television voting for President, Governors, Senators etc – people who did not give a damn about them before and after the elections. Nobody thought very much about the long term consequences or the possibility that a judgment day will come.
In a manner of speaking, the judgment day is here for the North. Unfortunately, it is wealth created in the South that will be used to pay for the rehabilitation of those kids fathered by lunatic parents — if the South is stupid enough to continue in this untenable federation. There must be an expiry date to this economic rape.
If Nigeria ranks as the poverty capital of the world today, the North makes it so. Draw a straight line across the North and South and computation of per capita income of the Southern States will never place them among the poorest in the world. More likely they will rank among the top half. Southerners are now treated with the contempt visited on poor people universally and at all times on account of our association with the North. It would have been bad enough if this is a temporary discomfort. One can counsel patience and prayer. But, the truth, which sends the chills down the spine, is more terrifying.
All the indices which generally account for positive and sustainable economic growth and social progress, and which can reverse the headlong dive into deeper poverty point to a bleak future for the North. The best estimate for Northern recovery is twenty or more years as a matter of fact. Given the precarious situation at the moment, that is also sufficient time to turn the region literally into a desert. The deeper it sinks the more of the wealth generated by the South will be siphoned to help save a place which is now almost beyond redemption.
“If gold rusts, what then will iron do?” Geoffrey Chaucer, 1342-1400. VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, VBQ, p 78.
Federal and State Governments as well as traditional and religious leaders in the region had been slow, they are always very slow, to understand the inevitable impact of the globalisation of information and the consequences for social transformation. The recent muddle concerning the dethronement of the Emir of Kano is symptomatic of the barbarism, covered by immaculate babanrigas still lurking in the hearts and mind of the leaders in the new millennium. The main author of the Kano atrocity also holds a Ph.D – or so we were told.
The ex-Governor of Zamfara State virtually abandoned his state to bandits. He spent more time out than in Zamfara. Nobody called him to account. He returned to arm-wrestle the rubber stamp State House of Assembly to sign a bill granting him a stupendous pension package for a “job well done.” The money for that monkey business will come mostly from the South. Zamfara has nothing and can never pay the pension without oil and VAT money.
“You cannot stop terror with appeasement. You fight terror with terror.” Adolf Hitler, 1899-1945.
Hitler, one of the greatest terrorists of the last century had a word of advice for Nigerians – especially Southerners. This is very important because this is our destination with this article. Let us examine what appeasement had purchased.
Kaduna offers a perfect and last example, among several ways the North had annihilated itself and wasted money. Regarded as one of the most intelligent Northerners, very erudite El-Rufai, Governor of Kaduna State will qualify as somebody to be described as “intelligent but not wise.” When bandits commingled with Fulani herdsmen first invaded mostly Christian communities in Zonkwa and Kafanchan area of the state and the people abandoned to self-help managed to kill some of the invaders and destroyed their cattle, Rufai, by his own admission compensated the herdsmen but not the people in the Christian communities. I was in Zonkwa area after one of those attacks.
If you ask El-Rufai why, he would probably justify the one-sided payout by asserting that it was done with good intentions. He must have forgotten what he learnt in Barewa College, Zaria. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” It was akin to feeding a dragon with goats in the vain hope that it would become as docile as your house pet. In reality, appetite grows with eating good food. The bandits received the hand-outs and learnt only one lesson. There is more where that came from. They went hunting on their own when the free issue from Rufai stopped. Kaduna is now a No-Go area for those who want to see tomorrow. Appeasement failed. Kaduna which should have been the flagship state for Northern recovery is now leading the region back into the Dark Age.
The reason for pessimism about any Northern recovery in the next twenty years is not hard to discover. There is no leader to bring it about. Cast a glance across the Northern landscape and tears of despair must come to your eyes. I don’t want to publish the names of individuals known to us only to demolish them. Better to make a blanket condemnation and challenge whoever thinks he has an answer to the region’s myriad challenges to step forward.
“Nothing in this world is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” Victor Hugo, 1802-1885, VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, VBQ p 96.
The most important thing is for all Southerners to boldly confront the questions which lurks in all our hearts. One, should we continue in this broken “shot-gun marriage” which Lugard forced on us in 1914? If not what should we do as the South about it? Who will lead the effort to re-write our history? When do we start the irreversible movement leading to a new political and social contract? These are difficult issues to determine; but not impossible to achieve. We can all hang together or die separately. The Northern knives are already held at our necks. As you are reading this, there is no single Southern terrorists operating anywhere in the North. There are several groups of terrorist herdsmen occupying large areas of land in several Southern States — kidnapping, raping, robbing with impunity – with the nearest Army Garrison Commander, state’s Commissioner of Police and the Directorate of State Services, DSS, apparently unconcerned or helpless because one of the Life Patrons of the terrorists is in Abuja sending condolence messages to relatives of victims. Obviously, only a bloody fool Southerner or a slave to the Northern power bloc can deny that the Federal Government, FG, is either incapable or unwilling to help us. More likely, elements at the top level of the FG are not only impotent, or unwilling to stop the carnage in the South, they are accomplices. Some are collaborators because the flocks of cattle being used to seize our ancestral lands in the South belong to them. Shocking as most of us might find it, one of the Life Presidents of the mass murderers of our people is ex-Emir of Kano. I rose to Sanusi’s defence last week because of Christian charity (“Do good to those that persecute you”).
Three things the south must do to save itself from annihilation.
“Any man who wants to be a cowardly slave can have no honour.” Adolf Hitler, 1899-1945, VBQ p 95.
Southerners are allowing themselves to be treated as slaves by some of the Northerners. Only a slave can have his wife and daughter raped, his farm destroyed, his land occupied and his farm produce eaten and rendered unfit for human consumption without being able to lift a finger. Our British overlords, being more civilised than the barbarians who have invaded our region did nothing as horrible as these. Yet, our founding fathers confronted them asking: “Let my people go.” A new generation of Southern fathers must now summon the courage to tell our Northern brothers and sisters, who have become parasites in this Federation the same thing. “Let my people go.”
“The man who eats in idleness, what he does not produc,e is a thief.”
Jean Jacques Rousseau, VBQ p 97.
Engineer Galadima, former close associate of Buhari, last year disclosed that a lot of new palatial mansions have sprung up in Daura in the last five years by people with no visible means of income. Meanwhile millions of Southerners are working themselves to death and still cannot eat two meals a day. Southerners account for almost seventy per cent of the revenue derived from Value Added Tax, VAT, on alcohol. Several Northern states discourage alcohol consumption and even destroy them eg Kano’s Hisbah. Yet, the hypocritical North collects the lion’s share of all VAT – including those on alcohol which they claim to abhor. We drink; they collect the proceeds of VAT and share them.
There is no need to list seriatim all the ways by which Southerners have made themselves indentured slaves to Northerners. We were in many respects our own worst enemies. As Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of late US President, once said, “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.” We partly allowed inferiority complex to creep into our relationships. Already, we notice how those infected with “2023 Virus” worship their god in Abuja. Those who, for years, espoused True Federalism are now asking us to define it. Those who wrote restructuring into their manifesto in 2013 are now suffering from amnesia. They cannot remember discussing it. We the people of the South are now on our own. In our march to freedom, we must leave the North with its mental slaves – those who are scheming to be President in 2023 in a Nigeria just as it is at the moment. We know some of them. They remind me of a small boy, years ago in the U.S., who after being rescued from fire ran back inside the inferno. He wanted his favourite toy. There are political leaders who will be nothing without politics in Nigeria as it is. We must discard them and march to our destiny as free people.
That still leaves the question: what is to be done? The answer remains the same for all time.
“Hereditary bondsmen, know ye not who would be free must strike the first blow?” Lord Byron, 1788-1824, VBQ p 67.
Most of the South missed the first boat. We did not act fast enough. We failed to notice when Fulani herdsmen moved to the Next Level. They have had three things since 2015 – a strategy to invade the South, lots of weapons to actualise the plan and a commander in chief all their own. For its survival the South needs its own response. Amotekun is only a rehearsal of the real response we must urgently develop
![TNG SPECIAL REPORT: Unveiling sinister motives behind planned, mass intrusion of ‘almajirai’ from North to South during lockdown [Photos/Videos]](https://thenewsguru.ng/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Travelers-1.jpg)
![Task force intercepts trailer load of humans in Delta [VIDEO/PHOTOS]](http://thenewsguru.ng/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/FB_IMG_1588679478956.jpg)
