Special Issues

   Your Ad Here
 
Web NigerianNews.com

Nigerian
News



Babatunde Adenodi
Pharmacist
East Orange,
New Jersey
 USA

send email

more articles by Adenodi

The world is watching the country with bated breadth while its leaders are actively struggling to ruin it. Yes! Aaondoaka, David Mark, Bankole, Ojo Madueke and the rest of them trying to outdo each other in the destruction of their country. As for Yar”Adua, he must be impeached today, not because he is ill, which is one good reason, but for looking Nigerians straight in the eye and spitting on them with utmost contempt. He deserves to be removed from office.

 

NIGERIA: A terrorist Country?
 by Tunde Adenodi.
 

As if to prove them right, there was yet another ethno-religious riot in Jos-Bauchi axis of the periodic theater of mayhem in northern Nigeria so soon after the attack of the under-pant airline bomber: Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab. And they are hoping that no one, not even the United States government of President Obama, would notice the nexus in these two seemingly unrelated events. On the Northwest airplane, the attack was directed at 300 innocent multinationals, Nigerians included and on the Nigerian attack, against hundreds of innocent Nigerians; in the name of the Almighty God.

The consequence of Abdulmutallab’s suicide bombing attempt is to declare Nigeria a country of interest in the on going fight against Islamic terrorism and treat Nigerian international travellers with contempt and odium at all airports wherever and whenever the green passport is sighted. And I dare say, rightly so!

Dear readers, think about this for a moment: Some of us Nigerians who travel on that route know that the plane which Abdulmuttalab tried to blow up in mid air was carrying many Nigerians. It is a well known route to many Nigerians travelling to Europe and the Americas. Some Christians and some Muslims none of whom had offended Abdulmuttalab in anyway. None probably knew him nor cared to know him. Yet, he wanted desperately to kill them and perhaps hundreds of others on the ground, all in the name of God! And he even wanted to die along with his victims.

In Nigeria, we have known religious terrorism since the pogrom against the Igbo in 1966 in some parts of the north. The angst was ethno-religious and directed mainly at the Igbo. Non-Igbo were also victims. And since then, there hav been an episodes of terrorism against Muslims and non-muslims alike in the northern part of Nigeria two to three times a year, every year since 1966. In fact the terrorists’ actions are usually mainly directed against their muslim brothers. And experts have said that more muslims have died in the hands of these muslim fanatics than all other demographic groups combined! In 2010 alone, we have had two episodes in which many people died. And we are only in February!

If this is not terrorism, what is? If this is not insanity, what is? If this is the most effective means of proselytizing your religion, then I would rather remain an infidel and risk the chance of going to hell with my head intact on my shoulders!

In my understanding of the Koran, yes indeed, I have read it, it unequivocably instructs followers of Islam to leave “Jews and the people of the book” alone unmolested. Its reference to Jews is unambiguous. And since there was only one book which the prophet might have been referring to: The Bible; it is safe to assume that his reference to “people of the book” is to the Christians. If this is what the Koran has said, what then is the source of the angst against Jews, Christians and even Muslims?

In 1985 or thereabouts, this writer was on a business trip to the North. It started from Lagos to Kano (our area office) by air. With a driver, I set off by road to Bauchi and Jos. Unknown to us, hell had been let lose between Jos and Kaduna by the maitatsine followers. We were so lucky that we would arrive at the theater of their operation only minutes after they had been forcibly dispersed by the mobile police. We had to take refuge at one of the police check-points between Zaria and Kaduna when it appeared that we had caught up with them on their rampage towards Zaria. Maitatsine riotings were a mere family squable of muslims against muslims! Hundreds of muslims died. I arrived in Lagos after this trip to write an essay that was published in the “Daily Times” in which I asked: If you kill hundreds of people in the name of God, what the hell will you do in the name of Lucifer? What will you do in the name of Satan? This question is even more contemporaneous today, twenty five years later!

I was terrified in those days. And for those who may have fallen victim of Boko Haram followers, the followers of Zanzaki in Zaria and the latest one in Jos, I am even more terrified. And if I am terrified by the acts of some of my compatriots, it means that I have suffered from acts of terror by them. And if my leadership has turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to my cries as they certainly have in the last forty years, it means that they have condoned terrorism in Nigeria. And by implication, Nigeria has become a terrorist country to its own citizens. Or hasn’t it?

In the last reported case of terrorism in the north, it was observed that Yar’Adua visited only muslim victims because he thought that Christians were the aggressors. By doing this, if the report was right, then he had unwittingly given a stamp of official approval to the acts of the muslims who took part in the violence! And this is the pattern of official behavior in the last forty years: To aportion blame without making effort to make sure it does not happen again.

We have had opinion leaders of the area making inflammatory statements against the side of their choice thus hardening positions on both sides. Consequently, each new episode of ethno-religious riot begets a new and more deadly episode than the previous one. This is how it has been since the “first blood” was drawn more than 25 years ago; if you start counting from the maitatsine rioting of the mid-80s.

No! Nigerian governments have not declared support for Al Qaeda and they will probably never do so. They are not that dogmatic in their religious beliefs. They do not believe in God to the extent of dying for Him! Especially, not when they have looted the treasury dry! They want to live to enjoy their loot. They are not ideologically or doctrinally fixated to the prospects of life beyond the one they know: Here and now! They are not like the talibans who would not snitch on Osama Bin Laden despite the 50 million dollar bounty placed on his head by the American government. Nigerian muslims will betray the Sultan for a mere two thousand dollars!

But, Nigerian leaders have not in any way condemned terrorism in other places whenever it occurs. On the other hand they actively support or at least acquiesce to internal terrorism in the north. They provide a breeding ground for ethno-religious strifes in the north. And if an Al Jazeera report is anything to go by, the Al Qaeda has responded by volunteering to provide training and logistic support to Nigerian muslims in the north who are engaged in a “jihad”.

So, can you then characterize Nigeria as a terrorist country? It depends: Any country that allows terror to reign for so long on the pretext of religion is terrorist in nature! Any group of people who named their children “Osama” in the aftermath of the assault on New York is a terrorist in nature. Any country that allows more than half of its population (women) to not acquire education is terrorist. Any judicial pronouncement that a woman (Hauwa) be stoned to death for adultery while her male accomplice is roaming the streets free is a terrorist country. How would you characterize a leadership that turns a blind eye to terrorism that kills hundreds of their citizens yearly since 1966? Why would a Nigerian leader, any leader, abandon his country while he is seriously incapacitated and stay away from his people for almost three months leaving that country ruderless and head-less? What about the Senate and House of Representatives which are to check executive recklessness by summarily impeaching the leader for contempt against the Nigerian people for abandoning them mid-stream while steering the ship of state to the abyss. They have ruled that the president is not right, but the infraction against the constitution be permitted? What about the Federal Executive Council which have been headless for almost three months insisting that everything is OK with the current political impasse? If this is not terrorism against the nation, what is?

The world is watching the country with bated breadth while its leaders are actively struggling to ruin it. Yes! Aaondoaka, David Mark, Bankole, Ojo Madueke and the rest of them trying to outdo each other in the destruction of their country. As for Yar”Adua, he must be impeached today, not because he is ill, which is one good reason, but for looking Nigerians straight in the eye and spitting on them with utmost contempt. He deserves to be removed from office.

 

 

  Unique visitors: 33