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President Obasanjo's Gratuitous Insult on Christians By Baba Magaji On Wednesday May 12, 2004 President Olusegun Obasanjo was in Plateau State purportedly to find a solution to the protracted communal violence in the southern part of the State. He flagged off the visit with a meeting of elders and leaders of thought at Government House, Rayfield, Jos. Ordinarily, we expected the President would seize the chance to be comprehensively apprised by the cross section of opinion leaders on the crisis. We expected the President of the Federal Republic, whose oath of office binds him to treat all Nigerians fairly and justly without favour or discrimination, to attend the meeting with an open mind ready to listen to all the aggrieved parties. Since this internecine conflict had been on for over two years, it was obvious that both sides would be hurting from human and material losses. The brutalized people of Plateau state expected the President to bring words of solace and encouragement to them. The occasion also called for a calm and somber assessment of the facts and suspension of hasty judgment. We expected that a leader of the caliber of the President should have understood these rudiments of conflict resolution. Regrettably, he did not. His brusque and boorish display of temper at his meeting in Jos was completely unstatesmanly. Rather than contribute to the search for peace, his intemperate flare-up has now become a source of new friction. As widely reported in both the national and foreign media, the President publicly lost his temper and openly insulted the Plateau State Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Rev. Yakubu Pam, for daring to suggest that the President’s handling of the Plateau crisis hinted of bias, during the meeting he conveyed for Plateau State leaders at the beginning of his visit. In February 2004 a group of armed Muslim militias descended on Yelwa town killing 71 Christians, 47 of them butchered and burnt while in the church. The CAN Chairman wondered why this grim story was blackened out on the NTA television network news and why it did not draw Presidential attention. Now that the victims of the reprisal attack of May 3, 2004 were Muslims not only did the President grant a one-sided audience to the Islamic Council of Ulama but also had to physically come to Plateau State. Mr. President in his typical style would not brook criticism and interrupted the man of God calling him an “idiot”. “You are talking absolutely nonsense…you are Chairman of CAN; CAN my foot!” President Obasanjo declared, among other expletives, and with that he angrily walked out of his own meeting. Such sharp tongue and tantrum are quite unPresidential but they are increasingly setting a tone for the Obasanjo presidency. His characteristic intolerance and imperial posturing bear more semblance to a potentate than of a democratically elected President. If the President is frustrated about his government’s inability to make Nigeria work, he ought to reexamine his personal leadership style. Democracy works better when government policies and actions are evolved through consultation and consensus than one man’s infallible idea of correctness. Although the President seems to arrogate to himself all knowledge he will achieve very little unless he listens to the people he governs. His outburst in Jos confirms his lethargic approach to conflict management in the country as a whole. It is no wonder ethno-religious conflicts appear to have multiplied since he took over the reins of government. What the President evidently did not know was that Rev. Yakubu Pam spoke the minds of not only Christians in the state, who have had to bear the brunt of the devastation that has been visited their homeland these past three years by settlers and hired mercenaries, but also other right thinking Nigerians whose sense of propriety and fairness has remained uncorrupted by political brinkmanship and horse trading. The
evidence of bias by the President in the Plateau State crisis is
overwhelming: THE APPOINTMENT OF EMIR OF ZAZZAU: The appointment of Emir of Zazzau to broker peace among the warring factions in Plateau State is either based on sheer ignorance of history or was a deliberate ploy to favour a particular religious and cultural group. First, the Emir could not be expected to be a neutral and a disinterested agent since he not only shares cultural, historical and religious ties with one of the warring groups but also shares blood ties with the Emir of Wase, whose emirate is also engulfed in the internecine conflict in the State. The
communal strife also has a historical background in which the Fulani
feudal system is a contributing factor. The 1804 Islamic jihad, and the
resistance to it, is a historical landmark that determines the cosmic
and philosophical outlook of the people in the State just like the Civil
War and the Storming of the Bastille will forever determine the way of
life of Americans and the French respectively. It was therefore insensitive, from the point of history, for the President to have appointed the Emir of Zazzau, whose ancestors levied war against the people of the region, as a mediator in a crisis whose very roots were established during the Jihad. It
is only reasonable, in the face of this insensate appointment, for the
indigenes of Plateau State to suspect that the Emir will only use the
position to perpetuate the agenda of his forebears. The institution of
the Emir of Zazzau, as indeed other paraphernalia of the Caliphate
feudal system, is an interested and active accomplice in the imbroglio. Second, the Zaria emirate, under which a large chunk of crisis-prone Southern Kaduna lies, has no record of communal peace. Since1980, there has not been a single year in which ethno- religious violence has not erupted there. We were all witnesses to the ‘ Islam- Only’ religious violence that erupted in Zaria in the early eighties during which many Christians were killed. Rampaging Muslim militants desecrated even graves of deceased Christians in Wusasa. In the eighties and throughout the nineties, we witnessed the repeated killings of Christians in Kaduna, Zaria and other towns in the emirate on the slightest pretext by Muslim youths. What about the recurring ethno-religious cataclysmic convolutions in Kafanchan (thrice), Zango Kataf (twice) Pambegua, Saminaka, Funtua and, only recently, Makarfi? On the basis of which credentials is the Emir of Zazzau with such dismal record, qualified to superintend over peace making in Plateau State? Why should the President be irked that CAN Plateau State branch complained about this slap-in-the-face appointment for which he owes us an explanation? But we ask again: What, Mr. President is the Emir of Zazzau doing in Plateau State that he couldn’t do in his domain? ONE-SIDED INTERACTION WITH THE COUNCIL OF ULAMAS In
the interaction with the Council of Ulamas in Abuja shortly before the
President departed for Jos, he disclosed that he had contacted the Emir
of Kano to help out in the Plateau crisis. It is evident from this
statement that the President had reached the conclusion as to who the
villains or victims in the Plateau crisis were even before he left
Abuja. It was obvious that the President was only interested in
placating the Muslims. Who did the President reach to placate when
Christians were butchered and burnt in a church in
Yelwa? Who did he contact to intervene in the crisis when
Christians were driven
out of Yelwa in February
2004 and the land of their ancestors declared ‘Zamfara State’? DISRESPECT FOR OUR TRADITIONAL INSTITUTION Even
by his body language Mr. President communicated so clearly his bias
against the Plateau people and disrespect to our traditional
institutions. During the visit to Jos the President did not pay the
customary courtesy call on the Gbom Gbong Jos but on his visit the same
day to Bauchi he was at the palace of the Emir of Bauchi. SELECTIVE USE OF UNCOUTH LANGUAGE During
the interactive session the representative of the Islamic group, JNI,
asked the President whether he was really interested in keeping the
country as one. That was by all interpretations a rude rhetoric and
though it angered him, he carefully answered without the use of uncouth
language as was directed against the CAN chairman who asked a relatively
milder question. It would appear that the President was either
intimidated or was discriminatory. If he could not dare call the Muslim,
not even a cleric, an idiot what makes him flippant with his mouth about
a Christian leader? Is it his egotistical and self-conceited claim that
he was a better Christian? CONCLUSION The only conclusion that can be drawn from the President’s gratuitous insult is that he is pandering to the Muslim Hausa Fulani for his political survival. In so doing he has taken the support of the Christians and Northern minority ethnic groups (especially Plateau State) for granted. This is not the first time Obasanjo would demonstrate such trait. In 1976, after he became Head of State in the place of the assassinated General Murtala Mohammed, he readily sacrificed many young military officers of Plateau State origin in order to boost his standing with the Muslim Hausa Fulani. During the 1999 and the 2003 electioneering campaigns, this historic betrayal of Middle Belt officers was used against him by rival parties but the people of Plateau State decided to let bygones be and to bury the past in a spectacular show of solidarity with his candidacy. Now that there is no more national election for the President to fight in the future, he is once again ready to sacrifice Plateau State and consolidate his grip on power by ingratiating himself to the Hausa Fulani. Just in case the President does not know it, Plateau people do not owe their cherished freedom and independence to his or anybody’s patronage. These are legacies of a valiant and heroic struggle for liberation. No amount of blackmail or insult will make the people give up their birthrights. All we ask of the President is to deal fairly and justly with all citizens as his oath of office demands. For the insult against Plateau State CAN chairman and CAN itself, we demand an unequivocal apology from Mr. President. |