Riots in Maiduguri and Katsina –the Aftershock

Ahmed Yahaya Joe

The reckless abandon with which properties are destroyed and innocent lives snuffed out with grievous bodily harm inflicted on others whenever hooligans hijack peaceful religious protests especially in Northern Nigeria begs for urgent introspection. The examples are all too numerous and familiar to recount.

Rev. Joseph Hayab is a man of the cloth that knows his onions well. He signed an emphatic condemnation on behalf of the Northern States CAN over the unfortunate Danish cartoons because he assumed as Martin Luther King said “ injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere” Such was the representative revulsion of the Northern Christian Community. But alas his bold initiative was not good enough or at least largely ignored for obvious reasons. What transpired in Maiduguri and Katsina over the second week ending of February was therefore infinitely shocking but not too overwhelmingly surprising, hooligans typically that lack focus of self intepretation are apparently more entrenched than good neighborliness in our society, they never the less have prominent spineless backers -the same lot that have in any case betrayed them into such a mundane existence in the first place.

Contemporary students of Nigeria History may accuse the British Colonial Government of many things but not the lack of residential insensitivity. The zoning of Northern townships segregated old cities from new CBDs, Sabon Garis and the green belt heralding the GRAs. It was a veritable tool entrenching harmonious tribal co-existence among others. Today rapid urbanization and the upsurge of missionary activities have got the indigenes crossing the religious divide thus creating more cosmopolitan and therefore integrated vistas. With contracting economic opportunities and the near absence of basic ‘democracy dividends’ our cities have become socio-religious time bombs. The perennial targeting of other non-northerners especially the Igbo traders adds an ethnic dimension not to talk of aspects of economic jealousy to it all. Ask any marketing executive of any of the newly recapitalized banks- who own the largest deposits and do the most transfers in the North. These traders and artisans by sheer dint of hardwork, cooperative commerce and thrift arrive as emaciated ‘boys’ and after seven years of painstaking apprenticeship become established while their indigenous peers wallow as ManU fans at fetid viewing centers after a hard day’s job plying their hazardous ‘achaba’ non-skills.

The Northern Elite both Christian and Moslem have failed woefully. Co to any ‘burkutu joint’ anywhere in the North or scan through wife-battering or forced marriage and child neglect /underaged prostitution statistics to get an idea of how things have degenerated. The Human Development Index and the recent NPC ranking in the areas of policy formulation service delivery and transparency are more abysmal in the Northern states . Our Intellectually lazy and inept elites with their collaborating clergy have hijacked the hearts and minds of the masses by misappropriating their opportunities and giving them religious sentimentalism in return. That is why the Taraba and Plateau States Governments will wishfully describe their travails with EFCC in Biblical semantics. And the States that are making a pretense at Sharia Implementation will brand proponents of constructive criticism as enemies of Allah. Back in July 1966 the then Major T.Y. Danjuma heroically and single handedly, avenged for the North an affront the historically irresponsible precursors of our own hooligans in Maiduguri and Katsina cowardly cringed from. Into the fray is an elite induced wrongly premised fallacy of WESTOPHOBIA this is characterized by a self serving conspiracy theorizing that is too far fetched and over exaggerated to the realities on ground – our Major concern is DEVELOPMENTAL and must remain so far our collective sakes. Afterall non have been as rabidly anti-western in his Saville Row pinstripes as the Roman Catholic Robert Mugabe with issues as succinctly put. The on going rival sub clan butchery in Somalia and the progressive decimination of fellow Africans that is still massively perpetuated till date in Darfur is much to a selective amnesia here. No doubt, these Maiduguri & Katsina riots by geography portend subtle political undertones not unrelated to the proposed public hearing for the forthcoming constitutional amendments. The alleged groundswell of aversion for the so-called Third term bid is an obvious TRAP for the North to compromise its unity by extension its strength and staying power. Thus the larger picture at stake is the now fragile Northern unity which has been since 1999 been a weird litany of avoidable woes. An integrated and monolithic North has been what had consistently denied the late Sage, O. Awolowo the helm of affairs of our now increasingly fractional Nation. The caveat here is that if other geopolitical zones are to soar, the North must diminish.

Unlike most other skeptical Nigerians I do not doubt O. Obasanjo’s desire to vacate power. As a seasoned battle tested General he is merely acting out SUN TZU’s Cardinal dictum of deception. He never the less lacks the muffled restrained smooth scheming finesse of the typical chess player (though he’s one)because as G.Washington once said”government is not about eloquence or reason its about power” . He exudes more of the characteristics of a village square draft player, clinging to power could be an enticing but precarious option for him but like fellow General turned politician Ariel Sharon, he has to take a cold hard second look. The ailing Prime Minister was the last man expected to withdraw completely from occupied territories Isrealis are still today grappling with that shocking reality and so will Nigerians come 2007. The current third term bid is therefore a well articulated stage managed chaos characterized by a diversionary smokescreen to shroud the real pincer movement that would cover the wily General’s retreat after relocating the national political oracle to Otta. If Sharon had promised to displace Jews he would have got a hail of automatic fire bullets and certainly not the votes to propel him to the highest echelons of the Knesset. Don Corleone in Mario Puzo’s GOD FATHER has cause to offer parental admonishement to his first born Son, Sonny that “never let any one know what you’re thinking” which today reads as LAW 3 of the seminal 48 LAWS OF POWER that enunciates “ CONCEAL YOUR INTENTIONS (Emphasis mine) keep people off balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions. If they do not have a clue of what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defense ,guide them far enough the wrong path, envelope them in enough smoke and by the time they realize your intentions, it will be too late”.

What Nigerians tend to forget is that General Obasanjo was not a gung-ho Infantry man he was in the meticulous Engineering Corps – the masters of concealment, planned demolitions and magical bridges. He’s still being mistaken for the reluctant and pliant successor to Gen. Murtala who grew in prison- no way this guy has come a longer way being a late developer like the scientist, Albert Einsten. General Obasanjo has a keen sense of history propelled by a stubborn self-belief a rare leadership quality not unlike that of Mahatir Mohammed and Fidel Castro. He will more likely transform into a “philosopher king” much like senior statesman Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore teleguiding his reforms through the present escalated pangs of National rebirth. He is infact a badly misunderstood genius( of course geniuses can also make mistakes but he hasn’t made any yet)

He actively participated in desecrating the national patrimony and is now making honest concerted efforts at revamping same more so that his efforts at reforms are overwhelmingly genuine within the context of the conflicting extingencies of the peculiar Nigerian condition.

By the time the Northern elite and their sibling hooligans realize what is happening the zone would have transformed into what JFK intentioned for the CIA when he declared ” I will break them into a thousand pieces and throw to the winds” at the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis. Only a more entrenched Federal Secular system can guarantee religious mutual respect and tolerance where no religion is more equal than the other in any part in the country. But unfortunately religious alienation will continue in the North with selected victims given eye service compensation habitual perpetuators will slip away unprosecuted from the long but slow castrated arms of the law and the erstwhile monolithic North will continue to fragment with bitterness cementing new alliances. No thanks to our own simplistic monochrome elite thus playing into the hands of our more multicolored compatriots

And we still dream awake that power will shift to the North by victimizing our kith and kin with impunity and without apology.

Life will certainly go on with no prominent Northerner issuing strong statements of condemnation and undertaking against similar future occurances as such reprisal actions will follow as in the past and at full circle who really looses out? Your guess is as good mine.

The killing of Detective Constable Oak in 2002 was the first terrorism related loss of life in the line of law enforcement duty outside Northern Ireland crisis. Also in April 2004 eight men were arrested alongside about a ton of Ammonium Nitrate that was not intended to boost farm produce. No doubt Great Britain is the most immigrant friendly G8 though with an open door of officious documentation. Violent crimes within the last decade have risen but are still relatively far between and still date less than ten percent of Bobbies bear arms on regular basis.

The gentle rolling hills of multi-cultural Britain lost that lost that peace far back in the eighties when certain verses of literary creativity came under a vicious hammer of summary censorship. And as recent a couple of months before 9/11 WTC a misguided battalion of mal-assimilated toughs in Oldham spiraled out of control firebombing and hurling bricks in a fit of racial hysteria. But it was not until a land mark judicial decision by a court of appeal early 2004 that ‘Ethnic Britain’ suffered a stroke of predictable schism. A teenage school girl had sought to mis-educate herself in Denbury High School and the law agreed. But the UK is not France where the law ensures no untoward symbolism is attached to its public school system. British society in its element views all its citizens through the prism of fairness with a long entrenched tradition of free speech and openness. Predominatly protestant it provides a level playing ground for all religions despite its monarchy the Chief Anglican. Those that subscribe to the various faiths practiced are allowed to build places of worship, schools and resource centers without undue restriction. Access to the largely privately owned mass media remains unfettered to all who can publicise their activities, disseminate propaganda and freely worship as guaranteed and sustained by law which has been repeatedly beached a most recently in finsbury park with so much reckless abandon that eventually attracted the Charity Commission, to yield the big stick. The ovetals has always accessed the larger society more than their Caribbean and sub-Saharan minority compatriots. Agreed prejudice and other forms of covert profiling exist it has not hampered their prosperity as world in most multicultural societies. And as investigations continue the conspiracy theorists have arrived town. Hoax or no hoax the British society will never be the same again.

The anthology of terror is frightengly real and no amount of circumstantial distortions and speculative half-truths can hoist any enduring false flags theories beyond reasonable doubt moreso in an emerging scenario of sectional doublespeak that dubiously seek to beat an unleashed weapon into a ploughshare of peace. While it is not totally imlpossible that some over imaginative sections of the intelligence community might have seized the opportunity to play out some psy-op wargames, only a mad man will go to sleep with his roof leaking.

Has big brother has come to stay and justifiably so.? All societies need some form of outright control at all levels be it at home, place of work and the society at large. Effective and order is a precondition enabling peace and security for the pursuit of progress which is first line duty for any responsible nation state. Much of Britain’s malaise is a consequence of excessive freedoms, unrestricted privacy and unbridled self-actualisation.

The French National team is a microsym of the contemporary land of barl that all Britain must emulate. All domiciled tribes of the isles must deflated other identities and self-delete intoa singleness of national purpose and ideology. The old boy gent’s club college tie network must also desegregate to allow skinheads, Rastas, Asians and it’s Establishment mandarins look up to the House of Windsor as the ‘DEFENDERS OF FAITH? It indeed ‘takes a village’. The London underground that was a haven retreat and an icon of safety during the luffwaffe strafing in WW II has now become a symbol of fear and the suspicion of the next passenger.

A passenger that is most likely preoccupied with making a cold living innocently commuting in a mundane orbit of existence but unfortunately targeted by a warped quest to inflict mortified hurt.

The victims are indeed the very heroes of everyday existence and the perpetrators its unfortunate by not facing the reality of their overwhelming middle-class affluence compaired to other immigrants and by their refusal to explore more civilized means of protest.

You can not fish from a pond of opportunity, poison same without being afflicted. The 7/7 blitz of bombings was a disaster waiting to happen.