[Forwarded By Magaji Galadima]
One
life in any tragic circumstance, such as violence, arson assassination or even
accident, is many lives lost. When society is being ruled by agents of these
gruesome happenings, citizens in their innocence become ready casualties.
The
former Attorney General and Minister for Justice did not deserve to die in the
hands of any Yorubaman and for that matter among his people. He was Yoruba
personified. Long before we knew those who are today claiming to be the
champions of the Yoruba interest, Chief Ige had been doing that for several
years.
His
preachment of Yoruba supremacy, his dedication to their cause, his promotion of
their values, his unflinching dedication to their interest and his commitment to
what they stand for made him a shining star among his Yoruba peers. In his own
right, he could be said to be a second Awolowo. For such a distinguished person
who has done so much for his race, to be gunned down by one of them, is indeed
tragic and painful.
What
is more, he was a high minister of state and could rightly be described as a
member of the inner caucus of this administration whose appointment was done on
merit. In appointing him, Obasanjo knew his standing among the Yoruba people. A
man in the tradition of Awolowo cannot be a diminished fellow anywhere, let
alone in Yorubaland. So during his confirmation hearing, he was only asked to
bow before the Senate. They had no question for him. Such was his standing in
official circles, a high flying minister. The nation was at his beck and call.
Yet its security failed him. Quite very sad.
Before
his tragic death, two other prominent sons of Yoruba died in similar
circumstance in Ife. One was a member of the Osun State House of Assembly, who
was waylaid and murdered by some hooligans and youths. The other was a local
government leader of the AD in the same locality. Theirs were no less tragic
than what happened to Chief Ige, even as they were lower in socio political
standing. Nonetheless, we ought to feel theirs too. True, the earth quakes when
the mighty is gone but this doesn’t mean we should feel not the loss of lesser
mortals.
About
the time these two were killed in Ife, eight persons, one an Igbo and the rest
Hausa’s were alleged slaughtered by the so-called ‘Yandaba in Kano. The
Igbos threatened to leave Kano on account of their assassinated one. No one took
notice of the murder of the other seven, all of them Hausa’s. Police have
arrested the suspected murderers of the Igboman. We are yet to hear of the
arrest of the murderers of the others. Our
interest, however, is not this, as the fact that violent tragedies,
involving the lives of the innocent, have firmly become part of our unwanted
culture.
In
terms of quantum, when we reflect back, we have greater reasons to be worried.
Shagamu readily comes to mind. So also Ibadan and Lagos. The OPC terrorists have
turned lots of places in to graveyards in the South West. Murder, arson,
assassination, violence have all become common occurrences. Today, millions of
Nigerians fear going to Lagos.
Up
here we had Kaduna twice, Kano, Jos, Tafawa Balewa and the endless Tiv-Jukun
war, the last being the worse, perhaps since the civil war. The East is not left
out. According to a civil rights organization, the Bakassi Boys, a notorious
gang, killed about 4000 in Onitsha alone within less than two years. We don’t
need to mention Aguleri-Umuleri where destruction took place early in the life
of this administration.
The
Niger Delta has been on line almost repeatedly since 1993. Between the Itsekiris
and Urhobo, Itsekiri and Ilajes there have been continuous wars leading to the
destruction of lives and property.
Indeed,
since the coming of this administration, Nigeria has been one huge battle field
in which hooligans, of various shades and colours, have been the warlords,
killing and destroying in the name of whatever. We have been in pains in their
hands with no place to run to. When the Igbos threatened to leave Kano, in the
wake of the murder of their own, even as others of different ethnic group were
murdered at the same time. I quickly realized that perhaps many are not
appreciative of the fact that Nigeria has been a huge volcano with sporadic
eruptions every where so much so that our great and cherished fatherland has
become one huge graveyard, with streams of human blood flowing constantly
throughout the landscape.
So
when the Assistant Secretary of AD, Mallam Umar Farouk called on the president
to sack the National Security Adviser, General Gusau, over the death of Chief
Bola Ige, I reflected that he did not reflect enough to appreciate that Ige was
only the latest in series of loss of innocent lives through violence,
assassination, murder and genocide. Sure enough Chief Ige was a prominent
Nigerian. However, in making such a call, impression must not be created that
government has no consideration for little mortals who lost their own lives
through similar gruesome circumstances.
For
the avoidance of doubt, I have no business defending Gusau knowing the role of
this administration and same of its officers in the discrimination and
harassment of the Abacha family for the reasons of vengeance and vendetta. But
in whatever we do, we must tamper the mind with the inner logic of objectivity.
You
may wonder why Gusau, and not Minister of Police Affairs or the IGP or Director
SSS. And you may further wonder why them and not Mr. President, the overall
boss, and indeed why him, and for that matter over Ige’s assassination and not
those of others?
Our
society is so rotten from top to bottom that what matter most is now money,
loved more than human lives and adored by all. It is a society of callous
happenings and inhuman activities caused by poverty, hatred and selfishness.
Ige’s
death has exposed the nakedness of our security, and this is not to blame our
security men.
The
police is so grossly under funded that each time an eruption occurs, the army
had to be called in. It is not that the police cannot handle matters. Rather it
is that they have not been given the wherewithal to effectively carry out their
functions. Even if you hate the police, you have to pity them for the poor
condition under which they are working. Where they stay for three months without
salary, as allegedly presently existing, you can’t expect the best from them.
They have to live and survive first before they could perform their duties. If a
policeman is, for instance, left for three months without his salary and he
catches an armed robber or assassin who offers him money, he may never get in
service, all his life, the natural tendency is to accept the offer of the armed
robber in order that he and his family survive the hardship now ravaging our
society. Until we have a motivated police and security forces, the talk of
national security would remain a pipe dream. They deserve better attention than
what they are being offered now.
With
this situation on ground, changing the NSA, IGP, DG SSS, the Minister of Police
Affairs or such other senior officers of the security services, would never
offer any meaningful situations. The solution lies in the concrete realization
that these services deserve better funding and training to function properly.
The
subtle preachments of violence by some of our leaders at all level is something
that should seriously worry us. Faseun, for instance, made reference that they
OPC raised an alarm recently that some prominent Yorubas have been marked for
elimination, but that people didn’t take them serious. The alarm raised by OPC
was to the effect that 43 prominent Yorubas were marked for elimination, as
usual, by Northerners. Is Faseun implying that Northerners were behind Bola
Ige’s assassination in Ibadan? But knowing them, they could come out with such
falsehood if only to visit, again, bloodshed on Northerners living amongst them.
The problem with some Nigerians is that they always attribute their failings to
the antics of others and not to their own shortcomings. Northerners have been
the scapegoats of some Yorubas in whatever happens to them. Nothing ugly happens
in the kingdom without a Northern finger in it. For how long will a few people
continue to fool Nigerians on the basis of their hatred of other persons? Some
tiny few individuals have woken up their tribal brothers to hate people from
other parts of the country, encouraging them to indulge in senseless violence
against such hated persons.
Let
me advice that violence has no boundary in its consumption of persons, including
its promoters. It has no respect for the dignity and standing of individuals in
society. Faseun needs to be reminded that a faction of his OPC once raised his
clinic to the ground, and for long the two factions have been engaging in
violence against themselves, even as they claim to represent and defend Yoruba
interests, and all their members are Yoruba.
One wonders whether non Yorubas were also responsible for the hostility
of violence that has been their lot for a very long time?
There
is no glory in promoting violence. Those who do so and think that they could be
safe from it need to reflect seriously. Faseun, in particular, needs to do this,
having experienced in the hands of his own violent OPC, the bitterness of
violence
As
we mourn Bola Ige, we need to think deeply over the promotion of acts of
violence by some of us, in the name of whatever. The violence that ended the
dear life of Chief Ige was the function of political selfishness and
intolerance, which has become a tradition among certain people. A retired
general once justified that the Yoruba traditional politics of violence was the
symbol of their abhorrence for injustice and unfairness. One wonders whether he
could now mean by it that there was a show of injustice on the part of Ige,
which led to his assassination. If Ige’s crime was that he supported one of
the factions in the on-going crisis in his state, naturally he was entitle to do
so and this shouldn’t have resorted to arson, violence, murder and
assassination.
Back to Faseun. We hope that he would appreciate the factional nature of the politics of his people. AD is fictionalized, Afenifere is divided, as the OPC, which he leads, was far a part, while key officers in two states are not on speaking terms. Up here, when the deputy governor of Jigawa state found the going too tough for him to bear, he just left and that was it. No one allowed the situation to degenerate into violence as happened in Osun State, let alone assassination, as happened to Bola Ige and murder as in the case of two chieftains in Ife. The art of peace is the art of wisdom.
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