They are killing people like rams, decimating and decapitating lives, limbs and legacies. Many have elevated themselves beyond governments and assumed the position of gods such that they flaunt an impish, a devious and a pyrrhic almightiness with their wanton abridgement of lives and destinies; they act like there is no ultimate power that shall judge all deeds someday.
In Kenya, within a space of one month, the sons of Satan went berserk, attacking travellers in a fashion that shows that our race is increasingly running mad. They rounded up a bus, separated Christians from Muslims and at point blank range annihilated the Christians. Wonder who those murderers are? Don’t think too much, they are but schizophrenic nitwits, brainwashed simpletons and godless demagogues. They are not Muslims, but shylocks of faith.
As though Kenyans had seen a one off in man’s fade and wane from civility to the state of nature where life was solitary, inane, brutish and short, those sons of the devil struck again, separating Christians from Muslims in their work place and killing in the same fashion about two scores. However, there is yet a take away from that morbid scenario. From the debris of a most unconscionable carnage rose a moral question that must agitate the minds of all Africans, Nigerians in particular.
The Interior Minister of Kenya and the Police Chief resigned from office because to them the lives under their watch must surpass their individual ambitions and curriculum vitae. In this clime, the argument is however different. Nigerians define the drift from civility and humanity to hell. Nigerians defend the logically indefensible. When the Transport Minister and the Prime Minister of South Korea resigned because a ship carrying their citizens went under, killing hundreds, some argued that it is unAfrican to resign from one’s political appointment/portfolio. Today, I wonder if Kenya has since exited the African continent.
Some pseudo intellectuals would argue that Mr. President cannot fight terror except we all support him; some insist that the Inspector General of Police must not resign because he cannot fight terror alone; some even defend the Chief of Defence Staff whose community was under Boko Haram control around the Mubi axis in Adamawa for about one week. Sadly, no one thinks anyone should be held accountable, nay from strange corridors and doorways. We excuse the inexcusable. And I ask what kind of people are we?
In the past six years, we have seen terror and insurgency in dimensions dwarfing the propensities of terror rings in the Sahara, we have mastered terror like the brigands of the Maghreb, tens of thousands of human lives have been barbecued in the North, several hundreds of thousands displaced as refugees in their homeland, yet not a security chief has resigned from office. The Army calls for bigger and heavier weaponry to fight insurgency, alas our dear President would rather deploy billions and more billions in his quest to remain in power. To him, 2015 is a do-or-die, even if the North East implodes and explodes.
Our President is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. Remember? Not us, the armed-less hoi-polloi; the buck stops at his table, not that of the opposition Remember? Have you forgotten that the Nigeria Police is yet a federal force under his control? May I remind you that all our security agencies, including the Civil Defence Corp, is controlled from and by the man in Aso Rock. So, those who argue that we must all put our hands on deck against terror are only 5% right. Our President must lead the way, he must show an uncommon commitment to fight insurgency and terror and he must equip the security agencies to so do.
Those who excuse the less than complimentary steps of this regime against terror are but politicians and businessmen who profiteer from the rot in and around the corridors of power. Those who vilify the opposition and blame them for the rise in insurgency dwell on falsehood, thrive on perfidy and lead a lie. One cord drives through this gamut, which is the fact that the chief beneficiaries of this cesspool of terror are Mr. President, who controls an unaccountable purse called Security Vote, the top cadre of the Nigerian security agencies and those whose primary call is to frustrate the conduct of elections in the North East come 2015. Do you yet wonder who stands to benefit should that be the case?
Many a social commentators see terror and insurgency as isolated decimals, the ISIL brigandage in the Maghreb is seen as Arabs decimating Arabs, same way some soulless Nigerians construe the Haramist as the scourge of the North, forgetting that beyond doubt what affects one directly affects the other indirectly. We wane deeper into the abyss of spiritual despair when we remove from that which must engender the universality of the human persona to fan embers of creed or clan. Humanity dies when the death of one man is treated with levity and excused from the precincts of banality and morbid prejudices.
When ethnicity and religion predominate our socio-political discourse humanity wanes; when race and colour excuse murder and banditry, the human pilgrimage is endangered and our universe short; when region and section take the front seat in our political engagement, logic and excellence suffer; when where a man comes from defeats the content of his character, the beauty of the human soul is troubled; and we are headed to the precipice when little prejudices of region and religion count more than the person, the passion, the programs and the manifesto of a candidate.
To you, my country men and women, I bring an ageless wisdom made prime by Abraham Lincoln who said in the midst of a raging propagandist inveigle against the truth, “You can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but can never fool all of the people all of the time”. When Sir Walter Scott cried out, ‘O what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive’, I am almost certain that he had a prophetic inclination to this generation of Homo Sapiens, with perhaps a particular pre-emption of a nation called Nigeria where court-jesters and political spin-doctors laboriously seek the death of truth.
I have sworn before the altar of my God, indiscriminate of the handicaps and the hardships that follow, to remain true to truth. I have committed my soul and body to the task of reawakening our humanity regardless of the sufferings that such seemingly thankless effort entails. YES, I know that in this age where even the clergy encourages wealth by any means, many will argue that I’m insane and perhaps unreal, BUT one truism remains that if lucre were nobler than truth, a Rockefeller would be deemed greater than a Gandhi, an Onassis than a Mother Theresa, a Bill Gates greater than a Mandela, and perhaps a Dangote greater than a Gani Fawehinmi. Alas not so, because the universe after-all is just.
TO BE CONTINUED.