Can anybody imagine any President anywhere else in the world urging his citizens to accept going out on a Sunday morning hale and hearty but returned in shreds in a body bag as part of a burden they must learn to live with as President Goodluck Jonathan was quoted to have said?
Did this man not once say to the world that he knew all those behind this ongoing insanity?
Can anybody imagine any President anywhere else in the world urging his citizens to accept going out on a Sunday morning hale and hearty but returned in shreds in a body bag as part of a burden they must learn to live with as President Goodluck Jonathan was quoted to have said?
Did this man not once say to the world that he knew all those behind this ongoing insanity?
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What makes it so hard for him to rein them in? Is it because they are his party men; because they bankrolled his campaign or because they are some untouchables he feels so indebted to?
What have we been saddled with for 4 years - a President with all the executive powers that go with it or what?
Is it not the same manner in which we are now being asked to pay more for fuel because “our fuel is so cheap it could be smuggled across the border”, while those saddled with the responsibility of manning our borders smile to the banks with the blood money they have made from the smugglers? And now we are being primed to accept living with a new brand of brigandage because the people we are paying to prevent certain things are instead accepting huge bribes to turn away their faces for weapons that will eventually destroy them and their innocent compatriots to find smooth passage into the hands of some blood hounds?
What has been the role of the various paramilitary agencies in all of these? What has the Immigration service being doing to contain the influx of aliens who are alleged to be the main suicide bombers? What of the customs? How have all these sophiscated weapons being finding their into the hands of these people?
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If the shoes were to be on the other side; if it had been mosques and Muslims that have been going up in flames and dismembered respectively, would our security agencies have continued the way they have been going in trying to contain these fellows that have declared war on all and sundry? Would the government's handling of this whole sordid affair continue to be this tepid? Would all the so called religious, traditional, political leaders and retired generals from the North continue to maintain the criminal and conniving silence they have adopted so far?
If half of what is being done by this Bokom Haram lot had been done by a group of non-muslim agitators to civilian targets, places of worships etc in the Niger Delta, South East or West, would the government and military response being the same?
That reminds me! Where is Sarkin Yarkin; the adroit general who, through land, air and sea assault ‘patriotically’ reduced Ijaw villages in Delta State to rubbles for the activities of MEND who never even targeted civilians? Where is the general who ran the kidnappers of Abia State out of town and restored sanity to that beleaguered state? Is it not the same General that is now heading the JTF assembled to contain the Boko Haram insurgents? Has he lost the patriotism with which he brought the Niger Delta insurgents on their knees? Or did some conniving professional, religious and traditional elders from his part of the country call him to remind him that patriotism differs depending on the part of the country you are posted to?
Whatever differences our thieving elites that call themselves our leaders might have with the President, are there no Islamic leaders out there who should be feeling ashamed of this brigandage being perpetuated in the name of the religion they profess? It’s instructive that other than General Mohammadu Buhari (rtd), no other weighty voice from the North has ever deemed it fit to condemn the ongoing carnage. And frankly speaking, could this have been going on under a Buhari that ran Maitatsine out of town in 1980 when he wasn’t even the President of the country?
What do these people and their local and international sponsors want? Is it that they are actually bent on igniting a religious war in Nigeria? Is it that Nigeria can only know peace when one of their own is in power?
Is this what their Islam is about? Is this what their Prophet and Koran taught them? Could it be the same Koran that these ones are carrying that all the Muslims in our neighboring countries carry? Or is it that the one our people carry here has been infected by the peculiar Nigerian virus? Did they not say Islam means peace in Arabic? Is this their idea of peace?
Our leaders have failed us and failed themselves and that includes our so called religious leaders – Christian and Muslim alike, and all those who steal billions of our money every month in the name of security vote. But let no one have any illusion about this – our God, I mean the one who took the centre stage when the army of 5 nations massed against Jehoshaphat and Judah, He will intervene shortly and all eyes shall see it! Mark my words!
Dr. Emmanuel Ugorji,
Dept of Physiology,
Faculty of Basic Medical Sciences,
Delta State University, Abraka
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