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Reading the Nigerian Tribune Newspaper today, Monday the 11th of June 2018, on page 10, as well as other national dailies, a simple impression that comes across to me is of a nation under siege! Can other people see it? Most of the papers today report of a press address by the joint leaders of the South-West, South-South, South-East and North-Central ethnic nationalities informing the Federal Government that the way they are running the country, marginalizing the vast majority of this country's people and ethnic nationalities and holding the power and privileges of this country under the hegemonic stranglehold of "the core North" of the Hausa-Fulani combined ethnic nationality, is a very dangerous thing to do! (These deliberately ill-educated, "core North people", marginalizing and attemptedly neo-colonizing the rest of Nigeria, with the cooperation of their various internal collaborators, were the same people that Gideon Okar carved out during his failed coup and requested to leave the rest of the peace, education, social justice and progress desiring Nigerians alone!) The former military governor of Akwa Ibom State, retired Air Vice Marshal Idongesit Nkanga, was reported to have read the statement on behalf of all the other ethnic minorities. The ethnic nationalities of the South-West were represented by leader of the Afenifere, Chief Ayo Adebanjo. South-South ethnic nationalities were represented by Chief Edwin Clerk. The South-East ethnic nationalities were represented by Dr. Chukwuemeka Ezeife, former governor of Anambra State; while the North-Central ethnic nationalities were represented by retired Air Commodore Dan Suleiman. These are, of course, the frontline leaders, among the other leaders who took part in the reported deliberations. However, among the reports in the newspapers was one from the presidency claiming that all the things being said to the president and the siege administration of the country by them and the very many such other groups in the country are "only coming from the elite who do not like the poor people that the Buhari government is uplifting their plight". The groups being referred to here obviously includes the Catholic Church, the Christian Association of Nigeria and the many other denominational Christian and other parochial groups. Now, how can ANYBODY watching the growing miseries of the poor people in this country say that it is the educated Nigerians, the elite, professionals and intelligentsia that are undermining the poor; and not the universally impoverishing federal government? How can Buhari, his well-known kitchen cabinet and all the other hegemonic and religious fanatical supporters, with all due respects for the office of the president especially if properly run, claim that they are not the ones whose actions are impoverishing the poor in this country all the more? How can they compromise all the military and civil protection command offices in the hands of these corruptly arrogant ethnic and religiously fanatical people, in an OPEN but very funny readiness for a war, and pretend to themselves that we are not aware of it? Which civilized person in the world today ANY LONGER SEEKS for war as the way to resolve conflicts? So, if primitive people go that way, refuse to listen to anybody else but only to hold these (others, ALL!) to ransom, as they are doing; one may then ask, is merely addressing press conferences enough things to do in these regards?; talking to deaf and dumb people?; speaking and approaching ill-educated people thus fully prepared for their victory-assured war, as peace-loving and intelligent people? Is it not obvious that such will only infuriate them the more? This full siege, terrorist posture and body language has been extended to the retired Lieutenant General Danjuma and General Obasanjo; and to some extents, to Generals Yakubu Gowon and IB Babangida, so as to frighten and to quiet them up, in the face of the tyranny! Do people not see these things? My summary of all these issues is that these politicians who wish to be taken to be representing the vast suffering masses of the non-Fulani/Hausa imperialistic ethnic hegemony of this unfortunate country must realize that "in and within this country, lies no hope for peace and progress of the people in it". The time for these petty conferences and press addresses from them are over! Anybody wishing to get ANYTHING meaningful out of the already ruined geographical entity of Nigeria must begin to engage the international frameworks with programmes of peaceful growth and politics; and take the matters there. This is the win-win political approach of the modern world, no more no less! These arena range from the ECOWAS to the Africa Union, to the United Nations and even the International Court of Justice at the Hague; the latter, for all the ethnic cleansing and rampaging ethnic pogroms that this present federal government is presiding over in this country. If these apparently well minded even politicians continue to fail to appreciate this, then, one will be justified to believe that all of them are much the same with the Federal Government itself, in their lack of genuine interest in the suffering masses of this country. Both for them and for our obvious oppressors, we can only say one thing, the day of reckoning comet o!, whether we like to hear it or not - from Nature or from God; or indeed, from both! God bless Nigeria! |
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