Kanu and Sunday Igboho: Are they criminals or heroes?

 

  Kanu and Sunday Igboho: Are they criminals or heroes?

By Bolaji O. Akinyemi

We should have known we were emboldening our monster against ourselves when we let it loose against others

The beauty of a democratic society is its penchant for the rule of law. For this, our founding fathers craved when in hope of it, they fought for freedom from our colonial masters opting for self rule. The generation after them who were nursed and nurtured for leadership from the dividends of self rule through regional arrangements in a working federation will not put up with the hijack of power by the military. They fought till they saw the military back to the barracks but not out of power.

Militocracy was given in exchange to us for democracy by the reason of decrees they renamed the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria; this document is a folly, but the foolishness it dispenses par time is a function of personality of its operators, particularly, the President, the head of the Judiciary and most importantly the heads of the Legislative arms in the office of the Senate President and Speaker, house of representatives. This aberration is the tint of religion upon our secular state.

 

The weakness of our constitution is often seen through the high handedness of the office of the President, little surprise that Muhammadu Buhari has left no one in doubt of his being an alien to the spirit of democracy. Our desperate need for change concealed the despotic tendencies of our new President. Even when the news broke out that our President had given order for the quarters of some judges to be invaded in the middle of the night in a gestapo manner, “we had it accommodated under the deception of fighting corruptions in the judiciary”. Some of us saw the hand writing on the wall and warned that we are heading for dangerous times, knowing that our rights in a democracy will amount to nothing if we fail to stand up for those who should stand up for us. The instrument of the defense of the common man through our courts was damaged when judges’ homes were invaded in manner we are yet to adopt at dealing with known criminals thereby truncating our collective desires for peace. Miyetti Allah, unlike our judges, has openly admitted carrying out attacks on certain communities and persons without any consequences.

We should have known we were emboldening our monster against ourselves when we let it loose against others. Boko Haram are known terrorists by global index and so consequently, are criminals by global standards, but not in Nigeria! Committing crime is not what makes people criminals under this Government, but your tribe and religion. The nepotism of this administration reaches to the highest heaven, so much more that tribes that are not Fulani are criminalized, so, whatever those other tribes do, is a crime! Whereas Fulanis, as 1st class citizens, are conferred with justice whatever their doings; right or wrong, the rest of us must look away like our President, while we hail, sai Baba! For Fulanis from any where in the world, are fathers the moment they step on Nigeria’s soil as our ancestral lands are ‘gifts’ from their god to their father, Uthman Dan Fodio and ourselves, slaves bequeath to farm our lands for their cows. A hundred of us is not worth one of their cows, I don’t see what Kanu have said in his anger that can equate this generational provocation made to a people forbidden to be!

Boko Haram, with just a little over 30,000 murders unanswered for from 2002, had the privilege of their welfare discussed on the floor of the senate, raised by their Senator. Till today, they are still repenting and getting integrated into our national life. But a mention of the agitation of Indigenous People of Biafra who are fed to dancing pythons and smiling crocodiles is forbidden in the hallowed chamber of our National Assembly.

We have fed our hydra headed monster in power, today we are confronted with a multi headed beast, suckling, drinking and spilling blood across the country. For no just cause, this monster comes against us in different ways aside the Boko Haram who spill blood in minimum of hundreds of souls. There are the killer herders who come close to them. Then of course the trading arm of this evil network called bandits whose major preoccupation is to kidnap for ransom to fund their core terror attacks and if ransom is not paid in time, the victim gets killed.

This group have a face in the public, who is soliciting our understanding to understand their plight that they are not criminals and shouldn’t be called bandits less they become angry? Their solicitor is also the Negotiator General who advises the Government on when to and what to pay! Yes, “the instruments of debate and dialogue is for engaging human and not beings who are less in value than our cows”.

The “animal” in Nnamdi Kanu has violated the human counsel of Sheikh Gumi. Before our Fulani President no one has the right to be angry except humans. But the Creator of all bequeathed rights even to animals.

Ṣùgbọ́n ajá mó ọmọ tí ẹ fún ló mú, o mo ti odù oya kii mọ́lẹ̀. Dogs know how to breastfeed its puppies, but it is skillful at hunting grasshopper.

Fulani demanded for compensation from this administration over the need to settle their brothers who came from President Buhari’s ancestral home of Niger Republic and other West Africa neighboring countries to help their brothers become governors and President in Nigeria. For which there are a phantom Fulani radio projects invented by Lai Mohammed’s ministry of information. A whooping 100Billion was allegedly paid to Miyetti Allah, a deafening silence on this important issue trading our sovereignty to sustain the rampaging lawlessness that the foreign militia has become to our national security greets us from the National Assembly.

Compensation has become the sole rights of our President’s tribe to claim in Nigeria. When cows are killed a hundred lives does not suffice for the life of a cow. But indigenous tribes dare not ask for compensation for people killed and their property destroyed. The fall out of south east crisis was a demand by the same people for onions, but Igangan losses must be born by the loser for daring to stand up to their oppressors. This is the injustice that made a “none entity”, the entity to which millions of Yoruba at home and in diaspora look today for freedom. Do I need to remind our political class that when the nobles refuses to stand up for the just cause of the common man a dynamics of power shift is activated.

This is the fertile ground of ideology nursing the trees of the likes of Kanu and Igboho, many more of them will grow even if both are cut down without altering the ideology of dominance of Fulani race and the docility of our elected leaders to the National Assembly.

It is needless for Sunday Igboho’s house to be invaded in the middle of the night by a combined team of DSS Operatives and the military in the dead of the night acting on information which became intelligence upon which the house was broken into without a warrant! We have no one to turn to except God, because the court that should have been our hope was raided and the judiciary eventually toppled when Onoghen was gotten rid of while we hailed Sai Baba!

Leaving Kanu and Igboho to face the music of this desperados in their Fulanization agenda is simply to postpone our own day of “partying”. If only Onoghen has stood up for those judges whose quarters were invaded, he wouldn’t have become a victim because Judiciary as an institution would have stood for him and by him. But he watched while the system was castrated only to realize that his office is only as potent as the institution. If only Kanu and Igboho had allowed themselves to be angered by the dehumanizing of the people of Agatu and hadn’t waited till their tribes became the reason to exhibit angers, exclusively bestowed on Fulani alone by our National Sheikh, Gumi, may be, they would have had a court to run to. I may not share the ideology of Kanu or the idolatry of Sunday Igboho but in a free society, both are entitled to their convictions and expressions of same. Kanu might have been reckless with words but he is yet to be linked directly with any crime! The invasion of Sunday Igboho’s house has led to the abduction of his gods and they are in the custody of DSS, we can only hope that his gods will be safe with Buhari’s Government, but his own personal safety is our collective responsibility to ensure. To look away from Kanu’s plight is to prepare the flights of terror that this Government has become for an attack against us soon. To ignore Sunday is to wait for our turn.

If the world thinks that democracy confers legitimacy on the Government of Muhammadu Buhari, a review of the attack on Sunday Igboho’s house will reveal the short supply of human rights under this administration. Rights, which is the hallmark of any constitutional democracy are completely eroded that we find it hard to call the attention of global community to the gruesome killing of the feline found in Sunday Igboho’s house. If Sunday is a “criminal”, was the cat an accomplice? If the guys they killed there were armed, was the cat holding an AK47 to justify the shoot at sight order of the President carried out on it? The event at Soka in Ibadan has overtaken that of the black Tuesday at the Lekki toll gate. Now we know how needless casualties of Government killings are handled; their bodies are taken away!

Sunday Igboho has had peaceful protests in other places in the South West without a single report of violence to the police, but the planned protest for Lagos must be stopped I believe to the knowledge of the Chief Security Officer of the State who also doubles as the Executive Governor from whom the Commissioner of Police must generate his brief to interpret the orders from Abuja to the public. How much of the fear of Lagos was unleashed on Igboho’s house only Sanwó-Olu and possibly Tinubu can tell? The attitude of Lagos to our collective well-being in the South West all right thinking should be probing. The floppy approach of LASG to Àmọ̀tẹ́kùn and the generosity of Olówó Eko who gave 50 million naira to victims of fire disaster at Kastina market, but, ignored those of Shasha market yet he hopes to benefit from the Zoning of Presidency to the South West. Yorùbás know what to do when that time comes.

Our questions must go to the world, if we hope to stop the monster we have fed against ourselves in the name of democracy. We need to rid our streets of protests and for now to avoid playing into the hands of a tribe whose mission is nothing but a genocide. We must protect our people against those who are killing indigenous tribes and taking over their lands. Time to take our right and welfare to the chambers of the Senate and the house of Representatives. If Boko Haram had a voice raised for them in the red chamber, our elected representatives at the NASS must be called to duty. We can’t be calling for 1963 constitution without demanding for the processes that led to it. Our elected representatives at the federal house then, stood for the people and championed their causes. Who are Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho’s Senators? Who are their Reps? Answers to these questions will be a good way to address the criminalization of our people without crime and the justification of criminal elements among the Fulani who gloat in crime and pride in violence to our humiliation. It is not a favor to cry for justice, injustice to one, is injustice to all! To stand up now is to do so for yourself