Ife: Please take us off the road to Kigali
Moving from the Daily Trust opinion pieces posted recently, one can see that some of the synthesisation of the Ife incident, by some Northern elites, is impassioned. Perhaps understandably so.
But reporting and discussing such events will always require calmness and objectivity, if it is to benefit the country with peace, better understanding and peaceful coexistence. That is why our security agencies must be constructively involved in information management, and not leave things in the hands of, mainly, the social media, with what is now circulating, clearly risking to become inciting.
A dimension that has come into the matter is the involvement of Northern notables like Senator Rabiu M Kwankwaso. He was reported, about three days ago, to have gone to see Gov. Aregbesola on the Ife incident. Did he go as a representative of the Senate, or of the National Assembly? Was he asked to go by the President, to represent him? Or did he go as a notable Northern figure because Hausawa had been killed in Ife? Did he weigh things before going?
Had Kwankwaso realised and taken into cognisance that the Ooni of Ife had set up a truth and reconciliation committee? Was his visit contra to this, or was it in furtherance of that peace being sought to be established? Did Senator RM Kwankwaso call on the people of Ife to embrace the gacaca instrument set up by the Ooni? How has that visit been perceived by the affected Hausawa of Ife, and by common Hausa folk elsewhere? That, at last, a caring and bold Northern notable has risen for them, to warn and scare the people of Ife?
On the other hand, what has Governor Aregbesola made of this visit? What has he done, and what is he doing about the reported fracas, clash, attack, massacre, or whatever it was that happened in Ife, between the Yoruba and the Hausa people there?
And what has the Federal Government and its security agencies done, to show vigilance and intolerance for violence, as well as to show that action is being taken to fully restore peace and harmony in the area? The same Federal Government that has been loudly reported by a national delay recently, to have “moved to avert face-off between Senate and Customs CG”, what are they doing about the Ife incident? Yes, the IGP has sent a fact finding delegation.
However, it must be restated and applauded, that His Highness the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi Ojaja II, operating under the severe constraints of a political system that leaves even first class tradoreligious leaders under the thumb of a local government, has, nevertheless, swiftly set up a gacaca.
With not much administrative and coercive instruments of power, and with a puny budget, that is about the best any such tradoreligious ruler can do. May God grant the Ooni a long, peaceful and progressive reign. And may his peace-building efforts bear fruit.
Now, while Northern elites are already receiving insults from all over the North that we have kept quiet in the face of a massacre and expulsion or displacement (words actually used) of Hausawa from Ife, we, the Northern elites, on the other hand, are both whispering and whimpering that the active, activist, dominant and otherwise voluble Southern press and commentariat have decided to keep quiet on this one. We are talking between us that if it had been just one killing, just one, howsoever occasioned, of a Southerner, by or involving a Northerner, even a deranged or drunk Northern lone wolf, the same Southern press and commentariat would have been shouting massacre by the agents of the jihadist Caliphate.
Have the Southern press and commentariat been silent on the Ife incident? Relatively. Why? Big question. But it must be answered. Why? Why have they held relative silence over what is being called a massacre of Hausa people in Ife? Especially when the purported cause of the fracas that led to so many reported deaths was a slap, bad as that was, of a woman, somebody’s wife, by a Hausaman in Ife? It was not that herders had attacked a community, as is now commonly reported to be happening all over the country, and the attackers were being fought back. The cause was reported to be assault and battery of a Yoruba woman by a Hausaman. A Northern writer in the DailyTrust, one Waheed Adigun, opined that what resulted from that slap, was an “attack” on the Hausa community in Ife, ending up in the killing of dozens of Hausa people. But, according to Adigun, in the same article, the Southern press had dishonestly chosen to call it a “clash”. Adigun even referred to the silence by the Southern press as “criminal silence”.
But coincidentally, some of the notes going round from common folk in the North have accused us Northern elites, of the same “criminal silence” in the face of the Ife killings.
Anyway, there has been relative silence on the part of the Southern press, on the Ife incident. To pretend otherwise is to be dishonest. And, on the other hand, there are murmurs between us, of disappointment, by this relative silence from Southern activists and champions of rights. Again, to pretend there aren’t these murmurs and condemnations, is to be dishonest. Clearly, these two positions have not solved the problem, will not solve the problem, and are taking us nowhere but further into chaos. So, what to do?
The right thing to do is for the Northern elites to charitably intuit into what the sentiments and feelings of our Southern elite and intellectual brethren are, on this matter, at this time. It is my honest guess that, as human beings, our brethren from the South may be looking at us with incredible surprise, even shock, that we have the cheek and temerity to think that anyone from the South will today raise their voice if Northerners have been killed or are being killed in the South. Why, when Southerners are almost always incessantly being killed, all over the country, by Northern cattle herders (we now sometimes claim that they are foreign Fulani herders); or Igbo traders in the North are being killed in markets or in front of their shops, for the flimsiest of reasons; and Southern Christian clergy are being killed on their way to, or inside churches, by Northern Hausa-Fulani extremists, for nothing other than being Christians? Why should Southerners show any concern if Hausa people get killed, when, in the face of all the very many painful and vexatious killing of Southerners, Northern press and intellectuals don’t give a hoot, and sometimes are even seen to be defending the murderers? You must agree with me that there is a narrative like this, running in the average Southerner’s mind.
Now, with this kind of narrative running a deep course into our Southern brother’s mind, how do we, Northerners, expect the Southern press, Southern rights activists and Southern intellectuals, to bat out in the field for the North, when, for a change, Northerners are the ones being killed? Is Northern life more valuable than Southern life?
Let’s be honest, can you fault anyone if they think so, feel so, and believe so? And as human beings, with all the frailty of our species, now that Southerners, in their thinking, and I am guessing, have arrived at a reciprocal silence, can we blame them? We both think and believe these things about each other. A lot of it helped by a mischievous press.
Our perception of each other, Northerners and Southerners, both generally and on incidents like Ife or Apo Six, is fashioned by that continuing history of unceasing and opportunistic manipulation of religion and ethnicity by leaders. Perception is the issue and the problem. Northerners and Southerners perceive each other in ways the other party feels is incorrect and unfair. And perception they say, can weigh heavier than reality. We live with this perception of each other. Clearly, it is not helpful, and can never be. If anything, it keeps creating many more ugly and divisive problems.
To solve this problem, we must go to the only solution known to fully and effectively cure the destructive disease of (wrong) perception. That cure is a terribly simple one. It is nothing but honest dialogue. That’s it, honest dialogue. And we know that right from the dawn of history, only the educated and enlightened elites, the leaders and intellectuals of society, go into dialogue on intra- and intersociety conflicts.
It is trite, and perhaps almost a cliché, to quote Churchill’s “To jaw jaw is better than to war war”. But talk we must. If the cream of Nigeria’s intellectuals don’t talk to analyse situations, if they don’t find facts and draw up solutions, then weigh options and bring out a road map for peace, is there going to be any other than the road to Kigali?
May God forbid. You can forbid it, too, by sitting round that table. Go on, please, go on. Sit round the table, o fellow Nigerians. Draw that peace road map for Nigeria. Take us off the road to Kigali.