Who will console the mother of Gen. Idris Alkali (rtd)?

Yes. She is well over ninety years now. A son like Mohammed Idris will therefore never come her way again. Now who is capable of consoling her? Hajiya Halima Alkali Umaru has been in fear and despair for weeks now and for months consequent upon the disappearance of her illustrious son, General Muhammad Idris Alkali. That the beloved is dead, the elders would argue, is ironically more seemly a tragedy than the beloved who is lost.

Yes. Tell me how to console the other mother; the mother of Leah Sharibu whose daughter has been in the underground with elements who masquerade as Muslims but about whom Islam has no relation? Tell me how the agony and pain of these women and those other women could be mitigated? Tell me how the emotional laceration the families of lost, abducted or kidnapped compatriots of ours could be healed.

Long before he disappeared, General Muhammad Idris Alkali had been lucky. He had seen it all. He had gone through the furnace of war and violence. He had served as Chief of Administration, Nigerian Army, with distinction and had retired from the military. Yes. He exited the Nigerian Army on August 7, 2018, after putting in thirty five years in service to the nation. For thirty five years, General Alkali had led a life of discipline and deprivation in defense of this nation. He had led the life of the obedient servant and an excellent officer to the highest echelon of the armed forces and the Commander-in-Chief. He had forsaken his freedom in order that our nation might be free; in order that you and I may be free of fear and want; so that Jos may be free of fear; so that this land may become free of ‘death’, of hatred, of the Mephistopheles and Beelzebub the like of which had held the Berom landscape hostage to its fiendish and roguish reign since the past couple of years.

Thus General Muhammad Idris Alkali ventured out his homestead on that fateful day. He thought the battle had been won. He thought Jos South local government had become the promised-land. Such is the fate that usually awaits heroes. Heroes always thought they have seen it all and that there is nothing left to be seen. Yes. This is the truth of and about life- those who have been destined to suffer the cruel hands of fate always conflate the lightning of thunder with the illumination of the Sun. Whenever His favours come down unto us in torrents, we become complacent and oblivious even of the intuitions and warnings that the portents in the horizon indicate and implicate.

Thus he began the journey to the, as at now, the unknown. But is it truly unknown? No. General Alkali’s journey from his home towards Bauchi was interrupted within the Berom landscape- the landscape of war and brigandage where countless lives of innocent Nigerians have been lost. He simply disappeared. No. He did not. He was made to disappear. What could have happened to him is better left to imagination. He just disappeared together with his car. Until recently when the car was retrieved from the pond in Du district in Jos south local government, the general notion had been that the General had disappeared just like others have disappeared from the earth, from around the Du district since the past couple of years.

Then came the intervention of the Nigerian Army which had sworn to look for the General whether dead or alive. Suddenly, the day of resurrection dawned on us all. Out of the pond came the gory secrets of the lucifers; out of the pond came the General’s car; the car that he drove the day he disappeared. Out of the pond came other cars, other vehicles. Out of the pond came other secrets- the secret of evil, of man’s hatred for man. The pond from which the General’s car has been found is still revealing its secrets to the Nigerian army-secrets that probably date as far back as a decade or more, or less.

But why is it that the hatred of Islam and Muslims run so deep among a section of the Nigerian population? Of what value is your faith and mine in the Almighty when we detest His creatures with so much bile and aversion? Or is it the case that those who perpetrate this heinous and vicious circle of violence think that by killing every Muslim that come their way the religion of Islam would eventually be wiped out of the Nigerian landscape? Would such a reading of reality not be as puerile and jejune as the assumption by the Boko Haram a couple of years ago that the unwarranted destruction of lives and properties would have the cathartic effect of ridding parts of the north of its non-Muslim elements and constituents?

Exactly how does it feel killing innocent souls on a Saturday and proceeding to the church on Sunday to shout Halleluiah?What stronger affront and insult could a Muslim give to the Almighty (wal’iyadh bihi) other than his proclamation of “No god but God’ at a time he is seen destroying what the Almighty has rendered sacred?