When leaders play the ethnic cards
EVENTS across the country in the recent times especially, the increase in the numbers of mobile terrorists masquerading as herders in dispensing their nefarious operation have shown clearly that open grazing in cattle business is no longer fashionable. Unfortunately, those entrusted with the responsibility to protect lives and property seem not to have recognized this fact with their continuous polarization of the issue along ethnic and religious divides. While excoriating the governor of Benue State, Samuel Ortom, for banning open grazing, and some governors in the South- West geopolitical zone for speaking out against the killer herdsmen, the governor of Bauchi State, Bala Mohammed on 11th February, 2021 said: “The West doesn’t want to accommodate other tribes ( sic) but we are accommodating your tribe in Bauchi. We have Yorubas who have stayed in Bauchi for over 150 years. Some of them have been made permanent secretaries in Gombe, Bauchi and Borno but because the Fulani man is practicing the tradition of pastoralism, he has been exposed to cattle rustlers who carry a gun, kill him and take away his cows: he has no option but to carry AK 47 because the government and the society are not protecting him.”
This is not the first time the governor will publicly display sentimental skill in a national discourse. It was on record that the governor did the same thing in 2019 when he described Fulani as global citizen that can leave the neighbouring countries and partake in Nigeria’s livestock reform. However, the level at which it has degenerated is what is of concern to most lovers of peace and prosperity in Nigeria because without objectivity and justice to find lasting solution to issue will be difficult.
One of the reasons the country is moving from one crisis to another is the lack of objectivity in addressing issue. This has turned justice to the game of who knows who, when, where and how? A veritable testimony of this is the justification of the use of unlicensed weapons by Governor Bala and his apostles in their quest to defend armed herdsmen living in the forest.
Before the governor of Ondo State, Mr Rotimi Akeredolu gave a vacation order to the herdsmen hibernating in his state’s forest reserve, reported cases of kidnapping, killing, rape and others indicated that most criminals use the forest as their dens and training ground for future operation. This is not limited to the South. For instance the Chibok girls in Borno State, Dapchi girls in Yobe, kankara boys in kastina State, kangara staff and students in Niger State among others were taken to the forest after they were abducted from their schools.
In fact, the pictures released by Sheik Ahmed Gumi, a popular cleric advocating for blanket amnesty for the bandits shows that most criminal elements like to stay in the forest. This might have been one of the reasons Governor Akeredolu ordered the herdsmen to vacate the state’s forest reserve so that the criminal elements among them can be smoked out. Unfortunately, because of the personal interest of those benefiting from the status quo ( open grazing system) the action of the governor was given North versus South colouration.
This ethnic card is responsible for the failure of government in addressing the growing insecurity in the country. It was what ignited the fire of the 1967- 70 civil war and it is the strength of those fanning the ember of war by giving eviction notice to people doing their lawful business in the area of their choice. This is further complicated by those agitating for amnesty for the bandits. Sheik Gumi tried to justify the amnesty by saying that the bandits carry arms because their members were killed by vigilante groups which further buttresses the point that they are criminals.
It is only a criminal that will confront a vigilante groups with arms. They started by confronting the vigilantes, graduated to fighting Police, now fighting the soilders, abducting children in order to collect more money to buy arms and increase the number of their membership and create more networks.
That is why different questions are being raised on the justification tendered by the cleric for his blanket amnesty particularly, looking at the ongoing killings in the North East despite the shadow amnesty given to the so- called repentant Boko Haram.
Even, if the government is going to empower the repentant terrorist in order to keep them away from their vomit, it shouldn’t be when they are still at war with them. Doing so will only increase violent ventures in the country because it will motivate other emerging terrorist to speed up their quest to gain public attention in order to share from the “national cake”, knowing fully well that the money collected will enable them to purchase more arms for future attacks either using the existing name or, new name.
This strategy is responsible for the increase in the cases of kidnapping and other criminal activities across the country. In fact, with the recent increase in the operation of the criminal entrepreneurs, it is obvious that there is a division of labour between these criminal elements with the area of jurisdiction well spelled out in an undisclosed operational guidelines.
In the North West they operate as bandit, rustler, insurgent among others while in the North Central they use another method with different names and in the South they operate as Fulani herdsmen in order to deceive the public and use divide and rule method to create an atmosphere that will ignite fire that will consume everyone and bring back the display of 1967- 1970 where millions of lives were destroyed on the altar of ego and personal interest. God forbid.
The agenda of most of the terrorists in the world is to kill, destroy and create an empire where their obnoxious laws will be applied. That is why the Federal Government, National Assembly, State House of Assembly and other stakeholders need to lay down their ego and ambition on the altar of collective security and support the struggle to prohibit open grazing and give room for ranching system so that the mobile terrorist masquerading as herders will not create an atmosphere that will lead everyone to the journey of no return.
IT was not long I drew attention to what I called harvest of deaths in the land. Specifically on 10 December, 2020, I wrote as follows: “Death has stalked the land, raiding villages and towns, and stumping cities to add to its already disturbing haul. We are befuddled and left aghast by the development. Before an obituary could be crafted for one, many more people have fallen victims.” A fortnight ago, Segun Odegbami, the famous footballer we fondly called Mathematical Odegbami, in the early 80s, doing the same in his column, in the piece captioned ‘ A Season of Death’, lamented the death of four former international footballers. Among them were a former chairman of the Nigerian Football Association and a fine sports journalist. They passed away within the last one month, he wrote. Since early December we have witnessed more departures from earthly life. These were Alhaji Lateef Jakande who left on 11 February, the day the remains of Prince Tony Momoh were being interred. Two days before then, Olajide Akinbiyi, more widely known as Jide Akinbiyi, one of the pillars of Jakande Administration also took his flight. Jide Akinbiyi, son of one- time Olubadan, Oba Daniel Akinbiyi was director of publicity and information in the Governor’s Office, and was instrumental to the establishment of Radio Lagos and Lagos Television, having been a member of the pioneering staff of Western Nigeria Television, Ibadan, in 1959. Jide Akinbiyi departed at 87. Also gone is the stormy petrel Dr. Junaid Mohammed, the irrepressible former member, House of Representatives in Second Republic.
For a majority of human beings the question remains: Where do the departed all go? There are still a great many who do not believe in life hereafter. Some consider it fashionable to reject any such thought. Others denying are goaded by technological wonders of our time. Anything science cannot prove makes no meaning to them. It is superstition. For them once it is over here on earth, that is the end of conscious existence and living. The Christians and Moslems, of course, believe in life hereafter. So do animists. Whether Christians, Moslems or animists, they may differ on details, but they are convinced there is life beyond earthly life. There is the concept of Paradise and Hell which may be said to have been taken out of a huge pile of myths surrounding the destination of man when he gets to the Beyond. An average Christian speaks with a measure of conviction that there is Paradise, the land of peace, joy and bliss, which for some denominations is also called New Jerusalem in Heaven, and there is Hell the region of everlasting torment. The Moslems are convinced about Paradise and Hell and have the same picture that Paradise is a land of peace, bliss and unceasing joy, and Hell where torment is the order of daily reality. For many human beings, however, there are several unanswered questions.
There is a lack of clarity, for example, on how long a person remains in the grave. Many believe that a man remains in the grave until the proverbial Judgment Day when he will be awakened to face judgment even when our biology teachers have brought to class dug up skulls, femur, ribs cage, tibia etc, to educate us on body architecture. And you wonder where the body cover is and where the content of the man to be awakened is. What of those who died 200 years ago or 2,000 years ago? Where are they and from where will they be awakened to face judgment. The work of the Creator cannot be so defective. There are the loving wishes for the soul to rest in peace, or sleep in the bosom of the Lord. All these arise from the conception that all life is solely material. All these are cleared up when we recognize that the grace in birth and death goes beyond the material, beyond the physical manifestation of the building and dissolution of the body. And the wishes for a soul to rest in peace do not correspond with reality. Is Paradise a place to sleep? How does a man sleeping all day enjoy the sheer splendor and sheer, indeed, inconceivable beauty of Paradise? Yet, that is where every believer regards as Home and goal.
Tony Momoh wrote as part of his wishes when the approach of his demise became a certainty to him: “My co- travellers on Train Station Earth, when I go, as my brother Hafiz Momoh left on April 25, don’t curse me by praying for me to rest in peace. Wish me a smoothened journey to my home in Paradise which all of us here left aeons ago to this part of God’s wonderful Creation where we can attend the school of life. The whole of this Creation is on the move and there is no stopping.” He also spoke sternly to his family not to weep over his departure. Tony Momoh’s note raises the question: When and where does life begin and when does it end? These are not subjects of discussion for today.
There are in the present time some literature and publications on Life in the Beyond. There is the book, “Life after Life” by Dr.
Raymond Moody, a medical practioner, made popular in Nigeria by Chief Obafemi Awolowo who had said on the occasion of his 78th birthday celebration that he had read the review of the book in the Times of London and wondered how he could get a copy of it. The book details experiences of people declared clinically dead but who came back to life. In the Preface, there is an account that says: “I went through this dark, black vacuum at super speed.” Another said: “it opened up a whole new world for me… I kept thinking, ‘ there’s so much that I’ve got to find out.’” There is another book titled “A Wanderer in the Spirit Lands” said to have been transmitted to a medium by an Italian by name Franchezzo who had passed away. It contains descriptions and experiences of the dead in the Beyond. Another publication is “More About Life In The World Unseen” by Anthony Borgia. In the cover, the following is said: “the assertion that ‘ dead men tell no tails” has long been proved untrue.
Countless so- called dead men— with women and children too— have persistently shown themselves to be very much alive by returning to earth to say so…. Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, son of a former Archbishop Of
Canterbury, is one of the many who have returned to earth to deny that they are dead… Monsignor Benson has communicated with Anthony Borgia who has all along acted as his ‘ scribe.’”
The author writes in the Epilogue: “I would like to make it perfectly clear, lest misunderstanding should arise, that our young friend Roger, the brief chronicle of whose life so far in these lands of the spirit world, is the subject of these writings, is no imaginary person, created merely as a character upon whom to hang spiritual facts. He is a real person whose passing and immediately subsequent story are precisely as here recounted.” Franchezzo shares his experience, reproduced in part as follows: “… I knew not that I had died. I passed from some hours of suffering and agony into sleep— and when I awoke it was to find myself alone and in total darkness. I could rise; I could move; surely I was better. But where was I? Why this darkness? Why was there no light left with me? I arose and groped as one does in a dark room, but I could find no light, hear no sound. There was nothing but stillness, the darkness of death around me. After some fruitless struggle I fell upon the ground in unconsciousness. When I awoke again I was overjoyed to see that my beloved one had returned to me. She was standing near, looking this time as I had seen her on earth, but pale and sad and all dressed in black…. She stooped over a low mound of fresh earth. I drew nearer and nearer and saw that she was silently weeping as she laid down the flowers on that low mound. Her voice murmured softly, ‘ Oh, my love! Can you be indeed dead, and gone where my love cannot follow you?’ and I drew near, very near, though I could not touch her, and as I knelt down I, too, looked at that long mound. A shock of horror passed over me, for I knew now, at last that I was dead, and this was my own grave. Now I stood beside this grave, my own grave, and heard my beloved call me dead and strew flowers upon it.
“As I looked, the solid mound grew transparent before my eye, and I saw down to the coffin with my own name and the date of my death upon it; and through the coffin I saw the white still form I knew as myself lying within. I saw to my horror that this body had already begun to decay and become a loathsome thing to look upon. Its beauty was gone; its features none would recognize; and I stood there, conscious, looking down upon it and then myself. I felt each limp, traced out with my hands each familiar feature of my face, and knew I was dead, and yet I lived. If this were death, then those priests must have been right after all. The dead lived— but where? In what state? Was this darkness hell?
“And yet as I thought thus I looked again upon my beloved… she seemed moral enough, and if she knelt by my grave surely I must still be upon earth. Did the dead then never leave the earth at all, but hover near the scenes of their earthly lives? Then I spoke; I called to her by name. I told her that I was there, that I was still conscious, still the same, though I was dead; and she never seemed to hear— she never saw me. She still wept sadly and silently, still tenderly touched the flowers, murmuring to herself that I had so loved flower, and surely I would know she had put them there for me. Again and again I spoke to her as loudly as I could, but she heard me not.
She was deaf to my voice. She only moved uneasily and passed her hand over her head as one in a dream, and then slowly and sadly she went away.
“I strove with all my might to follow her. In vain, I could go but a few yards from the grave and my earthly body, and I saw why. A chain as of dark silk thread – it seemed no thicker than a spider’s web— held me to my body; no power of mine could break it; as I moved it stretched like elastic, but always drew me back again. Worst of all I began now to be conscious of feeling the corruption of that decaying body affecting my spirit, as a limb that has become poisoned affects with suffering the whole body on earth, and a fresh horror filled my soul. “Then a voice of some majestic being spoke to me in the darkness, and said: ‘ You loved that body more than your soul. Watch it now as it turned to dust and know what it was that you worshipped, and ministered and clung to. Know how perishable it was, how vile it has become, and look upon your spirit body and see how you have starved and cramped and neglected it for the sake of enjoyment of earthly body… I looked and beheld myself. As in a mirror held up before me, I saw myself. Oh, horror! It was beyond doubt myself, but, oh! So awfully changed, so vile, so full of baseness did I appear so repulsive in every feature.” What do we take away from this experience? Every human being will experience the immediate beyond differently from the other person after passing on in accordance with his volition and emphasis on life which takes on ethereal form in the Beyond. The experience of Franchezzo, a typical good man in the reckoning of many, was borne out of his belief that everything ended with death! Consequently his etheric organs could not be brought to activity and the thread connecting his body with the soul became dense and to the decaying and disintegrating body. Because the ethereal world is lighter his weaknesses, unedifying thinking and passion showed on the garment of his soul and held him down. It is revealed in higher knowledge that this is fate that befalls many souls that have departed. When they are set free, detached from their bodies, the level to which each sinks is determined by the degree of his density in accordance with the Law of Spiritual Gravitation. The Lord says: “Thou shall not get out of thence until thou have paid the last farthing!”
Next week: Concepts and the Beyond; Kwara and Hijab controversy.
exa“There is a lack of clarity, for mple, on how long a person remains in the grave. Many believe that a man remains in the grave until the proverbial Judgment Day when he will be awakened to face judgment even when our biology teachers have brought to class dug up skulls, femur, ribs cage, tibia etc, to educate us on body architecture. And you wonder where the body cover is and where the content of the man to be awakened is. What of those who died 200 years ago or 2,000 years ago? Where are they and from where will they be awakened to face judgment.