Your Land or Your Life: Garbage from the Seat of Power
“THE STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENCY, IS NOT ONLY RECKLESS, BUT UTTERLY IRRESPONSIBLE. NIGERIA IS SOAKED IN BLOOD”
Again, sorrow, tears and blood, flowed in Plateau State recently, when a band of marauding herdsmen visited horror on several villages in Plateau State, exterminating families and whole communities. Their excuse? ‘Our cattle were rustled!’ As the nation continues to mourn the over 200 innocents (mainly Christians), felled by the sophisticated weapons of Fulani herdsmen, Chief Ferdinand Orbih, SAN Daniel Bwala and Richard Abdulahi, go into the nitty-gritty of the remote and immediate causes of this needless bloodbath, against the backdrop of the statement by the Presidential spokesman, that people should choose between their ancestral homes or their lives! The Declaration
The common threat associated with highway robbers on a mission to forcibly steal what does not belong to them, is “your money or your life.” The Presidency would appear to have borrowed this threat from highway robbers and common criminals, when its chief spokesperson --Femi Adesina declared recently as follows:
“Ancestral attachment, you can only have attachment when you are alive, if you are talking of ancestral attachment, if you are dead what does the attachment matter? What does it matter again? What would the land be used for, if those who own it at the end of the day are dead? As somebody has said before, it is better to live on the land than under the land”
I must confess that, when the story first broke out on social media, I dismissed it with a wave of the hand as fake news, until I viewed the video clip wherein the President’s spokesman made the declaration.
Government’s Recklessness and Media Justification
The reality of the declaration, left me completely dumbfounded, and has thrown up a few but pertinent questions. On whose behalf, did the Government issue this threat? What are the constitutional implications of the threat? Is threatening a solution to the present bloodletting, going on in most parts of the country?
The statement by the Presidency is not only reckless, but utterly irresponsible. Nigeria is soaked in blood. It is tragic that, the blood we are talking about here, is not that of dogs and baboons, but that of innocent men, women and children (Nigerian citizens). The country is bleeding and burning, but the tragedy of it all, is that those who have the constitutional responsibility to put out the flame, are not only stoking it but are pouring petrol on the raging inferno, by their ill- thought-out and badly motivated utterances.
In saner climes, the Presidency ought to have distanced itself from the infamous declaration of its spokesman highlighted above, and sanction him by sacking him with ignominy, but no action was taken as mum was the word from the seat of power.
Hence, the media took the silence of the Presidency on the issue, to mean that it is the official position of the President. The media cannot be faulted, in this regard. It appears to be the modus operandi of this administration, that when its officials behave badly or recklessly, they are never reprimanded or sanctioned. Many examples abound in this regard. When the Inspector- General of Police disobeyed the instructions of the President to relocate to Benue State at the height of the massacre of innocent Nigerians in Benue State, he was neither sanctioned nor reprimanded. When the Minister of Defence attributed the cause of the crisis, to the blocking of the grazing routes by the affected communities and thus, blaming the victims rather than the perpetrators, he was neither sanctioned nor reprimanded. One cannot but agree with Mr. Olusegun Adeniyi, who opined recently that:
“When public officials speak so recklessly at a time when several families were mourning the victims of a brutal massacre, and there was neither a reprimand or any sanction, why would the President not be accused of partisanship? And to compound the problem, almost on a daily basis, several other silly excuses are being manufactured for the killings, with the latest being that the perpetrators being some unnamed corrupt politicians. How can a Government be so cynical, in treating an issue that is already tearing the nation apart? Aside that, the lives of hundreds are being lost on a daily basis”
Given his antecedents as a media guru and a former presidential spokesman, Olusegun Adeniyi is a man with considerable experience, whose opinion should not be disregarded. I find his views expressed above, compelling and valid.
Government’s Changing Narrative
The Presidency by its utterances and declarations, has left the citizens of Nigeria so confused, that they do not know what to believe anymore. And this has not helped in any way, in finding a solution to the massacres taking place across Nigeria. The narrative by the Government of Nigeria, changes as frequently as the ladies change their underwear, depending on who is speaking on behalf of the Government, or the place or the audience.
On his trips to the United Kingdom and the United states, our President told the Archbishop of Canterbury and President Trump respectively, that the killings have always been there, but have been made worse by the influx of gunmen from the Sahel region, trained and armed by the late Muammar Gadhafi of Libya, who escaped when Gadhafi was killed.
Another narrative by the Presidency, is that Herdsmen are killing because grazing routes were blocked,