Mr. President, Pythons Do Not Dance!

By Obi Nwakanma

 In a badly worded press release announced last week, the Nigerian Army declared what it called “Operation Python Dance,” aimed, the Army says, at anticipating and curtailing violence in the South East through the Christmas period. The language of that press statement signed by Colonel Sagir Musa was only slightly better than the extremely poor and bombastic English of an earlier statement by the Army’s Public Relations Office signed by Colonel Sani Kukasheka Usman, Army Director of Public Affairs, that challenged Amnesty International’s damning report about the Nigerian Army’s extrajudicial killings of unarmed Biafran activists and protesters. 

 

*President Buhari with Military Service Chiefs

The Army’s response and denial of Amnesty’s report was not only incompetent, in that it lied about the Biafrans, but it also seemed not to take into account that in this age of ubiquitous eyes, including the Eyes in the sky recording and capturing everything, the evidence of the killing of the Biafran protesters exist; the faces of the soldiers who took part in these killings exist, recorded and digitally preserved in real time, and are now public record. Did President Buhari order the killing of these unarmed Biafrans? This is a question that is now slowly gathering momentum internationally, and it is not going to go away. 

Colonel Usman’s statement claimed: “The evidence of MASSOB/IPOB violent secessionist agitations is widely known across the national and international domains. Their modus operandi has continued to relish violence that threatens national security. Indeed, between August 2015 and August 2016, the groups’ violent protests have manifested unimaginable atrocities to unhinge the reign of peace, security and stability in several parts of the South East Nigeria. A number of persons from the settler communities that hailed from other parts of the country were selected for attack, killed and burnt. Such reign of hate, terror and ethno-religious controversies that portend grave consequences for national security have been averted severally through the responsiveness of the Nigerian Army and members of the security agencies.”

Aside from the ineloquent bombast of this statement, I beg to note that MASSOB and IPOB are not known internationally as violent groups, and have consistently maintained their non-violent philosophy and methods, and have never armed themselves, unless Colonel Usman suggests that singing and praying and “signifying” constitute lethal ammunition. The Nigerian National Assembly which should investigate the uses or misuses of Nigeria’s National Security apparatus, and keep the use or misuse of executive power within bounds, have maintained a very stony silence on this matter even with the international release of this damning video of soldiers killing unarmed Igbo civilians whose only crime is public gathering to campaign for self-determination. 

Kano Mob, Boko Haram And Herdsmen: Why There Are No Prospects For Peace

By Lawrence Nwobu

There is an increasing number of Nigerians who believe there will never be peace; as far as the nation remains as presently constituted. Those Nigerians are being vindicated by trends and events that continue to unfold in this wretched land. At the same time, there is an­other group of Nigerians—the status quo leadership elites from sections of the coun­try who continue to thrive in the pretence that all is well. Even when the reverse is self evident, the myth of harmo­ny and progress is propagat­ed in the midst of blood, toil and tears occasioned by the nation’s ethno-religious con­tradictions. When groups like IPOB/MASSOB, Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) and other legitimate self determi­nation groups burst into the scene; having been birthed by decades of injustice, inequal­ity, marginalisation, internal colonialism, ethno-religious violence and general misrule with the banner of justice, equality and self determina­tion, the chief pretenders of Nigeria castigate and shout them down.

When those who mean well advocate a Sovereign Nation­al Conference (SNC) or Con­ference of Ethnic Nationalities (CEN) to afford us the oppor­tunity to dialogue and create a nation in our own image; properly structured to               ac­commodate ethno-religious inclinations with enough au­tonomy (federalism) to pro­pel regional development and prosperity within the over­all confines of Nigeria — the chief pretenders of Nigeria label them enemies of the re­public who want to tear down the nation. Yet curiously in striking down every progres­sive idea to build a cohesive, just and properly structured nation, they never offer any alternative to the existential crisis that is ever growing be­fore their eyes. Preferring in­stead to like an Ostrich bury their heads in the sand and pretend that all is well. So the problem remains and the na­tion continues to burn with a steep price in human lives.

The worst lie is the one a people continually feed themselves thereby shackling themselves to the eternal va­garies of slavery from which they cannot exit until as was biblically proclaimed in John 8: 32; they allow “the truth set them free.” Nigeria has an ex­istential problem; pretending about it or denying it will not solve the problem, but rather it will fester and grow worse until it consumes all of us in ways never imagined. On the 2nd of June, the hard truth of Nigeria’s existential problems confronted us again with the brutal murder of Mrs Bridg­et Agbahime, a 74 year old woman from Imo state who was killed by a mob in Kano for alleged blasphemy. We later learnt that her only sin was stopping some people from doing pre-prayer wash in front of her stall in the market. These people now mobilised the usual mob of blood thirsty barbarians that murdered her.

As has been reported, this woman has not visited her home state in the last 30 years. For all intents and purposes, she is more a citizen of Kano than anywhere else. Yet she was hacked to death just be­cause of her religion and pos­sibly her ethnicity and yet we still pretend Nigeria is one. What kind of a people will be so blinded by religious and ethnic hate that they would so unconscionably kill a 74 year old woman? As difficult as this question is to answer, it has been the predicament in Nigeria since 1945—some 7 decades ago when the first ethnic riots happened in Jos, followed in succession by the 1953 anti-independence ri­ots in Kano by which time an incipient culture of vio­lence had been created. In 1966, the existing culture of violence made it easy to acti­vate pogroms in the North at a scale unprecedented in the continent, leading to the civil war. Maitsatsine riots broke the brief lull that occurred after the war. But since then it has been one riot after an­other in a ritual of ethno re­ligious violence that not only became routine but eventual­ly evolved into terrorism.