By Jude Ndukwe
The Sultan of Sokoto’s recent visit to Enugu State where he went
to felicitate with Enugu Rangers as champions of the 2015/2016 NPFL season has
been described by a section of the media and some commentators as a
bridge-building one. But then, is it really?
*Sultan Abubakar, Gov Ugwuanyi, Deputy Senate Pres. Ekweremmadu |
In
as much as the visit is commendable, the Sultan himself putrefied his own oil
when he said that the reason why Ndigbo
are killed whenever there is a crisis in the north is “because they are the industrious ones found in everywhere and in
every village but nobody plans or sends people to kill the Igbos”.
Apart
from being ridiculous, it is insulting to the sensibilities of the Igbo and
horrifying to upright members of the society that the reason why a people are
usually targeted for mass murder is because of their industry and number. They
are not killed because they are bad neighbours; they are not killed because
they are trouble makers, they are not killed because they are law breakers;
they are killed just because they are industrious and large in number!
This
statement by His Royal Highness, Alhaji Mohammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, is a
confirmation of what we have always known: that the Igbo are hated for nothing
but jealousy and that most crises in the northern part of Nigeria have
been instigated not because of anything serious but as an alibi for a
systematic extermination of the Igbo people.
Little
wonder then the Igbo are targets of northern Islamic extremists when there is a
crisis between Israel and Palestine in far away Middle East .
When some Danes draw a cartoon of Prophet Muhammed in far away Denmark , Ndigbo
in Kano , Kaduna
and Niger
would have to pay for it with their blood. When there is a furore about Nigeria hosting an international beauty contest
in Abuja or Lagos , the Igbo in Zamfara and Yobe would
have to be killed and their sources of livelihood destroyed for the message to
be passed that such contest is Haram to some people.
When
the US bomb Iraq , the Igbo
in Adamawa are bombed by northern elements in return. When there is a sharp
disagreement between Saudi Arabia
and Iran ,
it is the Igbo in Bauchi that pay for it. When the Sunnis and the Shi’as have
issues with each other in Kaduna
or other places, it is a recipe for Igbo sons and daughters to be beheaded in
those places even when they are neither Shiites nor Sunnis.