Who Will Protect Nigeria’s Northern Christians?

Every week, there are more massacres, but nobody seems to mind — not even their own government

By Douglas Murray

Another day in northern Nigeria, another Christian village reeling from an attack by the Muslim Fulani herdsmen who used to be their neighbours — and who are now cleansing them from the area. The locals daren’t collect the freshest bodies. Some who tried earlier have already been killed, spotted by the waiting militia and hacked down or shot. The Fulani are watching everything closely from the surrounding mountains. Every week, their progress across the northern states of Plateau and Kaduna continues. Every week, more massacres — another village burned, its church razed, its inhabitants slaughtered, raped or chased away. A young woman, whose husband and two children have just been killed in front of her, tells me blankly, ‘Our parents told us about these people. But we lived in relative peace and we forgot what they said.’

For the outside world, what is happening to the Christians of northern Nigeria is both beyond our imagination and beneath our interest. These tribal-led villages, each with their own ‘paramount ruler’, were converted by missionaries in the 19th and 20th centuries. But now these Christians — from the bishop down — sense that they have become unsympathetic figures, perhaps even an embarrassment, to the West. The international community pretends that this situation is a tit-for-tat problem, rather than a one-sided slaughter. Meanwhile, in Nigeria, the press fails to report or actively obscures the situation. Christians in the south of the country feel little solidarity with their co-religionists suffering from this Islamic revivalism and territorial conquest in the north. And worst of all, the plight of these people is of no interest to their own government. In fact, this ethnic and religious cleansing appears to be taking place with that government’s complicity or connivance.

Every village has a similar story. A few days before any attack, a military helicopter is spotted dropping arms and other supplies into the areas inhabited by the Fulani tribes. Then the attack comes. For reasons of Islamic doctrine, the militia often deliver a letter of warning. Then they come, at any time of night or day, not down the dirt tracks, but silently through the foliage. The Christian villagers, who are forbidden to carry arms (everyone is, in theory), have no way to defend themselves.

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Buhari: The Obstacle To War On Corruption

By Remi Oyeyemi

“…. whoever that is indicted of corruption between 1999 to the time of swearing-in, would be pardoned”
– President Mohammadu Buhari on March 11, 2015 at a Campaign rally in Kaduna
 
“The right thing to do is to probe at least the administrations from 1966 when this level of corruption and criminal wastefulness of resources started…”
– Balarabe Musa, Former Governor of Kaduna State
 in The Sun  of July 25, 2015.
 

Buhari 

It is becoming increasingly clear that President Mohammadu Buhari really has no interest in fighting corruption. It is embarrassing and disappointing that President Buhari conveys confusion and contused confidence about the war on corruption. The defeat of corruption is the greatest desire of Nigerians. It is why Nigerians felt that he should be given a chance after rejecting him at the polls three previous times. So far, President Buhari has not been able to come up with any clear cut policy, rules and guidelines as to how he plans to fight corruption.
 
In fact, evidentially, the most challenging obstacle to fighting corruption in this present dispensation is President Buhari himself. President Buhari has raised obstacles to the war on corruption so that it would be impossible to prosecute. This would help him and his friends could keep their loots. Any hope that corruption would be decimated if not brought to its knees by President Buhari is not just dissipating, it is fast disappearing. One more time, Nigerians have been taken for a ride.
 
In a document titled “I Pledge to Nigeria” released during the campaign, President Buhari made the following promise to Nigerians:
 
“I pledge to publicly declare my assets and liabilities, encourage all my appointees to publicly declare their assets and liabilities as a precondition for appointment. …. I pledge, as Commander-in Chief, to lead from the front and not behind in the comfort and security  of Aso Rock, to boost the morale of fighting forces and the generality of all Nigerians.”
 
 So far, President Buhari has failed to fulfill this promise to publicly declare his assets. What this refusal to declare assets publicly means is that he has skeletons in his own closet. He is hiding something from Nigerians. He is not as poor as Nigerians have been made to believe and he is probably embarrassed to openly let Nigerian know what he has illicitly accumulated.
 
It would be remembered that on Wednesday March 11, 2015, in Kaduna, President Buhari had promised that he would not probe anyone who was engaged in corruption up till May 29 when he would be sworn in. As far as he was concerned, according to that speech, you can steal all you want up till his swearing-in as president, you would be left untouched. This gave an impetus to more stealing toward the dying days of President Goodluck Jonathan administration. He has by his utterances and actions so far created confusion about what he planned to do about corruption. It is difficult given some of his actions so far if this was not a deliberate act of obfuscation to undermine the war on corruption on the part of President Buhari himself. Now, he has turned around to insist that he would only probe Jonathan’s administration as if corruption just started six years ago; as if Nigeria just came into existence six years ago. What a balderdash!

The National Grazing Reserve Bill: The Greatest Evil Of All

By Femi Fani-Kayode

On April 18th 2016, Mr. Okonkwo Afamefuna wrote the following on his Facebook wall:

“I decided to read a copy of the National Grazing Reserve Bill and I was surprised at what I saw. The Bill creates a council to be chaired by a chairman to be appointed by the president. The council shall have the power to take your land anywhere the land is located in the country and then pay you compensation. Your land, when taken, shall be assigned to herdsmen who shall use your land for grazing purposes. They shall bring cows to the land and you shall lose the land permanently to those Fulani cattlemen”. This is the Sudan downloading right here in Nigeria.”

*Fani-Kayode 

On April 18th, Mr. Gabriel Ogbonnaya wrote the following on his Facebook wall:

“I decided to read a copy of the National Grazing Reserve Bill and I was surprised at what I saw. The Bill creates a commission to be chaired by a Chairman to be appointed by the president, to be confirmed by the senate. The commission shall have the power to take your land anywhere the land is located in the country and then pay you compensation. Your land, when taken, shall be assigned to herdsmen who shall use your land for grazing purposes. They shall bring cows to the land and you shall lose the land permanently to those cattlemen. If you feel that the commission was not right to take your land, you can go to court but before you go to court, you must first of all notify the federal attorney general of your intention to sue the commission. Apart from notifying, you must get the consent and authority of the federal attorney general before you can sue. So that means that if the attorney general refuses to give his consent to the suit, you have lost your land forever to the herdsmen. And this law, when passed, shall apply to the whole country so it means that your land in the village or anywhere is not safe. The National Grazing Reserve Commission would have the power to take away your land from you anytime they want and pay you whatever they want as compensation (even when you don’t want to sell, and remember that for you to get compensation, you must have documents showing or proving ownership). So I think that we all in the South-West, South-South and South-East must rise up and reject this Bill. We must do all things to force our national Assembly members from passing that Bill into law. That Bill is a deliberate attempt to take our lands and hand the land over to the Fulani cattlemen since it is only the Fulanis that rear cattle in Nigeria. That law, when passed, shall fulfill the directive of Uthman Dan Fodio and other northern leaders to take over other parts of Nigeria. I implore you to use all available means to implore your senator and Reps not to pass that law. That law will destroy Nigeria. All over the world, ranches are established and used to rear cattle. The farmers buy land and put their cattle there. There is no country where the land of the citizens are compulsorily acquired and given to others.

This is evil, and designed to favour the Fulanis, the stock the president comes from. We must resist the passage of that Bill into law to save Nigeria, and to protect our future generations.” This is Yugoslavia and Rwanda unfolding right here in Nigeria.

On April 18th 2016, Mr. Duru Collins wrote the following on his Facebook wall:

“This National Grazing Reserve Bill if passed into law will just mark the beginning of apartheid in our country. When the government of Zimbabwe collected land from the white people who naturalised there the whole world worked against President Robert Mugabe. Sanctions were stiffened against his regime even though the whites in Zimbabwe were not African by origin. In our country today there are people that are not Nigerians by origin and these people are making laws to take over our inheritance. This nation will burn once this law is passed.” This is Lebanon and Zimbabwe downloading right here in Nigeria.” 

Wailing For Buhari's Waning Popularity

By Suraj Oyewale

Abdulhakeem is the name of my two-year-old son, but we fondly call him Baba from birth due to his resemblance of his grandparents.  At the height of President Muhammadu Buhari’s popularity before and shortly after the March 2015 presidential elections, my neighbors added ‘Sai’ to this alias, to form ‘Sai Baba’, the phrase used to hail President Buhari, which means ‘only Baba’.

*Buhari 

A few days ago, while having a walk on my street with the boy, I came across two of such neighbors, and while one, as usual, was hailing my boy as ‘Sai Baba’, the other interjected, with fury: “Please don’t call the boy Sai Baba again, Sai Baba is in Abuja doing nonsense.” That was how my neighbors stripped my boy of the alias they gave him.

I walked away thinking: So this is how life is? The same Buhari that these gentlemen were proud of just last year to voluntarily want to share name with, is now the man they despise so much that they don’t want their neighbor’s beloved son to take after again? The reason is simple: they had just come back home after hours of queuing and fighting at the fuel station to buy petrol to fill their generator, which is what they had to resort to due to the power outage they had been experiencing for weeks. They had thought that, with Sai Baba in power, the era of spending hours at the filling station was over, or that there would not even be the need to resort to their generator every day.

The above experience is one of the many I come across everyday in the last three months. From the market woman in Obalende to the tricycle operator in Ajah, the story has been the same: things are hard, this is not the change we voted for, we expected a better deal from Sai Baba.  

Expressing my worry to a Buharist friend, he tried to downplay this pulse of the street, I dared him to go the nearest newspaper stand or board a BRT from any point in Lagos and try to say Buhari is doing well, and see whether he would not be literally skinned alive! That’s how angry people are.

As someone that believed in the Buhari project and expended a great deal of intellectual resources to actualize a Buhari presidency, I owe it a duty to express my worry through the same open medium I used to sell him.

The common men on the street are the easiest to lose support of, because they’re usually unidirectional, and they care probably only for things that affect them directly. The trader in Isale Eko or the barber’s shop operator in Apapa does not care whether one looting general is going to prison, he only cares about fuel availability, transport fare, power supply and water – at least, before anything else. Herein lays the problem with the current trend of things.

Buhari: If We Were Truly In A Democracy

By Stephen Gbadamosi

Democracy! They say you are the government of the people, by the people and for the people; the government that is strictly built on the rule of law and adherence to the very minute tenet of the nation's constitution. Ok! In Nigeria, if we were truly in a democracy, would all these despicable 'peculiar mess,' as that revered South-Western politician of yore would say, be happening in Ekiti today, under the much-awaited change leadership of President Muhammadu Buhar? 

*President Buhari 

If we were truly in a democracy, would the Federal Government be brazenly disregarding the proclamations of the judiciary, courts, held as one of the three arms that is the last resort of the people in a people's government?

If we were in a democracy in Nigeria, why would the sanctity of the Ekiti governorship election be tested from the very first rung of applicable judiciary hierarchy to the Supreme Court (after which, in Nigeria's constitution, next is court of God), only for the Buhari-led All Progressives Congress (APC) to be employing every available subterfuge means to truncate the elected wishes of the people in the name of politics?

If we were truly in a democracy in Nigeria, why would the Department of State Security (DSS), an agency of the Federal Executive, storm the Ekiti State House of Assembly, a component of the legislative arm recognized by the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and abduct four members of the House on trumped-up allegations, when the same constitution guarantees separation of powers?

To my consternation, I even heard that another Ekiti government official, secretly apprehended by the DSS, respected Chief Toyin Ojo, Commissioner for Finance, was asked by DSS what he contributed to Fayose's election to merit his appointment. What a mockery and rape of democracy, if that was coming from officers of the DSS. When did contribution to electoral finances become a criterion for holding professional positions in our governments? Why haven't the moneybags in this nation who have been known to bankroll governors' and presidents' elections been appointed to key government positions? And if they had been, in which statute book is it stated that they had no right to be so appointed?

The Tyrant In Abuja

By Iyoha John Darlington
The world has lived through great civilizations and civilization itself has had its worst enemies. Man driven by lust for power and personal aggrandizement plays god to others and we have encountered with so many of them through the ages. The historic tripartite pact of 1936 saw a fusion of power blocs. Benito Mussolini ruled by caprice in fascist Italy, in Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler allied with Emperor Hirohito of Japan in a bid to bestride the world like a colossus.

*Buhari 

Other outposts of tyranny include Jordan under King Abdullah, Libya under Ghaddafi, Cuba under Fidel Castrol, the rogue regimes of North Korea and Iran, Iraq under Saddam, Uganda under Amin the late despot and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe who has ruled the country for nearly four decades.These were cold-blooded brutes who hid under a cause to unleash fury on their subjects and silenced dissenting voices in their political domains.

A lot of lives were lost and the world and most regions experienced unprecedentedly abysmal demographic change calling to mind the attempted extermination of the Jewish race out of which six million Jews gassed to death where they were held in death camps and other million of lives that were lost in World War11. Thousands of unarmed civilians mainly Kurds were killed in Halabja poison gas attack by the regime in Baghdad under Saddam Hussein, Iron-fisted Benito Mussolini clamped down on his own people while he ruled over Italy.

Back home in Africa, the State Research Bureau, Amin's secret agents killed many Ugandans some of whose flesh he fed on like a cannibal. These were all dark moments in human history. As luck would have it they all methodically took their unceremonious exits from the earth under unfortunate circumstances.

Stop Punishing Nigerians For Politicians' Wrongs! - Ben Murray-Bruce

Our Change Slogan Is Not A Campaign Gimmick – President Buhari

President Muhammadu Buhari's Christmas Message To Nigerians 

*President Buhari with Bishop Matthew Kukah 

I felicitate with all Nigerians, especially our Christian brothers and sisters, on the joyous occasion of this year’s Christmas. On this occasion of the commemoration of the birth of Jesus Christ, let us all rededicate ourselves to the virtues of peace, love, honesty, justice, equity, piety, humility and service to others which he taught. 

There can be no doubt that a greater manifestation of these virtues and ideals in our lives will immensely help us to become a more united, peaceful, secure and progressive nation.

Let us also reach out in love and compassion to fellow Nigerians who are in distress at this period of our nation’s history.

I particularly urge you all to remember victims of terrorism and insurgency in the country, especially Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).

The Federal Government will continue to collaborate with state governments and other stakeholders to ease the harsh conditions in IDP camps, while the ultimate objective remains to quickly put an end to insurgency and return the IDPs to their homes.

We must never again allow any group to hold the nation to ransom under whatever guise.

Let us also not allow current socio-economic and security challenges to dampen our expectations for a better Nigeria.

This administration has taken a number of measures to restore hope to our people. The 2016 Budget defines our commitment to giving Nigeria a new lease of life.

Our change slogan is not a campaign gimmick but a promise that must be kept. We are determined to bring about tangible changes in the lives of our people.

In this regard, efforts will be intensified to recover stolen funds, block revenue leakages and enthrone due process, transparency and accountability.

Public office is a public trust that must be held to the highest ethical standards.

I wish all Nigerians a Merry Christmas.

Please drive carefully.

MUHAMMADU BUHARI

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Nigeria: Listen Up Mr. President…

Michael Oluwagbemi II

It is almost six months, half a year, since your administration assumed the mantle of office and we’ve waited in bated breath for change that we were promised, and have watched as change have died deaths by many strokes of accommodations.

*Buhari 

 First we got platitudes of how bad it was and how short a period you had to understand your new job (discounting the fact that you badly wanted it for twelve years, and held the same job before); then we got feedback that you were looking for angels or that your body language did the magic that woke moribund refineries, convinced crazed kleptomaniacs to return looted funds and perhaps even rejuvenated national industries! Then it was the ministerial wait. But alas, the latest pronouncement from you that we’re broke is becoming quite to say the least unbecoming.

Sir, as an undying Buharist even before it became fashionable (and I still think you’re miles better than the incompetent and clueless ruler that we jettisoned for your person by miles), we expect and still expect better from a General, a strategist and above all- a leader.

Leadership is first and foremost an inspiration game. You cannot go to the three and half moribund refineries to engineer them back to life; your honorable person cannot possibly get fitted into yellow suits as one thief of yore did and inspect or facilitate the completion of Lagos-Ibadan, Benin-Ore, Coastal Roads or the realization of high speed rail connecting Lagos to Ibadan & Abuja, Second Niger Bridge or Fourth Mainland Bridge. What your Excellency can do is to inspire Nigerians to rise above the current morass of mono-economy, develop an attitude of revolutionaries and kick poverty in the butt!

Mugabe Explodes: South Africa, Nigeria ‘Betrayed Africa’

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe blasted South Africa and Nigeria at the African Union summit this weekend, saying Africa would never agree to them getting permanent seats on the UN Security Council.

This was because they had both voted for UN Security Council Resolution 1973 in 2011, which authorised military action against the regime of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

They had betrayed the continent which could never trust them, sources reported him as saying.

Mugabe intervened in a meeting of the so-called “Committee of 10” at the summit on Saturday which was discussing possible amendments to the “Ezulwini Consensus” which stated Africa’s position on reform of the UN Security Council.

The 2005 Ezulwini Consensus was that Africa should demand at least two permanent and five non-permanent seats on the council as part of the protracted, wider reform to make it more representative of the world.

The consensus also demanded that the two permanent seats should come with the same veto powers as were enjoyed by the five current permanent members, the US, UK, China, Russia and France.

This demand for vetoes had effectively stymied Africa’s chances of reforming the council. And so the South African government was calling for Africa to adopt a more flexible approach by dropping the veto demand.

This was what the so-called G4 group of nations - Germany, Japan, India and Brazil - who were also seeking permanent seats on the council had done, as a tactical manoeuvre to try to diminish resistance to their bid.

Last year South African President Jacob Zuma said: “Africa needs to compromise - not reiterate fixed positions as it has done for the past nine years.”

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